April 15, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
47:54
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies. | |
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| I got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. | ||
|
unidentified
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The people have had a belly full of it. | |
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
|
unidentified
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Mega Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | ||
| Let's hear the question from this very low-rated anchor at CBN. | ||
| Thank you, President. | ||
| Do you plan to ask President McKinley to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported? | ||
| The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador? | ||
| Well, let me ask, Pam, would you ask to answer that question? | ||
| Sure, President. | ||
| First and foremost, he was illegally in our country. | ||
| He had been illegally in our country. | ||
| And in 2019... | ||
| Two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court, ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country. | ||
| Right now, it was a paperwork. | ||
| It was additional paperwork that needed to be done. | ||
| That's up to El Salvador if they want to return him. | ||
| That's not up to us. | ||
| The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if, as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs. | ||
| If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane. | ||
|
unidentified
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And you are doing a great job. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Mr. Miller, can you just also respond to that question? | ||
| Because, you know, it's asked by CNN, and they always ask it with a slant, because they're totally slanting, because they don't know what's happening. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's why nobody's watching them. | |
| But would you answer that question also, please? | ||
| Yes, gladly. | ||
| So, as Pam mentioned, He's an illegal alien from El Salvador. | ||
| So, with respect to you, he's a citizen of El Salvador. | ||
| So, it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point. | ||
| As two immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13. | ||
| When President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization, That meant that he was no longer eligible under federal law, which I'm sure you know, you're very familiar with the INA, that he was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief in the United States. | ||
| So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law, he's not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation. | ||
| This issue was then, by a district court judge, Completely inverted. | ||
| And a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here. | ||
| That issue was raised to the Supreme Court. | ||
| And the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed 9-0 unanimously, stating clearly that neither Secretary of State nor the President could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador. | ||
| Who, again, is a member of MS-13, which, as I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world, and I can promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away. | ||
|
unidentified
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So you don't plan to ask for any help to get him back? | |
| And what was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve? | ||
| Was it 9-0? | ||
| Yes, it was a 9-0. | ||
|
unidentified
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In our favor. | |
| In our favor, against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power. | ||
| To compel the foreign policy function of the United States. | ||
| As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador's sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. | ||
| No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador. | ||
| That is the president of El Salvador. | ||
| Your questions about it per the court can only be directed to him. | ||
| You are in the War Room. | ||
| It's Monday, April 14th in the year of our Lord, 2025. | ||
| It's Natalie Winters hosting. | ||
| Stephen K. Bannon is out on assignment, but don't worry, he will be back tomorrow. | ||
| Until then, you are stuck with me, but don't go anywhere. | ||
| We've got a packed show for you. | ||
| I am obviously not in Washington, D.C. I am out on my own assignment, but so much going on. | ||
| I thought I just had to host. | ||
| This evening, I guess I'm already feeling, shall we say, FOMO from that wonderful exchange in the Oval Office earlier today. | ||
| And look, we don't like to cast or throw stones here in the war room, but I will say for some of my legacy media colleagues, though it pains me to have to describe them as such, just a humble tip. | ||
| If the questions that you're asking, if I were to just read a blank transcript of them, and they probably could have been read or written by a propagandist on behalf of MS-13 or Trend de Aragua, it probably means that you're not asking a very good question. | ||
| Question. I think Caitlin Collins is probably only a few days away from becoming an honorary member of MS-13, and I would extend that honor because they probably think it is one. | ||
| Out to probably virtually all of the press corps, because it seems that the only time that the word immigrant, immigration, refugee, or any Latin American country can cross their mouths or enter their vernacular, sort of like a Kamala Harris effect, | ||
| right? The only time she could say the word sovereignty was when she was down at the border once on the campaign in Tucson, then suddenly it seemed to diminish and abate from her vocabulary in its entirety. | ||
| But the only time that these sick, twisted people want to talk about immigration, legal, illegal, or otherwise, is in the confines of trying to get a gotcha moment against President Trump. | ||
| And I don't know, I'll just be blunt. | ||
| The American people do not care about deporting or what the lived experience of some thug, violent gang member is after they've been deported from this country. | ||
| I don't care about the paperwork, and I really don't care if they were in the right seat or the wrong seat, right? | ||
| I think we saw on the campaign trail, and frankly, since President Trump descended down, the escalator on that very fateful day. | ||
| The legacy media loves to play referee. | ||
| And set the goalposts when it comes to what our discussion has to be about anything related to immigration, legal, illegal, or otherwise. | ||
| And the only time that my legacy media betters will ask a question about immigration is in an effort to smear and mock President Trump's deportation agenda. | ||
| And just like what we saw in the outrage, the rightful and justified, Outrage, the righteous indignation about what was happening in, say, for example, Springfield, Ohio. | ||
| The American people don't want to talk about respecting the human rights and due process of people who probably have more stuff in common with animals than they do humanity. | ||
| We want to talk about how these deportation numbers, how we can get them up, how we can reform legal immigration. | ||
| How we can stop subverting this country's culture from within by importing an enemy, oftentimes peoples from countries that we're basically at, maybe not kinetic war, but certainly economic war with. | ||
| Whatever happened to what was it, the thousands of Chinese nationals that entered this country under Joe Biden. | ||
| They love to only look at immigration in the confines of a political gotcha moment against President Trump when the rest of this country looks at immigration as an issue that's not just about immigration, but it's something economic, it's political, it's societal, and most importantly, | ||
| it's cultural. | ||
| And anybody who thinks that defending illegal aliens by saying, well... | ||
| It's actually not a crime. | ||
| It's a civil offense to enter this country illegally. | ||
| Yet good luck in the midterms. | ||
| Very good luck in the midterms to you. | ||
| And by the way, it's the same people who are so quick to make that distinction, right, between civil and criminal offenses. | ||
| Well, did you see them ever apoplectic or melting down about, I don't know, what was it, the hundreds if not thousands of terrorism enhancement charges that January 6th participants had added to their record? | ||
| They're more upset about designating MS-13 and Trent de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations and deporting foreign terrorists than actual American citizens being treated as such. | ||
| Right? They care more, I think, about the chain of custody and making sure that criminal illegal aliens Have all of their human rights, whatever weird UN Geneva framework they've come up with for these disgusting people being honored on these deportation flights, | ||
| then they care about investigating or looking into the chain of custody of mail-in ballots. | ||
| Right? It's very, very selective outrage. | ||
| And it's quite interesting. | ||
| We, I think, have advocated here on this show, since before the election, that we shouldn't just be talking about mass deportations, but we should be talking about mass denaturalizations, too. | ||
| And yes, Media Matters, I hope you heard me on that one. | ||
| But in the same vein that Joe Biden just gets to what? | ||
| And I'm not talking, auto pen sign preemptive blanket pardons, but just grant. | ||
| Millions, probably at the end of the day, over 10 million illegal aliens with some form of citizenship or a green card or a visa, that doesn't mean anything. | ||
| Not just because he was an illegitimate president, but there are certainly legal ways to look into denaturalizing these people. | ||
| And I think that the president and that this White House should be looking into that full steam and full force ahead. | ||
| Because I would certainly love to see my legacy media colleagues melt down about that one. | ||
| But I think we can give credit where credit is due. | ||
| Obviously, we have hammered, I think, on the show that the deportation numbers, though the crossings of the border have plummeted. | ||
| We need to have, I guess, a perpendicular track record when it comes to these deportations and see that number exponentially grow, maybe even more so than the fake climate change hockey stick graph. | ||
| But to the Trump administration's credit, I mean, right, you know they've been talking about it since even before President Trump won. | ||
| The fear porn, the propaganda, the information warfare that they were going to be waging. | ||
| On all of us, right? | ||
| All the Saab stories, I'm sure you all remember, and I'm not just talking about the legalization of domestic propaganda or CNN intentionally airing, you know, pictures of children dying in wars. | ||
| Well, they'll never air pictures of American children being killed by illegal aliens, but I guess if it serves a military-industrial complex, then they'll make an exception. | ||
| But it really is quite wild that for the tens of thousands of people that the Trump administration has successfully deported, That the best gotcha moment they can manufacture really boils down to two people, and that is the Maryland man, | ||
| used to be Maryland father, now I guess he's just a Maryland man, who was, what, an MS-13 member, and then, of course, the infamous, notorious makeup artist. | ||
| And it really is quite impressive, like I was saying, of the, what, tens of thousands of people that they've deported, the best that they can do, the best... | ||
| The accusation that they can hurl against the Trump administration is that, well, maybe two of the people, you fudged the paperwork. | ||
| Maybe they were just being like Democrats on mail-in ballots. | ||
| But it's quite telling, and it's a testament to that successful operation. | ||
| Right? Marilyn Mann, I guess that's just like, what was it? | ||
| Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Asir religious scholar, also known as the leader of the Islamic State, but the Washington Post, I guess, didn't want to describe him. | ||
| Is that? | ||
| But I guess you also get special treatment if you're a member of a terrorist organization, because apparently Senator Chris Van Hollen has requested a meeting with the wonderful president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to discuss the status of that so-called missing Maryland man, | ||
| demanding answers like a petulant child, because apparently the Democrats' perverse version of a social contract is that they're going to keep selling you down the river with, I don't know, trade deals and immigration policy. | ||
| Well, then you get a special meeting, not even with a member of the House, but with a full-blown senator, because that makes a lot of sense. | ||
| But I would just say humbly. | ||
| To all of these wonderful Democrats who really on full display have shown their love, not for this country, but for, again, foreign terrorist organizations, that we probably wouldn't have had to flood the zone with all these EOs and deportations and this whole mess of an operation would not have to be so haphazard and massive and colossal if you guys had not flooded this country with tens of millions of illegal aliens. | ||
| And I'm not just talking under Joe Biden. | ||
| But years past and years prior, and we know what you guys probably tried to do, under President Trump, too. | ||
| And then, it's quite funny, because there's a beautiful article, I believe it came out yesterday, in Politico, Denver, if you want to toss that up, populists are gaining power and keeping it. | ||
| What comes next? | ||
| And it goes in details. | ||
| They almost get there. | ||
| They're close enough, but not quite. | ||
| They don't realize that it's actually this mass immigration, and that's too euphemistic a term, this mass invasion of every Western country by third world backwards cultures that hate us and don't have to go over to Iran to hear them chanting death to America. | ||
| You can hear it a lot closer to home. | ||
| But that is what is undergirding this global populist movement that, believe me, Politico is absolutely panicking and in meltdown over. | ||
| But the real reason that the populist movement right now is having such a moment and is so ascendant is because, well, all of the levers that they use to try to throttle us, whether it was the censorship, USAID, the State Department, all of these weird pro-democracy initiatives. | ||
| I think anytime you hear the word pro-democracy, it should make the hair on your neck stick up almost as much as when you hear comprehensive immigration reform or another Ukraine aid package. | ||
| But they no longer have the levers of institutional power to push back on what is the ascendant global populist movement. | ||
| And might I just add, while we're at it, the left, of course, is also melting down over terrorists being deported from... | ||
| College campuses, although fair point, I think there are probably a lot of homegrown terrorists and anti-American activists on those campuses too. | ||
| But I think that they need to be going after the professors as well, the foreign professors. | ||
| And a lot of the Chinese Communist Party funded, if not outright linked and controlled, owned and operated researchers. | ||
| I think just limiting the confines of who you're deporting on these college campuses to people who are anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. | ||
| It's not right. | ||
| It should be under the purview of who is anti-America, right? | ||
| This is the United States of America, and I think they need to broaden out the scope. | ||
| I think, like I said, Chinese Communist Party-funded researchers and, frankly, all the foreign students should have been gone yesterday. | ||
| How's that for a late Sunday afternoon EO? | ||
| But this administration really is firing on all cylinders, and you can see it in the way. | ||
| Caitlin Collins, the wonderful Caitlin Collins, is melting down in the briefing room. | ||
| But I want to broaden this out to, I guess, an exclusive story for you guys here on The War Room that I broke this morning having to do with foreign governments, if you can believe it, actively researching and studying how they can best thwart within their own countries. | ||
| A populist uprising in terms of supporting restrictionists, that's what they describe it as, immigration policies in the style of President Trump. | ||
| Denver, if you want to toss the report cover up, it's called, no bias here, countering misinformation about refugees and migrants. | ||
| Fun fact, not only was it funded by an Australian government subsidized research institution, but also the... | ||
| Behavioral Insight Technology. | ||
| It's a global consulting firm that has a lot of contracts with the federal government. | ||
| I guess where is Doge when you need it? | ||
| But they put out this 40, 50-some-odd page report working. | ||
| They've become so radical. | ||
| It's no longer just about debunking misinformation. | ||
| They're actually in the business of pre-bunking information. | ||
| In other words, they don't even want you to be able to conceptualize. | ||
| Dirty thoughts about illegal aliens and mass migration to begin with. | ||
| Let that sink in. | ||
| Global researchers in conjunction with federal contractors conspiring together to make it so you can't even have unpure thoughts or negative thoughts about mass migration. | ||
| And to that point where they say that illegal aliens are used as political scapegoats for all things that are going wrong in this country. | ||
| I don't necessarily think that's true. | ||
| I think here in the war room we call it the deep state for what it's worth, but whatever, they can share credit, I guess. | ||
| But one of the top examples that they use in terms of pre-bunking, and I'll read you the direct quote, you can also toss the picture up on screen, is quote, in the U.S., Trump has introduced new border control measures and announced plans for mass deportations. | ||
| Some European leaders are considering following suit. | ||
| In this context, misinformation may circulate in the near future, warns the paper. | ||
| They then go on to explain, and you can put the other picture up where they show you this nice little HR-UN style flowchart. | ||
| Where they help you pre-bunk these, what they describe as myths, about the scale of illegal immigration, the scope of illegal immigration, crimes committed by illegal aliens, and of course the impending, if not already occurring, housing crisis at the hands of illegal aliens. | ||
| And frankly, I think the real buried lead here is that rather than curtail the number of immigration, legal or illegal, They would rather engineer and terraform your psychological response to it. | ||
| Right? That's quite telling. | ||
| Rather than work with the population at home who has obviously expressed anti-immigration sentiment, they would rather try to psychologically manipulate you, that's what they're studying, into being pro-open borders. | ||
| That's the elite ruling class. | ||
| That's your betters that we're up against. | ||
| I guess, speaking of narrative control, they wheeled out, I guess, another wonderful open borders globalist, although I guess the only border he cares about is his own. | ||
| That is, of course, none other than Volodymyr Zelensky, who got the wonderful 60 Minutes treatment last night on just a whole Bash Trump episode. | ||
| I have a few cuts that I want to play. | ||
| I'll put a trigger warning for those of us. | ||
| I guess it's a little close to tax day, so I apologize. | ||
| But in case you were wondering what your hard-earned tax dollars are going to support, I'll give you a little supercut. | ||
| Denver, let's roll it. | ||
|
unidentified
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narrative | |
| I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S. How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, | ||
| and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? | ||
| This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia's information policy on America, on US politics and US politicians. | ||
| You're not in a good position. | ||
| You don't have the cards right now. | ||
| And Zelensky told us he heard Russia's narrative from Trump officials in that disastrous Oval Office meeting in February. | ||
| You're gambling with World War III. | ||
| Would you invite President Trump to Ukraine? | ||
| With pleasure. | ||
| Please. This, Zelensky apparently wanted President Trump to hear in English. | ||
| We want you to come. | ||
| And I think to come and to see. | ||
| You think you understand what's going on here? | ||
| Okay. We respect your position. | ||
| You understand. | ||
| But please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of formats of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, | ||
| churches, children, destroyed. | ||
| Or that come. | ||
| Look and then let's move with the plan how to finish the war. | ||
| You will understand with whom you have a deal. | ||
| You will understand what Putin did. | ||
| And we will not prepare anything. | ||
| It will not be theater with preparing actors in the streets and etc. | ||
| We don't do this. | ||
| We don't need it. | ||
| You can go exactly where you want in any city which has been under attacks. | ||
| What I said to them, just come and to understand. | ||
| With his invitation on its way, he switched to Ukrainian. | ||
| Does the United States have your back? | ||
| The U.S. has donated about $175 billion in aid. | ||
| Roughly $100 billion of that was military, most of which was spent in the U.S. on manufacturing American weapons. | ||
|
unidentified
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What would you say that the American people have gotten for that money? | |
| We have always believed that this is our shared struggle, that Ukraine is defending our shared values, that we are defending Europe as a whole. | ||
| I can only thank the people of the United States of America for their support, their strong support. | ||
| But the people dying right now, with all due respect to the U.S. and Europe, the ones dying right now are Ukrainians. | ||
| This is why I say that by giving us weapons, other countries are protecting their own people. | ||
| You can save your thanks. | ||
| I think what the American people really want is, well, frankly, no more money to go to you and your corrupt oligarchic friends, but we want an audit. | ||
| And a retroactive audit at that. | ||
| And also shame on you for saying it's only Ukrainians who are dying, or I believe you referred to the United States as a partner of yours. | ||
| Don't really think that that's a co-equal relationship in any sense of the word. | ||
| A lot of Americans are dying too, and I would have rather allocated those $175 billion to what was it? | ||
| Probably stopping the fentanyl crisis, stopping, I don't know, the poorest southern border, the invasion that was going there, or any of the myriad of health emergencies that this country's undergone while we've been shipping away God knows what to your country that's probably only funneling at least half, probably more. | ||
| Of those weapons to the black market. | ||
| I mean, at this point, I think the only strategic advantage that the Ukraine could potentially have for the United States would be turning it into another version of El Salvador where we could deport illegals to. | ||
| And I stand by that wholeheartedly. | ||
| Media matters. | ||
| You know, it's quite funny, right? | ||
| The irony, it's not okay for... | ||
| Russia, right, to cross the border of Ukraine. | ||
| But I guess when it's the United States, if you're just a Maryland man, which is apparently a euphemism for what domestic terrorist or foreign terrorist in that case, then you have free reign to invade the United States, all that you want. | ||
| And if you're not on the right seat when you're being deported, then you'll have the entire Praetorian Guard of the legacy media running cover for you. | ||
| I guess while we're at it, the legacy media that's also right apoplectic over the tariffs. | ||
| It's quite funny. | ||
| Ukraine aid is really great for America's industrial base, right? | ||
| It's really good at building that up and creating jobs. | ||
| Well, you know what else is really great for America's industrial base is apparently you guys care about that so much. | ||
| A little thing that starts with a T called tariffs. | ||
| But I don't think that they're getting the same kind treatment. | ||
| That Volodymyr Zelensky or any of the other Ukrainian oligarchs, corrupt oligarchs at that, and I'm being nice in my characterization, have received in terms of media coverage. | ||
| And by the way, tariffs are less severe of an economic impact on the United States than any of these Ukraine aid packages. | ||
| And I'm not just talking from a fiscal perspective, but from the fact of how close we've been drawn into World War III, angering the Chinese Communist Party and angering Russia at that. | ||
| But I guess democracy dies in darkness, right? | ||
| So therefore we should just continue to ceaselessly sell our tax dollars down the river. | ||
| And I guess democracy also dies when you start deporting foreign terrorists, convicted foreign terrorists at that. | ||
| That's the America that we live in. | ||
| We're going to get into all things speaking of maybe not foreign, maybe not full-blown terrorists, but aiding and abetting domestic terrorists, foreign ones too. | ||
| Mark Zuckerberg after this short break. | ||
| I've got to go run and grab a... | ||
|
unidentified
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Welcome back to The War Room. | |
| Anytime I'm in LA doing the shows from here, it always reminds me of when I was filling in for Steve while he was in prison, which I would also just add that to the other wonderful layer of hypocrisy on all these people melting down about the so-called unjust... | ||
| treatment of these foreign terrorist criminals, scum of the earth people. | ||
| Where were all of you when Stephen K. Bannon was sent to prison, all you criminal justice reform advocates? | ||
| I think you guys are probably throwing parties and celebrating, so spare me the performative activism. | ||
| We are going to jump to our first guest shortly, but real quick, in the meantime, you've got to make sure you are checking out HomeTitleLock.com with promo code STEVE25. | ||
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| That's BirchGold.com slash Bannon or texting Bannon to 989898. | ||
| We saw Steve had a wonderful getter post this morning on the price of gold saying pattern recognition because gold is and always has been a hedge. | ||
| And lastly, you can be checking out Patriot Mobile. | ||
| That's PatriotMobile.com slash Bannon, or you can call 972-PATRIOT for a free month of service. | ||
| So you can call your friends and talk about all the wonderful gains and victories we've had under the Trump administration that are probably making Caitlin Collins and her ilk totally apoplectic, which I don't know about you, contrary to what MSNBC says, that's exactly what I voted for. | ||
| Now that we have that out of the way, I'm honored to come to our first guest that is none other than Alam Bakari, who is still working at Mike Benz's Foundation for Freedom Online Think Tank, among many other things. | ||
| But Alam, I wanted to have you on. | ||
| Your background is obviously in covering big tech. | ||
| There's the big meta Zuckerberg trial going on today. | ||
| I want to get into what happened today in court. | ||
| But before we do that... | ||
| There's been a massive, massive effort. | ||
| I would call it lobbying, but it's more than that. | ||
| It's targeting influencers, but particularly on the right. | ||
| And I think that our audience needs to be very steely-eyed and wary of influencers, talking heads that are not talking about this trial or talking about it extremely soft, because I would argue odds are that they are somehow wrapped up in the very robust meta Zuckerberg influence operation that we know they've put out there. | ||
| Tentacles, claws, talons, whatever you want to call it, into the magosphere. | ||
| But can you just sort of walk us through the scope of these efforts to sort of control the narrative, control opposition? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, yeah, Zuckerberg and Meta have been on a lobbying blitz in D.C., and I'm sure that extends to funding PR efforts targeted at the right. | |
| No doubt. | ||
| That's how every big company does it. | ||
| That's in conjunction with his public pivot towards the right. | ||
| He's made some overtures to the MAGA movement since Trump won the election in November. | ||
| He went on Joe Rogan, criticized the Biden administration. | ||
| He shut down Meta's fact-checking program. | ||
| He talked about the need for more masculine energy in corporate culture. | ||
| And he's talked about the importance of free speech. | ||
| And now he's trying to cash in that little bit of goodwill he's built up with a lobbying campaign in D.C., including where they're buying a massive mansion 10 minutes from the White House and having regular meetings in the Oval Office. | ||
| According to reports, and it was all aimed at stopping this FTC antitrust case against Meta from going to trial, because it could be the most consequential antitrust case in the US versus Microsoft. | ||
| It could lead to Meta having to unwind its purchases. | ||
| I think you pointed it out on Twitter, | ||
| despite... His public pivot towards the right. | ||
| Many leading MAGA figures remain banned on the platform. | ||
| And I know you were tweeting about that last week. | ||
| Yeah, I had reached out to their spokesperson for a comment and I presented them with a list of individuals, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, people who I'm sure people in this audience love and watch, asking if they were still banned and if so, why? | ||
| And instead of saying, you know what, you're right, we're going to overturn the ban or actually you're wrong, these people aren't banned, they can start an account. | ||
| They said... | ||
| We'll review it, like, at some point down the line, maybe if it's of interest to us. | ||
| So, you know, the fact-checking and the masculinity stuff is obviously, I think, what we would call a shiny toy, a distraction, sort of the culture war stuff that they think we're a cheap date, we have low standards, and an easy buy-in. | ||
| But I do think it's a good sign that they didn't settle. | ||
| So can you sort of walk the audience through the timeline of the trial? | ||
| And today, I believe the first day is already underway, probably concluded. | ||
| But what they need to be on the lookout for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, and just briefly on that point, I mean, it's a real fumble on Meta's part that, you know, they hadn't unbanned these accounts almost six months after Trump won the election. | |
| I mean, there are so many big names that are still banned. | ||
| Tommy Robinson, Milo Yiannopoulos. | ||
| Paul Joseph Watson, I think, is still banned. | ||
| Scott Greer, the conservative columnist. | ||
| Many, many others as well. | ||
| And I kind of get the sense of a tension between Facebook's leadership, which wants to roll back all of this stuff, and its content moderation team, which wants to stick to the old ways. | ||
| It's important to remember one of the first things Elon Musk did when he bought X, formerly Twitter, was massive, massive cuts to the content moderation team. | ||
| Meta hasn't done that. | ||
| So I imagine they're getting a lot of pushback from content moderators who still want to keep all these people banned. | ||
| And I think that's really hampering their efforts to win goodwill on the right. | ||
| But to get to your question, this case has been going on for five years. | ||
| It started in the first Trump administration under their efficacy and continued under the Biden administration. | ||
| And it basically alleges that Facebook obtained an illegal monopoly on the US antitrust laws with its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instagram. | ||
| that could... | ||
| You know, it'd be a hugely consequential moment for the entire tech industry because Meta would be forced to unwind those purchases. | ||
| And just walk us through, you know, if it were up to me, I'm a Luddite, I don't like any of these social media platforms, I'm like Steve on that, but obviously they're here to stay and I guess they're trying to do the MAGA conversion, though I always say I've seen transgender operations more convincing than what they're trying to do. | ||
| But what do you think a realistic outcome, like a pro-MAGA, an outcome of this trial that our audience could support, what do you think that would look like, if there is one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, you know, my nonprofit obviously focuses on online free speech. | |
| And what I'd like to see Meta do is unban all of those accounts that we talked about. | ||
| They're very important political voices. | ||
| And, you know, maybe even go take steps towards unbanning some of the smaller accounts that have been banned over the years, you know, over spurious allegations of hate speech and misinformation. | ||
| Probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions, fell into that. | ||
| You even go to places like Brazil and there were hundreds of thousands of WhatsApp users being banned at the behest of that country's very politicized pro-censorship judiciary. | ||
| Hopefully what Meta learns from this episode and the backlash they've been receiving over the past two weeks is you can't take a halfway step towards ending censorship. | ||
| You have to be serious about it. | ||
| And you have to be at least on X's level, which has set the standard in unbanning some of these major political voices that were censored over the last decade or so. | ||
| The other thing that I think Meta could do and other tech companies really is look for areas of alignment with the present political moment, which I would argue is on the anti-censorship side of things. | ||
| I think the result of the presidential election was a vote against online censorship. | ||
| There's tension between the so-called tech right and the MAGA right in questions like immigration, but I think there's also alignment on matters like fighting censorship abroad, for example, in places like Brazil, and especially in Europe with their Digital Services Act, | ||
| which levies enormous fines on American companies for, again, spurious so-called violations like misinformation and hate speech. | ||
| And, you know, if the tech right, if tech companies who have a lot of resources would actually commit some of those resources to fighting those online censorship laws abroad and did it publicly and vocally, you know, at least, you know, if they spend a fraction... | ||
| of the amount that the Chan Zuckerberg initiative spent on progressive causes over the last few years and ballot boxes in 2020, which were pivotal to Biden's victory. | ||
| If they spent a fraction on that on fighting censorship in places like Brazil and Europe, I think that would win them a lot of goodwill and it would show that they're serious about fighting censorship. | ||
| Alan, you guys do such wonderful work at the Foundation for Freedom Online and everything that you've done. | ||
| Your whole canon of work, I think, has really been pivotal. | ||
| On this issue, which is, I think, much bigger than just big tech or platforms or social media, it is about free speech itself. | ||
| Where can people go to follow you and stay up to date with everything you're working on in the meantime? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, thank you, Natalie. | |
| And you can find our reports at thefoundationforfreedomonline.com. | ||
| We do detailed deep dives. | ||
| On the censorship industrial complex and especially has been funded by US government agencies over the past half decade. | ||
| You can find us there. | ||
| You can find me on X at Alan Bakari. | ||
| You can find our founder at Mike Benz. | ||
| And yeah, we'll be putting out many reports going forward as we try to unravel this machine of censorship that was built up over the last few years. | ||
| Try to put the contents of Pandora's box back inside. | ||
| It's never been done, but we will try. | ||
| Alan, thank you so much for joining us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Natalie. | |
| And Warren Posse, I will be very clear, I think you guys know where we stand on all of this, but just to reiterate for the haters, losers, and legacy media that's watching, Mark Zuckerberg belongs in prison. | ||
| Maybe we should send him to El Salvador. | ||
| I know President Trump was talking about sending Americans to prisons in El Salvador. | ||
| I think that would be a great idea. | ||
| And look, I'm not even saying because he stole the 2020 election or helped rig it, because he did, and I can go over chapter and verse, the Center for Tech and Civic Life Grants that went, what was it, 98% and upwards of that, to Democratic districts. | ||
| Yeah, try to explain keeping your tax-exempt status for all that work, or your collusion with the Chinese Communist Party, like the whistleblowers that you're actively trying to suppress. | ||
| So spare me your free speech, performative activism on that front. | ||
| Mr. Zuckerberg. | ||
| But I would just look at what happened on the southern border. | ||
| Right? All the wonderful activities, this time not necessarily emanating out of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, but out of Forward U.S., one of the foremost lobbying organizations to essentially replace you, your children, and your grandchildren with immigrant labor. | ||
| Well, believe it or not, they, as we exclusively reported, I think a few months ago, have financed to the tunes of millions of dollars, essentially every left-wing NGO, those that aren't funded by ActBlue, that are involved on the southern border from cradle to grave, | ||
| from start to finish, the entirety of the illegal immigration process. | ||
| And I'm leaving out the whole H-1B discussion, though. | ||
| I will certainly have that anytime, anywhere, anyplace. | ||
| But in the case of the Chan Zuckerberg initiative, if you remember the long, what was it, 40-tweet thread that I put out, showing all these various NGOs that Zuckerberg himself, the organization that he founded, so spare me the stupid defense that they, | ||
| I think, attacked this show for saying that, oh, well, he doesn't control all the money. | ||
| He doesn't know where his money goes. | ||
| Bro, you founded the organization. | ||
| So you're all about masculinity? | ||
| Then be a man and take some ownership. | ||
| And a real man wouldn't just send some half-assed two-page letter to the House Judiciary Committee saying, oops, I think I maybe stole the election, but, like, I don't totally think I did. | ||
| Sorry would go a long way. | ||
| Not long enough to keep you out of prison, per se. | ||
| But maybe that would be a good start. | ||
| But some of these NGOs, one of them was the Border Angels Initiative, the Kino Border Initiative. | ||
| Well, those groups were involved with supplying water and food and resources to illegal aliens on their trek to the United States. | ||
| And then all of the Catholic charities and their Lutheran counterparts were funded, you guessed it, extensively by foreign U.S. and groups like that to help facilitate every single Instance every single section of the mass invasion of illegal immigration into this country. | ||
| Groups that are actively opposing President Trump's immigration agenda. | ||
| Groups that are operating ICE hotlines, doxxing ICE agents, trying to stop ICE raids, swearing that till their dying breath they'll oppose President Trump's deportation raids. | ||
| Those are groups that are funded directly. | ||
| Directly by a group that Mark Zuckerberg founded. | ||
| And now this man has the nerve, using all the money that he got from trying to destroy this country, social media, the negative impacts on children aside, to buy what was a $25 million house in D.C. so he could go grovel and try to kiss the ring of President Trump so his stupid companies can somehow avoid being broken up. | ||
| You know, it's the people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, their weird space expeditions that are probably all just a tax write-off to begin with. | ||
| It's those people who I guess for so long they've been used to being prioritized by who's ever been elected, whoever's been the president, or I guess selected in the case of Joe Biden, maybe that's why they had to rig it, because they know for once President Trump actually puts you first. | ||
| Right, the day that he launched those tariffs, you know, I know the Ukraine aid was really so great for America's industrial base. | ||
| Did you guys feel that? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think so. | ||
| Thank you, Scott Pelley. | ||
| You're very convincing in your presentation, but unfortunately, the facts do not comport with your propaganda. | ||
| But that was the first day in a very long time in this country where the working class The people who Mark Zuckerberg thinks are dumb enough that if he just sends a stupid apology letter to House Judiciary saying that I promise I won't rig elections and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, | ||
| well, we're out of the political space. | ||
| Yeah, but all of my, I guess, fellow co-founders of Facebook and all my Silicon Valley friends, they're still going to be in it. | ||
| They'll just say they're like pseudo-MAGA. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| President Trump put you first and put you over him. | ||
| And I would strongly implore and encourage this administration to keep doing that when it comes to this whole Meta case. | ||
| Because for me, and I think for a lot of people watching this show, that the Zuckerberg issue is a red line in the sand. | ||
| And like I'm telling you, you know I live in D.C. I know all the people, all the influencers. | ||
| There is a massive, massive effort going on at the hands of Meta. | ||
| To try to direct, dare I say, smear the narrative about Zuckerberg, about his MAGA come-up, you know, do a couple of rounds of jiu-jitsu, and now all of a sudden you're a real strong, tough man. | ||
| Apparently that's what's going to go over with the MAGA crowd. | ||
| Now, maybe just say you don't support open borders, and that would go a little bit further. | ||
| But they are spending a bunch of cash to try to influence the influencers into not talking. | ||
| And not calling out Mark Zuckerberg for who he is. | ||
| Now, I think I have very clearly demonstrated that I, despite their best efforts, I'm not on their payroll, but be very, very clear-eyed about the people who shows you're watching this week, frankly, since a while back, who are not talking about this issue or who are talking about it very euphemistically and very vaguely, | ||
| because I can guarantee you that those people are somehow caught up in some Weird form of a meta-lobbying campaign and meta-influence orbit. | ||
| And speaking of influence orbits, you guys know we've been really honing in on the people who are opposing the tariffs. | ||
| And a lot of these think tanks you saw over the weekend, all the so-called experts emanating out of the Brookings Institution, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Security and International Studies, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and then all of the so-called elite institutions, | ||
| the Harvards of the world. | ||
| Well, unfortunately, whatever you have to say on tariffs doesn't matter because you guys are nothing more than cheap, made-in-China knockoffs of what academics and think-takers should be since you guys have taken so much cash, that is, the cash that you've reported since you've purposely lobbied for the loopholes to make it so you don't have to disclose what foreign money you're taking. | ||
| But you guys couldn't even put America first if you wanted to. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I think the grand irony... | ||
| If not outright laugh and spit in your faces of this whole situation, is that these same people, these same think tanks, the same elitist ruling class, who believe me, thinks and thinks they're better than you. | ||
| Well, the reason why we have to continue supporting Ukraine, the United States of Ukraine, that's our 51st state, it's not Canada. | ||
| The reason why we have to keep doing that? | ||
| It's because we have to do that to keep China in check, right? | ||
| Yeah, alienate Russia into more of their sphere of influence to beat China. | ||
| Make that make sense. | ||
| You can't. | ||
| But that aside, President Trump does the one thing that this country has left in their toolkit, their tool belt, to take on the Chinese Communist Party, abandons the equity mindset of global politics where we have to negotiate as if we're some third-rate country like Somalia where we have no leverage. | ||
| Instead, we actually show that muscle on the world stage and say, you know what, China? | ||
| We're going to slap you with triple-digit tariffs. | ||
| And I don't know about you, but I've only heard what from these guys that the Chinese Communist Party is an existential threat and that's why we have to keep funding Ukraine, right? | ||
| Then President Trump treats them like the existential threat that they are. | ||
| Suddenly no one supports it. | ||
| It's quite interesting. | ||
| And it's quite telling. | ||
| Right? That it's all one big lie. | ||
| So get rid of your fact-checking program meta. | ||
| There's a lot more when it comes to information warfare. | ||
| The fact-checkers were.0001% of it. | ||
| Mark Zuckerberg, I'm not buying it. | ||
| And I never will. | ||
| And this audience never will. | ||
| I know you might think you're really smart and that all we care about is masculinity dropping DEI and getting rid of the fact-checkers. | ||
| It's a nice start. | ||
| It's an opening bid. | ||
| But we're not going to buy it. | ||
| So I suggest that you get ready for your companies to be broken up and MAGA will be there celebrating and applauding and maybe you should just sell your house while you're at it too. | ||
| Get ready for your prison sentence because in a just world, that's where you would be headed. | ||
| And on that note, Warren Posse, thank you as always for hanging out with me. | ||
| I will see you guys soon. |
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