April 28, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:52
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Got it. | ||
| We got so many. | ||
| Look, I want to get to him, but we got so many. | ||
| Pam and Cash, we got to get focused on so many. | ||
| And I hear there's news going to break in the next week or two. | ||
|
unidentified
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I spoke to Cash. | |
| It's stacked up. | ||
| I need Brennan, the 51, all of America. | ||
|
unidentified
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I spoke to Cash on Friday. | |
| He said expect something high profile very soon. | ||
| So hopefully it's that, Steve. | ||
| I'm going to give it to you because I've already eaten into your show. | ||
| I'm looking forward to seeing, working with you tomorrow. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll hang out tomorrow. | |
| You're the best. | ||
| You're the best day block we got. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Eric Bolling is in the house tomorrow here in Washington. | ||
| He's going to be hanging out. | ||
| We're doing five hours of coverage starting at 3 o 'clock all the way through. | ||
| Gruber is going to be there as one of the hosts at the Trump 100 Day in Michigan. | ||
| And our guy, Brian Glenn, is on the plane. | ||
| He's on Air Force One, so we're going to have a great time. | ||
| It starts at 6. We'll be picking up coverage at 3. Eric, you and I got a lot to catch up on. | ||
| We're having a great time. | ||
|
unidentified
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See you tomorrow, Steve. | |
| I'll bring you a cigar. | ||
| It's another bad habit. | ||
| I quit. | ||
| I kicked all my bad habits. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's what I'm here for, Steve. | |
| That's what I'm here for. | ||
| See you tomorrow. | ||
| One thing, we can't go to Rio together. | ||
| You go as the advance man. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I think it would be... | |
| It might be a little bit of a problem. | ||
| No, but, you know, since you traded oil and gold for a dozen years in the pits, you'd be perfect to go down there. | ||
| This meeting is so big because we've been warning people for years since we teamed up with Birch Gold to do the end of the dollar empire that this day was coming. | ||
| Remember, this is the thing, you know, and today, John Thune, before I let you go, Eric, John Thune put out something truthful. | ||
| He said, hey, look, from the Senate's perspective, I'm not so sure we get to this. | ||
| That this thing's going to be ready for us to really consider until after Memorial Day. | ||
| He said, look, it could be through the summer before you vote. | ||
| This is what I've been saying. | ||
| People are saying this thing's going to get voted on and sent to the president by Memorial Day, are sending the president wishful thinking, and we've got to get back to reality check. | ||
| And there's no bigger way to give people a reality check than have the bond market sit here and start to opine on the range of options we have. | ||
| Eric, as you know, those options get narrower and narrower every day. | ||
| And that's why I think this Rio reset is going to be a big deal. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know who would love to see the Rio reset? | |
| Not those BRIC countries. | ||
| Besides, China wants to see that. | ||
| China would love to see the U.S. dollar no longer be the reserve currency. | ||
| Because, I don't know, maybe the thing yuan, who knows, maybe the euro. | ||
| But whatever it is, if it's not the U.S. dollar, that means all those countries that hold U.S. dollars to negotiate trade, currency transactions, We're going to have to dump them. | ||
| That is really a lot of selling, like insane selling in the U.S. dollar. | ||
| It's a scary concept. | ||
| And by the way, you want to be buying gold before that reset in case it happens, because $3,300 would look like a cheap price if it does happen. | ||
| This is what we did. | ||
| You know, the president, as if he doesn't have enough weight on his shoulders right now, to add that one would be unsatisfactory. | ||
| So we all got to pull together. | ||
| Eric Bolling, look forward to seeing you in the House tomorrow, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, sir. | |
| That's going to be fun. | ||
| 100 days. | ||
| President Trump's going to go to Michigan, the state that gave him the victory. | ||
| And we're going to cover it wall-to-wall. | ||
| Brian Glenn is on Air Force One. | ||
| Is that amazing? | ||
| Does that sound great? | ||
| Brian Glenn's on Air Force One. | ||
| And Steve Gruber's going to be there at the actual event itself and give us play-by-play commentary. | ||
| And Eric and I will be here. | ||
| This starts at 3 o 'clock tomorrow. | ||
| Where Steve Gruber's show naturally is, I think he's going to be... | ||
| Doing things at the convention. | ||
| We'll dial him in as we go. | ||
| Okay, remember a couple weeks ago we had the truckers on here about only truckers that could speak English, right? | ||
| No foreign truckers should be here in the United States of America. | ||
| Well, President Trump's about to go in the Oval in a few minutes and sign an executive order. | ||
| Let's play the cold open, and we'll bring the truckers in. | ||
|
unidentified
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We fired the first shot back at them in Arkansas. | |
| We found a state representative here by the name of Wayne Long and a state senator. | ||
| John Payton filed House Bill 1569, which was written, it was the Secure Roads and Safe Trucking Act, and it was written to require all truck drivers to read and speak the English language. | ||
| It was written to close the loopholes for non-domicile commercial driver's license and to close the loopholes for the foreign commercial driver's license and to create felony code for non-citizens that cause injuries and fatalizations. | ||
| Unfortunately, because of political games and shenanigans here in the state of Arkansas, we never even got to present that bill to the committee. | ||
| The Trucking Association put forward another bill, HB 1745, which addressed none of those issues that we just brought up directly. | ||
| Issues are still allowed on Arkansas highways. | ||
| The one thing that it did do in the 11th hour was they added English proficiency. | ||
| They put a fine in HB 1745 so that a driver has now fined $500. | ||
| If he's caught unable to read and speak English, but they still let him go. | ||
| So an officer is going to pull him over, they're going to write him a ticket for $500 and say, okay, but now you can carry on on your way. | ||
| The whole purpose of the English proficiency law is that he's an imminent hazard to the motoring public, so he should be taken out of service and removed from the truck or the truck impounded. | ||
| This is outrageous. | ||
| You can't have foreigners coming in here and taking truckers' jobs. | ||
| And don't read English, don't understand English. | ||
| It's outrageous. | ||
| This is my point about American citizens. | ||
| Whether you're in Silicon Valley or driving a truck, you shouldn't have to compete in your own nation, your own country, with foreigners. | ||
| American companies should be able to compete around the world if they want and have plants overseas to do what they want. | ||
| But in this country, you | ||
| have foreign labor imported here to compete against you. | ||
| This was Biden's thing about low-skilled labor. | ||
| This is why we got 10 million illegal aliens up through there. | ||
| And as Todd Benz has told you, it wasn't chaos. | ||
| It was so perfectly thought through. | ||
| This is why we need some | ||
| And then the third executive order, which actually speaks to the heart of your question earlier about the Uber drivers, will be a... | ||
| Order directing the Department of Transportation to include English literacy tests for our truckers. | ||
| This is a big problem in the trucking community that, unless you're in that community, you might not know. | ||
| But there's a lot of communication problems between truckers on the road with federal officials and local officials as well, which obviously is a public safety risk. | ||
| So we're going to ensure that our truckers, who are the backbone of our economy, are all able to speak English. | ||
| That's a very common-sense policy in the United States of America, so the president will be signing that later this afternoon. | ||
| Yeah, you're welcome. | ||
| To the back in the yellow tie. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Monday, 28 April, Year of Our Lord, 2025. | ||
| We have Shannon Everett from American Truckers Unlimited and Gord McCall, the writer that got us involved with this group. | ||
| So first, Shannon, is this the victory, is this executive order the start of a path to get this thing sorted about foreign truckers competing with American truckers? | ||
| Or is it an end-all, be-all? | ||
| I mean, talk to us about this executive order. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's definitely a victory. | |
| It's a victory for American truck drivers. | ||
| It's a victory for the American worker. | ||
| And it's a victory for the American motoring public. | ||
| It's definitely not an end-all, do-all. | ||
| The American trucking industry is a shell of what it once was just five to ten years ago. | ||
| And so we need to restore the American trucking industry to its greatness. | ||
| And so there's several things that continue to need more work. | ||
| But we believe that this is a great step by the president and by the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, in showing that their priority is the American worker and that they have concern for the American trucking industry. | ||
| So we think we can work through those remaining issues. | ||
| So tell us, what is today, Shannon? | ||
| What did today, President Trump, what is he exactly signing and what is the impact and how does this set us forward to go and sort this entire mess out, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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So there was a memorandum that was issued in 2016 that told all of our law enforcement officers to stop enforcing the law where a United States American truck driver was required to speak and read English. | |
| And so this federal agency issued this memorandum, and all of our state agencies that enforce these laws stood down. | ||
| And so instead of putting a truck out of service and taking a driver off of the roads... | ||
| They would cite the driver for the violation and then they would let him go. | ||
| It's my understanding that today's executive order will be to give guidelines to those officers instead of just giving them a citation to now put him out of service. | ||
| And so that's been our request all along, that a driver that's unable to read our highway signs is an imminent hazard to the motoring public and should be removed from service and taken out of that truck. | ||
| Gord. | ||
| Where do we go? | ||
| This is a major development. | ||
| Obviously, a lot of people are working on this. | ||
| Talk to us about what we need to do to get this whole mess sorted out. | ||
| There should be no foreign drivers whatsoever here competing with American citizens for the trucking business, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Well, one of the problems, as Shannon and his team have pointed out, is that during the Biden administration, In 2021, they put together this Trucking Action Task Force, and they effectively doubled the production of CDLs in one year, | ||
| and a whole bunch of people were just given CDLs. | ||
| It appears that a number of states cooperated with the Biden administration and reduced requirements. | ||
| Tell the audience what a CDL is. | ||
| What's a CDL, and why is it such a big deal that they doubled the number of them? | ||
|
unidentified
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The CDL stands for Commercial Driver's License, and that is the license that you must have to drive an 18-wheeler in the United States of America. | |
| It's the same in Canada and Mexico. | ||
| They call them different terms. | ||
| But you have to have one to drive a truck. | ||
| And typically, the United States training systems to produce new drivers will generate between 400,000 and 450,000 new CDLs a year, which is a problem on its own. | ||
| The trucking industry has got a major retention problem and it's had one for decades. | ||
| They try and lie to us that there's a shortage of truck drivers. | ||
| What's going on is that the industry has not fixed the material conditions of the job or paid drivers enough and they've been chipping away at it for decades and decades and decades. | ||
| And the really good, really safe, professional truck driver has had a war essentially declared against him. | ||
| And what the Biden administration did during the COVID demand spike was flooded the market. | ||
| And how they were able to achieve that was issuing CDLs to migrants and refugees and a whole bunch of people that are not Americans. | ||
| And one of the ways they were able to get away with that was because of this waiver of English language requirements that Shannon just spoke of. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| You're saying that when they... | ||
| All the time they say there's a shortage of truckers. | ||
| There's a shortage of truckers because they flooded the zone with foreign cheap labor, and that's driven the wages down. | ||
| And so it's tough to get people to do this type of rigorous job if you're going to get paid 50% of what you used to get paid for because you're competing against non-American citizens. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And before they started flooding it with migrants, they were using taxpayer money. | ||
| To pay for CDL schools, right? | ||
| A number of very large carriers, the type of people represented by the lobbying organization called the American Trucking Association, and I want your listeners and viewers to understand this very clearly. | ||
| The American Trucking Association does not... | ||
| They represent truckers. | ||
| They represent carriers. | ||
| And they have been wards of the state for decades, taking money from the taxpayer to pay for the production of new CDLs because they can't keep good guys around because they don't want to pay them. | ||
| They don't want to fix endemic problems in the industry. | ||
| And what the Biden administration did was took all these migrants and refugees and threw them in there to help the mega carriers continue their program. | ||
| Of cheap labor and not fixing their problems and keeping good, safe operators around. | ||
| Cheap labor. | ||
| You heard that before. | ||
| Okay, guys, stick around. | ||
| We're going to hold you to a commercial break. | ||
| President Trump trying to set things right. | ||
| In days of thunder as we come down to the 100th day. | ||
| Tomorrow, from 3 to 7, here in the war room, we're going to have Eric Bolling. | ||
| We're going to do it live. | ||
| Steve Gruber's going to be in Michigan as one of the hosts. | ||
| Of the event with President Trump, the rally. | ||
| Our own Brian Glenn's going to be on Air Force One. | ||
| How does that sound? | ||
| Does that sound great? | ||
| Brian Glenn on Air Force One. | ||
| We're going to have wall-to-wall coverage starting at 3 o 'clock tomorrow. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll actually do a little pregame on the morning show. | |
| Take a short commercial break. | ||
| You heard Bowling talking about the Rio reset. | ||
| Bowling spent, what, a dozen years in the pits trading oil and gold? | ||
| He knows. | ||
| Birchgold.com. | ||
| Slash banning the end of the dollar empire. | ||
| Modern Monetary Theory, the sixth re-installment. | ||
| Get it all. | ||
| Get up to speed before we go to Rio. | ||
| short break. | ||
|
unidentified
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In America's heart on the road | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann. | ||
| Shannon, with the president obviously taking action here and getting involved in this now, What shape is the American trucking industry in, in your opinion, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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Steve, it's in the worst shape of my 25-year career. | |
| We're in the midst of a three-year-long freight recession. | ||
| Of course, we call it a supply crisis. | ||
| And that situation has deteriorated rapidly over the past couple weeks as the imports coming into our seaports have started to slow down. | ||
| I think Gord described it as an accordion effect. | ||
| There's a delay in three to four weeks of transit time, and even more in some cases, for those shipments to arrive to our ports. | ||
| And so we're starting to feel those effects. | ||
| We really started to see it last week. | ||
| In my day job, I'm actually running a trucking company, and so this advocacy work that we're doing is really just part-time work that we're doing on the side to do these issues. | ||
| In my day job, I'm actually operating a large fleet of refrigerated freight, and so I've seen that situation deteriorate in the last couple weeks. | ||
| I've seen it rapidly start to dissolve last week, and so we're really predicting that we're headed into, over the next two to three weeks, a crisis for the American trucking industry, I believe, unlike anything that we've ever seen. | ||
| I lived through 2008 and 2009. | ||
| At the time, I was hauling automotive parts. | ||
| We saw factories go down for 11 to 13 weeks. | ||
| And during that time, we had hope. | ||
| We had hope because we knew that when the factories came back on, that we would have adequate work and that we would have cash flow and a profit margin that would suffice. | ||
| The problem with today's market is there's not much hope for the American trucking industry because we've been in this crisis now for three years before the tariffs conversation even comes to fruition. | ||
| My concern right now is that a lot of these special interest groups are going to try to lay the blame of the trucking industry faults on the tariffs. | ||
| And that's not the case. | ||
| Trucking industry was in shambles long before we ever mentioned tariffs. | ||
| And so it's important that the administration and the cabinet understand that there's going to be people trying to place blame at their feet for something that was done in the prior administration. | ||
| And we need to take action on those things that were done. | ||
| And so that's what we did, and that's what we lined out in that letter to Secretary Duffy that said, you know, number one, all drivers should have English proficiency for the public safety of our highways. | ||
| But we also had four other things that were right below that that really get into the immigration and the economics and the national security issues that have arisen from all of these. | ||
| And so the second thing was that they need to revoke and ban all of these non-domiciled CDLs that they've issued to non-citizens. | ||
| For 20 years of my career, we did not pass out CDLs at state DMVs to noncitizens of the country. | ||
| The CDL system was maintained for American citizens. | ||
| And so I don't know of any legislation or law that was written in Washington to make it to where these DMVs could start issuing these CDLs to noncitizens. | ||
| It's my understanding that there was some guidelines that were issued by our federal agency down to these states. | ||
| DMVs that took out some ambiguity, removed some language where they thought, oh, okay, we can take advantage of this loophole now and start issuing this to solve our driver shortage problem. | ||
| And so that should be a loophole that we should be able to close pretty easily. | ||
| Because, you know, not only do we have national security and safety concerns, but they have flooded the labor market. | ||
| And that's why we coined the term labor dumping. | ||
| The whole purpose of opening up our CDL system was so they could dump in foreign labor at reduced wages to put pressure on the American truck driver. | ||
| And so your American truck driver right now... | ||
| Their standard of living has been greatly reduced over the past couple of years. | ||
| Their pay standards are down. | ||
| Their quality of life is down. | ||
| The amount of time that they have to spend away from their family is up. | ||
| And so our American truck drivers are really on their last leg. | ||
| And my biggest concern is if we don't take action on this issue of the oversupply. | ||
| The effect of the tariffs is going to completely fall on the American truck driver. | ||
| It's going to push the remaining American truck drivers and American trucking companies that we have in the business out right now at this critical time. | ||
| And the replacement cycle that's been going on for the last four years is going to intensify. | ||
| And that's because the American truck driver and the American trucking company can't operate at the same cost level that these foreign operators and these foreign truck drivers can. | ||
| And so the first companies to lose. | ||
| The third thing that we listed goes back to my personal experience with the USMCA trade lanes. | ||
| And so in my past interview with you, I told you that I did automotive inbound logistics. | ||
| So we would haul the parts into the automotive assembly factory. | ||
| All of that business now has been transitioned from the American truck drivers to foreign truck drivers. | ||
| It's almost exclusively hauled by truck drivers from Mexico. | ||
| We need to ban that, or we need to come up with a solution to control what percentage each driver group gets. | ||
| We should restrict and ban the use of a visitor visa to perform work in the United States. | ||
| How is it? | ||
| That truck drivers from foreign countries are allowed to use visitor visas to perform work. | ||
| It's not even a work visa. | ||
| But there's no enforcement of that. | ||
| So when a truck driver gets past the inward immigration zones, which is like, I think it's mile marker 12 on Interstate 35, just north of the border. | ||
| So when you cross the border, you talk to immigration. | ||
| You go a little bit inward, 10 to 12 miles or so, you have to talk to immigration again. | ||
| And then once you're past that. | ||
| You'd never see another immigration officer. | ||
| DOT officer, state police, they're not allowed to ask you about immigration. | ||
| They're not allowed to ask you for your immigration documents. | ||
| So why are we allowing these drivers past that zone? | ||
| The whole purpose of the commercial trade zone was so that they could use these visitor visas for a guy to simply come across the border, drop his trailer, go back to the foreign country. | ||
| And then if he tried to abuse that, we had a check station. | ||
| 10, 12 miles in, that would check his immigration status and say, whoa, you're not supposed to come past this point. | ||
| And at some point over the last 10 years, somebody made a phone call and said, hey, y 'all let them through. | ||
| And they just started going through the checkpoint. | ||
| And so we need to restrict that. | ||
| We need common sense back into these drivers operating on visitor visas. | ||
| We need common sense back into this trade between the United States. | ||
| It's not right that we take all of our factories in the United States. | ||
| And move those to Mexico, and we move those up into Canada, and then we insource all of the workers for the truck driving jobs. | ||
| Can we not at least just have the truck driving jobs? | ||
| If you're going to take our factories, can we at least keep our truck driving jobs? | ||
| And so that item right there addresses that. | ||
| And then for the families of Deanne Miller, for the families of LaDonna Bry, look, we want to say thank you for the victory today for this executive order. | ||
| But we need criminal statutes for these non-citizen drivers who are abusing work visas, who are abusing these CDLs. | ||
| We don't speak English, and when they're doing all these things knowingly, knowing that they're not qualified, knowing that they're not vetted, knowing that they haven't been properly trained, and they're abusing the system, and they kill somebody like Scott Miller, or they kill somebody like Mark Bryant, they need to be held accountable for negligent homicide. | ||
| Right now, these guys are all receiving misdemeanors. | ||
| Our law enforcement agencies don't know what to do. | ||
| Our prosecutors don't know what to do, so they all get a slap on the wrist. | ||
| They get released, and that's how you get the situation, like Ignacio Cruz Morales, who's been deported. | ||
| 16 times, 17 times now. | ||
| And every time he gets deported, he gets in another commercial truck and drives straight back across the border and goes back to work. | ||
| And so we need criminal statutes to address that so these guys are charged with homicide and they're given felonies. | ||
| And then we need a task force. | ||
| We need a task force to get our arms around this population. | ||
| Who are these people? | ||
| I've got a conference call scheduled later this week to talk about one of these drivers in this pool is on the most wanted list from India, and he's received one of these non-domiciled CDLs. | ||
| So how are we vetting people when the people that are driving our trucks here in the United States are on the most wanted list from a foreign country? | ||
| So we know that there's no vetting whatsoever. | ||
| We knew that before we found out about this driver because we saw the licenses that were being issued with made-up birthdates. | ||
| We saw the licenses that were being issued with no first name and with no last name. | ||
| And so there's just really no law and order right now in the CDL issuance to truck drivers here in the United States. | ||
| And that's why the American trucking industry is being destroyed. | ||
| You cannot have an unlimited amount of supply of drivers come in without it impacting the overall living standards and the conditions for the American trucking company. | ||
| Shannon, how do people find out more about you on social media and how they get to the American Truckers United? | ||
|
unidentified
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You can follow us on Twitter at ATUTruckers. | |
| You can also come to our website at americantruckers.com. | ||
| Whether you're a concerned citizen, whether you're a truck driver or a carrier that's on your last leg and looking for support, we've got a great coalition now built of good mom-and-pop trucking companies, guys all the way up to 1,000 trucks, 300 trucks, guys as little as 30 trucks. | ||
| And so we're all coming together to kind of spread this message and to bring back greatness to the American trucking industry. | ||
| So join us. | ||
| Shannon, thank you. | ||
| Cord, we've got about a minute. | ||
| Any closing thoughts, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, sir. | |
| President Trump is going to be facing a lot of pushback from this. | ||
| Organizations like the ACLU will no doubt stand up and say, hey, migrants and refugees don't need to speak English. | ||
| He's going to get pushback from the Mexican and Canadian governments. | ||
| Canada has a huge problem right now after a decade of the Justin Trudeau regime allowing scams to be operated on their immigration system. | ||
| There's all kinds of truckers in Canada who also don't speak English, and the Canadian government's going to be coming to Trump saying, you can't enforce this on us. | ||
| How can we engage in cross-border trade? | ||
| When Trump needs to fight back and say... | ||
| You guys need to enforce English proficiency on your own drivers. | ||
| Trump needs to be prepared. | ||
| He's going to be getting a lot of pushback. | ||
| He always does. | ||
| That's why he's the tip of the spear. | ||
| Gord McCall, Shannon Everett, thank you guys. | ||
| Thank you for bringing it to our attention. | ||
| Our audience loves it. | ||
| Good victory today. | ||
| President Trump's on point. | ||
| We'll make sure we stay close to the story. | ||
| Keep us up to date on everything that's happening. | ||
| The American trucker is the backbone. | ||
| of this country. | ||
| I remember when I started and the show shifted to Sirius XM. | ||
| I was on the Patriot Channel, had the morning show. | ||
| Well, actually, it's Sunday night show, Saturday morning show, but also the 6 to 9 a.m. | ||
| Man, oh man, were the truckers, big part of the audience. | ||
| It was a call-in show then. | ||
| Love the truckers. | ||
| So does President Trump. | ||
| He took action today. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
| Coming from the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| We're going to the White House. | ||
| And Natalie Winters next. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann. | |
| Okay, we'll get to Natalie at the White House in a moment. | ||
| We have Robert O 'Brien, former National Security Advisor for President Trump in the first term. | ||
| Robert, you know, Scott Besant today, he's talking about potential architecture. | ||
| Of some deals, not final deals, but members of understanding or at least term sheets for Japan, maybe, Taiwan, you know, Korea, but the big one is India. | ||
| How important is India strategically to us, not simply just on trade, but also national security against the Chinese Communist Party, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, Steve, you're a Navy guy. | |
| You understand how important the Indian Ocean is in that whole region. | ||
| We now call the Pacific Command the Indo-Pacific Command. | ||
| India is incredibly important. | ||
| It's a huge country. | ||
| They're going to be bigger than China, population-wise. | ||
| If they're not already, they will be in the next five years. | ||
| They're a powerful country. | ||
| They're a democracy. | ||
| They speak English. | ||
| They want to be friends with the U.S. And China has territorial claims against India. | ||
| China has attacked India many times, and so they're not very happy with the Chinese. | ||
| They've kicked out all the Chinese apps. | ||
| WeChat and WeBoo and TikTok are not available in India. | ||
| And India will become a major manufacturing base for American products and companies that are leaving China. | ||
| So India is a huge strategic partner for America going forward. | ||
| It's part of the Quad, the diplomatic alliance between Canberra, Tokyo, Delhi, and Washington. | ||
| And so it was important to President Trump. | ||
| It's important to America as a whole. | ||
| And we've got very good relations with India. | ||
| So I think that's going to be a key relationship late into the 21st century. | ||
| Look, we love Modi. | ||
| He's a nationalist like we like him. | ||
| And President Trump's obviously very close to Modi. | ||
| The Howdy Modi thing was the biggest thing President Trump's ever had. | ||
| When President Trump went to India in 2020, it was unbelievable. | ||
| But they are very tough negotiators. | ||
| And if you look at our trade deals, particularly talk to Navarro, India makes his head blow up. | ||
| Do you think we'll actually get a deal with these guys that we can live with and they can live with? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I think we will. | |
| I was on both of those visits. | ||
| The Howdy and Modi visit was in Houston, as you know, and at the stadium there, the basketball arena, packed. | ||
| And Modi gave a speech that had the crowd very raucous. | ||
| President Trump gave a speech. | ||
| And you might recall after the end of the speech, you know, a lot of these leaders have a formal relationship. | ||
| They have a cordial relationship. | ||
| But they don't have a real friendship. | ||
| I think that Modi and Trump have a real friendship. | ||
| And so Modi took Trump by the hands, as they kind of want to do in that region, and held him by both hands and walked him around the arena. | ||
| The Secret Service, their heads exploded, trying to keep up with Modi and Trump walking around the arena. | ||
| And there was this genuine affection between the two of them. | ||
| And then I was on a trip to India, where the president had, I think the biggest rally he's ever done was over 120,000 people in the largest cricket stadium in the world. | ||
| The whole infield of the cricket stadium was full. | ||
| Every seat of the stands was full. | ||
| It was hot as Hades that day. | ||
| We were sitting in the front row and boiling. | ||
| I remember Cash Patel, who worked for me at the time, was with me, and we were all sweating. | ||
| But the president gave a great talk. | ||
| Modi gave a great talk. | ||
| Again, they walked around the stadium to some extent. | ||
| And so there's a real relationship there. | ||
| And I think India understands, after the Chinese attacked India, you'll recall this in 2019, Steve, And they attacked that Indian patrol up in the Himalayas and dismembered the bodies of the Indian soldiers they killed and were quite brutal with them. | ||
| The Indians learned what they were dealing with the Chinese. | ||
| And the Indians understood that it's only with American and American weapons systems that they can hold off the Chinese. | ||
| And so that alliance has really come together in a way that it had not before. | ||
| So I think it'll be a strong alliance. | ||
| When it comes to trade, you know, I think the Indians... | ||
| Modi used to joke about it. | ||
| He knew that the Indian tariffs were very high. | ||
| It killed Peter Navarro, as he pointed out, that India had such high tariffs. | ||
| President Trump understood it. | ||
| He gave Prime Minister Modi a hard time about those high tariffs. | ||
| But I think now that Trump has announced Liberation Day, has announced the high tariffs, and reciprocal tariffs, I think the Indians understand that they need to make a deal. | ||
| The Indians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity as everything moves from China to India. | ||
| They can blow up their manufacturing base. | ||
| They can have a huge middle class. | ||
| Apple announced they're going to start making iPhones in India, 100% of the iPhone in India. | ||
| That's a great opportunity for the Indians. | ||
| So it's in their interest to reduce tariffs, bring the manufacturing from China to India, export to the United States, have a strong security alliance with us, and really have an American Indian future in the Indo-Pacific region. | ||
| Robert, explain to the audience why this tragedy in Kashmir is so volatile and we've got to watch it. | ||
| You know, the line of departure. | ||
| Why is that one of the most dangerous parts of the world? | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks for asking about that because so many people don't recognize it as a flashpoint. | |
| We talk about Iran, we talk about... | ||
| Gaza, we talk about Ukraine, Russia, we talk about the Taiwan Straits. | ||
| When India was partitioned by the British between the Muslims and the Hindus, basically, although Pakistan kicked out most of the Hindus, there are still Muslims in India, a couple hundred billion. | ||
| But when Britain partitioned the Indian Empire into East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh, and India, which was primarily Hindu, There are borderlands and gray areas and gray zones, | ||
| like Gaza or other places. | ||
| There are areas in India that were majority Muslim, and the Indians considered their territory. | ||
| One of those areas is Kashmir. | ||
| For many years, there's been a low-level insurgency, sometimes hotter than other times, where the terrorists have had sanctuary in Pakistan. | ||
| They've been able to go back across the border and find safety in Pakistan. | ||
| The last terror attack was really a terrible thing. | ||
| They killed 23 Indian tourists in a tourist bus. | ||
| It was a brutal, vicious terrorist attack, as we've seen from jihadis and Salafists all over the world, all over the Middle East, all over Afghanistan. | ||
| The Indians have had enough. | ||
| They're not going to put up with this type of terrorism anymore. | ||
| India is a first-world country. | ||
| They're not going to put up with it. | ||
| They sent a very strong message to Pakistan. | ||
| To get these rebels and terrorists under control. | ||
| But just like the Pakistanis gave sucker for many years to the Taliban in Afghanistan, they've done the same with the terror groups in India that are attacking the Indians. | ||
| Pakistan, I think, is going to have a reckoning. | ||
| But the reason it's so dangerous, going back to your question, there's kind of a little bit of a Donald Trump weed there. | ||
| Not as good as the president, but I try. | ||
| Both Pakistan and India are nuclear arms. | ||
| So if the situation escalates, if there is a war, the Indians would probably start winning the conventional war pretty quickly. | ||
| The balance of power has shifted heavily to the Indians with their Navy, with their Air Force, with their Army. | ||
| And so the Pakistanis might feel that they had to use nuclear weapons in response. | ||
| And the Indians would use nukes and you could have a very serious nuclear conflagration on the subcontinent of Asia. | ||
| And that, of course, is terrible for the world and terrible for both countries. | ||
| So it's quite a dangerous situation if it escalates. | ||
| Pakistan has open source. | ||
| Pakistan has roughly how many nuclear weapons and they have a, was it ISI? | ||
| They have a basically intelligence service that kind of runs the government and kind of runs the military. | ||
| That has stability issues? | ||
| And how many nuclear weapons do they have? | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, it's hard to say. | |
| Open source, I've seen reports of up to 60 nuclear weapons in Pakistan and in India. | ||
| But again, you know, otherwise you'd have to go to classified sources to see what the U.S. IIC Intelligence Committee was estimating for both sides. | ||
| But I think it's been publicly reported, kind of like North Korea, about 60 weapons apiece. | ||
| That's a lot of nukes, Steve. | ||
| It's a lot of nukes in a hot territory. | ||
| What's going to be the outcome there, you think? | ||
|
unidentified
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So it's hard to say. | |
| I mean, the passions are, of course, exercised on both sides. | ||
| They're both proud people. | ||
| They've got a shared heritage. | ||
| It's kind of like brothers who were separated early on or have a long-term quarrel. | ||
| So there's passion that influences the... | ||
| The debate, unfortunately, and human emotions. | ||
| It could be bad, but I think the Pakistanis, I think Prime Minister Shiraz and Pakistan understand that things have changed. | ||
| India is becoming almost a great power. | ||
| Pakistan, they've got five times the population of Pakistan. | ||
| Pakistan has to be very careful here. | ||
| They've played a dangerous game in hosting these terror organizations. | ||
| I'm not suggesting that the Pakistanis directed the terror attack or were involved in it as a government, but they certainly know that they have these terrorist organizations camping out in Pakistan. | ||
| They haven't rounded them all up yet. | ||
| They probably should. | ||
| I think that you're going to see a steady de-escalation. | ||
| I think the Indians made a very strong point. | ||
| There was some shooting across the border. | ||
| The Indians took some steps. | ||
| To go after terrorists within India. | ||
| I think both parties are going to be level-headed enough here to calm it down a little bit. | ||
| As you mentioned, Pakistan is very unstable politically. | ||
| Imran Khan, the great cricket player, was the prime minister. | ||
| He's probably still the most popular politician in Pakistan. | ||
| He gets along quite well with President Trump. | ||
| But he was deposed by the government, the current government. | ||
| So there's some instability in Pakistan. | ||
| We'll see if that is an impact on how they deal with these terror organizations and separatist movements that are finding sanctuary and safety within Pakistan and are attacking India. | ||
| He's a populist that's in prison. | ||
| Was it the Chagos Islanders, Dager Garcia? | ||
| How can we actually... | ||
| Have the Indian Ocean be something that's strategic to us. | ||
| It's the most important base there. | ||
| Aren't we letting the Brits give it away, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, it's mind-boggling, Steve. | |
| The fact that Keir Starmer wants to give the Diego Garcia, which is an unpopulated island. | ||
| I think there are maybe 50 or 60 people from Diego Garcia who live in England quite well. | ||
| But he wants to give it away, I think, to the Maldives. | ||
| We have strong relations with the communist Chinese. | ||
| That's the most important base probably in the world for America. | ||
| It gives us reach into the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| It gives us reach into Central Asia. | ||
| It gives us reach into the Middle East. | ||
| And if we have to attack Iran, the planes will take off from Diego Garcia. | ||
| Now, there's some talk that the U.S. would receive a 99-year base similar to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, even if the Brits gave up the islands. | ||
| Giving up the Checos Islands, this island chain that's unpopulated to a government that never has governed them, and it's not even part of their government, but asserted it's a vested in colonialism, and they should have the islands instead of the UK. | ||
| It's really a bad move by a Starmer. | ||
| It's a woke, politically correct-type move that will harm British security and US security throughout the world. | ||
| I think the Brits still have a chance to pull it back. | ||
| But we'll see what they do. | ||
| They should. | ||
| Can you tell us, you're the head of the PIAP, the President's Intelligence Assessment Board. | ||
| Can you take a minute? | ||
| We've got some time here. | ||
| Can you stay through the break? | ||
| We've got a three-minute break coming up. | ||
| Can you stick with us? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yeah, of course, Steve. | |
| What is, just to give people an overview, what is PIAP? | ||
|
unidentified
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So the PIB is the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. | |
| I'm a member of it. | ||
| Devin Nunes, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Select Committee on Intelligence, IPSI, is the chairman. | ||
| He's a great chairman. | ||
| We've got a number of top members that the President announced recently. | ||
| And the idea is to keep an eye on the IC, to suggest reforms to the IC, to go to the President and advise them on how the intelligence community is servicing them and if we think there are ways for them to do a better job. | ||
| To improve and ensure that they operate in compliance with the U.S. Constitution and treat American citizens with their constitutional protections as they should as an intelligence community. | ||
| So it's an advisory board. | ||
| It meets once a month, and it was quite an honor for the president to appoint me. | ||
| There are not a lot of jobs for a former National Security Advisor, but this, Henry Kissinger, a former NSA. | ||
| Brent Scowcroft and Zig Brzezinski were all on this board, the Pi Evans. | ||
| So it's kind of a refugee home for former National Security Advisors. | ||
| It was very good of the president to appoint me. | ||
| Hang over one second. | ||
| Robert O 'Brien is going to join us on the other side. | ||
| Robert O 'Brien relieved John Bolton. | ||
| As national security advisor for the last year and a half under President Trump. | ||
| And I think everybody that's close to President Trump can say that Robert O 'Brien is a safe pair of hands and calm things down there. | ||
| Robert, Venezuela, it is a massive, it's got a massive potential for oil, gas, natural resources, but the country's a complete mess. | ||
| What's your recommendation to President Trump? | ||
| We know it's the top of mind for him in this hemispheric defense. | ||
| From the Panama Canal to Greenland and to clear out the Caribbean of the Chinese Communist Party's navy, Venezuela will be a linchpin in Latin America with Brazil and our allies in Argentina. | ||
| What's your recommendation to the president about Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, listen, you're absolutely right, Steve. | |
| I think the president's instincts, and I haven't talked to him about this directly recently, but... | ||
| I think the president's instincts are to get a deal with the Venezuelan government. | ||
| The government, as you know, in Venezuela, Maduro, he succeeded Chavez, communist, not a great guy, kind of a tough guy. | ||
| Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. | ||
| But wasn't that counter, isn't that counter, at least to the pre-Robert O 'Brien? | ||
| I mean, weren't Bolton and Mike Pompeo? | ||
| They had a coup down there that reminded me of the movie Bananas. | ||
| Remember they had the guys all going to go and it was like... | ||
| Two companies of guys in green uniform. | ||
| Maduro and these guys are tough hombres, as the president would say. | ||
| Didn't we try to overthrow the government at one time? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, look, there was a purported coup attempt. | |
| It made the Bay of Pigs look like Normandy. | ||
| It was very unsuccessful and involved about four or five guys. | ||
| So I don't think it was much of a threat to the Venezuelan government. | ||
| But look, no one likes Maduro or Chavez. | ||
| Well, we've got to face reality here. | ||
| We can either replace them and send the 101st down and get involved in a war, which the Venezuelans know we could overthrow the regime. | ||
| Guaido and the current gal Machado probably won the election. | ||
| But we've got to look at what's in America's interest. | ||
| And there are two things, three things I'm looking at here, Steve. | ||
| Maduro wants a deal. | ||
| He wants to stay in power. | ||
| He knows he's got to get a deal with President Trump to stay in power. | ||
| He wants to make some money off his oil. | ||
| And the way to make money if you're Venezuelan and maximize the value of your oil is to sell it to America because we have refineries here that are specifically set up to refine Venezuelan crude, which is a very heavy crude. | ||
| We've got the refineries, we've got the distribution network, and it's a million barrels of oil a day. | ||
| So instead of seeing those million barrels go to China, which is, as you know, the adversary that could affect the lives of our children and grandchildren, We want those million barrels a day in America, supporting American manufacturing, giving us energy dominance, allowing us to export some oil to our allies in Japan and Europe. | ||
| So number one, we want to get the oil. | ||
| President Trump is very focused on getting the resources, the minerals, the oil we need to power this golden age of an American economy that he's talking about. | ||
| It's tax cuts, it's deregulation, it's energy dominance, and it's tariffs. | ||
| And the energy dominance part has helped if we do a deal with We need Maduro to take back all the Venezuelans that are here, | ||
| the illegal Venezuelans. | ||
| The Venezuelans who are here legally are great citizens. | ||
| A lot of them live in Florida. | ||
| They're wonderful people. | ||
| They're patriots or they're conservatives. | ||
| But the bad Venezuelans, we need them back in Venezuela. | ||
| We need Maduro to take them. | ||
| And then number three, Steve, and this goes to the point you just made about the Chinese Navy, the Chinese Navy, the Russian Navy, even the Iranians have been using Venezuela as a home base in the Caribbean. | ||
| And so we've got to tell Maduro, look, the deal is we'll buy your oil. | ||
| We'll take it. | ||
| You take back your bad folks that you sent here, and you kick out the Iranians, you kick out the Russians, and you kick out the Chinese. | ||
| And then we'll deal long-term with the internal governance of Venezuela, obviously supporting the Democrats and giving people basic human rights and the rule of law. | ||
| But let's take an American-first approach to Venezuela to start with, which is get the oil. | ||
| Get the bad guys out of our country and back into Venezuelan prisons. | ||
| Let Maduro take care of them, feed and clothe them in jail. | ||
| And let's get the Chinese and Russians and Iranians out. | ||
| And if President Trump can pull off that deal, I think that would be a great thing for the country. | ||
| And probably a little diversion from John Bolton, who wanted to invade Venezuela. | ||
| I understand why he did, but he had the famous tablet with 10,000 troops written on it that he let the press see. | ||
| But I don't think the American people are ready for another war right now. | ||
| They want to end wars, not stardom. | ||
| President Trump is a peacemaker, as you know. | ||
| And so I think we're going to see a real good deal with Venezuela. | ||
| It'll be good for America. | ||
| And it'll be kind of a hard-headed, realistic deal. | ||
| And it may not satisfy everything we want, but it can get the big things that are good for the American people. | ||
| Well, we want to thank you for the great service you did in the first term. | ||
| And I know you're available if the president needs you in the second term. | ||
| And, you know, being on PIB and having these great ideas, particularly about Venezuela, that's going to be a big one. | ||
| Hopefully you and Rick Grinnell can work together and pull that off. | ||
|
unidentified
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Robert, where do people get your social media? | |
| Grinnell's doing a great job with that mission. | ||
| Grinnell's been down there. | ||
| He's been talking to Maduro. | ||
| He's a very good negotiator. | ||
| He did the Serbia-Koso deal with me in the first term. | ||
| And Rick is the guy to pull something like this off. | ||
| You guys are a pretty good team. | ||
| Where do people go on social media or website to track your writings and your thinking? | ||
|
unidentified
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Twitter, at Robert C. O 'Brien. | |
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Appreciate you coming on today. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, thanks, Steve. | |
| It's an honor. | ||
| Thank you, my friend. | ||
| India, and that's the strategic thinking that President Trump needs around him. | ||
| You can tell that. | ||
| O 'Brien did a really good job in the first term. | ||
| One of the folks on the bench, you know, with Grinnell and O 'Brien, you can always, you know, if you need a player, call him up. | ||
| Make it a special envoy. | ||
| President Trump had his hands for? | ||
| Good Lord. | ||
| Never seen a workload like this. | ||
| No human on earth has ever had a workload like this guy. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Look, today, at least started to solve the trucker problem. | ||
| That's probably not in the top 50, and it has to get done. | ||
| We've got to get this sorted with the truckers. | ||
| That's how many problems President Trump is dealing with. | ||
| Birch Gold, that one of the problems is the de-dollarization of the world's economy by the Chinese Communist Party and the BRICS nation. | ||
| Now, a lot of that is the evil of the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| However, our elites have not helped us here as they've been financially irresponsible. | ||
| I don't need to tell you that you have to live with it every day. | ||
| Birchgold.com end of the dollar empire six free installment. | ||
| You get all the other five for free. | ||
| Birchgold.com/bandit. And most importantly, you get to talk to Philip Patrick and the team. | ||
| They're sending a team to Rio. | ||
|
unidentified
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I think we're gonna try to get our ball and go with him. | |
| We're back in a minute. | ||
| We're going to go to the White House with Natalie and maybe even... | ||
| Into the Oval Office for a signing of an executive order. | ||
| Short commercial break. |
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