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May 13, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:06
WarRoom Battleground EP 766: Rise Of Threat And War With Persia
Participants
Main voices
e
ej antoni
05:36
f
frank gaffney
13:12
s
steve bannon
20:22
Appearances
t
terry schilling
03:19
Clips
a
alex jones
00:14
j
jake tapper
00:08
r
robert f kennedy-jr
00:54
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
robert f kennedy-jr ▲ ● ▼
But he can't be bought, unlike most of the politicians in this country.
And he is standing here for the American people.
I don't know what, you know, there's writers like Elizabeth Warren or Robert Reich who are saying that President Trump is on this side of the oligarchs.
There has never been a president more willing to stand up to the oligarchs than President Donald Trump.
And I'm very, very proud of you, Mr. President, for your courage.
I'll say, because I don't want to be crude, your intestinal fortitude, your stiff spine, and your willingness to stand up for the American people.
We have 4.2% of the world's population.
Our country represents 75% of the revenues for pharmaceutical companies.
unidentified
Donald Trump will touch down in the Middle East this week, tonight in fact, stopping in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, but not Israel.
Over the last few weeks, Trump has gone from being aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on key issues, like the war in Gaza and Iran's nuclear weapons access, to sidelining him.
And according to exclusive reporting from NBC News, It has.
Benjamin Netanyahu worried.
Joining us now, NBC News senior correspondent covering national security and the military, Courtney Kubi.
And still with us, Eli Stockels and Stephen Cook.
All right, so Courtney, give us a reporting on the seeming rift between both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Yeah, Katie, so this is really more of sort of a growing divide.
Now, when President Trump came into office, it seemed that the two leaders were really on the same page when it came to two pressing issues in the region.
That is the war in Gaza and what to do about the threat from Iran.
But as time has evolved over the last several months, several of those issues, they seem to be splitting or not seeing exactly eye to eye.
So, for instance, President Trump, according to officials we spoke with here, and this is reporting by our colleagues Carol Lee, Andrea Mitchell, and Dan DeLucia, President Trump was upset when Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to begin another military campaign in Gaza because it was really at odds with President Trump's idea that he was very public about to rebuild Gaza and essentially make it into the Riviera in Gaza.
That was one issue that we heard about, but another was just even more recent than that.
As recently as several days ago, when President Trump said that he wasn't quite sure if it was okay with him whether Iran would be able to produce uranium for so-called civilian use or peaceful purposes.
Well, that, according to the officials he spoke with, really rankled Prime Minister Netanyahu, of course, believes that Iran should not be able to enrich any uranium.
And then, Katie, to add to that, several days ago, President Trump surprising many, including many people here in this building, The Houthis had agreed to essentially a ceasefire where the Houthis would not attack U.S. ships and the United States would no longer conduct airstrikes into Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen.
Well, this also caught Prime Minister Netanyahu by surprise, leading him to then say, well, fine, we'll just defend ourselves against the Houthi rebels, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
So this relationship that really started out after the inauguration as being completely on the same page on most issues does seem to be moving apart.
Now, I should say, Katie, the officials we see We said, look, behind the scenes, others sort of below the level of the leaders of these two countries are still working together towards the same aims.
But it's really notable, given the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump came in believing that they would be on the same page and they would be in a close alliance on many of these issues, Katie.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies.
unidentified
Because we're going medieval on these people.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
It's going to happen.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
unidentified
Mega Media.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
unidentified
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
unidentified
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Babb.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Monday, 12 May, Year of the Lord, 2025.
Historic day.
Just got more historic.
If Denver could please put up, just as we went to break, the Hill newspaper.
I guess it got leaked.
The debt ceiling increase to going to go part of the big, beautiful bill has now been in the Hill and Bloomberg are both on a quick and dirty analysis of it.
And I want you to lay your number two pencil down right now.
Okay, down.
Don't write this down.
But just remember, I want to go down memory lane and remember where I heard this first.
Remember where I heard this first.
The debt ceiling request, and we're not opining on this currently.
We're going to break it down tonight and talk tomorrow.
Try to get EJ and Tony on, probably tomorrow.
$4 trillion.
And the duration, wait for it, right after the November midterm election.
Just saying.
So folks, that means...
It's going to be $2.5 trillion this year because we didn't do the work and accepted the Biden-Pelosi budget.
It's going to be $2.5 trillion.
The tariffs, $16 billion, helped take down the size of the deficit for the month.
I think a huge number, massive number.
But $4 trillion in 18 months.
Under two years.
The model we have in the nation is not sustainable.
The political class and Johnson and these guys have to understand this is not a tax cut now.
This is a tax shifting because this is going to go into the working class and middle class with higher interest rates, absolutely brutal, and the generation of 30-40.
If you want to sit here and just steal their future, let's just go down the path we're going down.
I also don't believe I had not done the math, but the purpose of this under Secretary of Treasury Besant, remember for the confirmation years, all of it, in the campaign, you can't eliminate these deficits overnight.
We're not going to get to a balanced budget overnight.
Now, they try to do the gimmicks on the 10 years.
Forget that.
I'm talking fiscal year 25 and September 30th, October 1st.
We start again fiscal year 26. That will end...
September 30th, 2026, 60 days before, no, less than 60 days before, I guess 45 days, 47 days before the election, the midterm election in 26. It's shortly thereafter that we hit the debt ceiling.
So we won't get involved in the election.
That's the old trick.
But there you're talking about at least another two trillion dollar deficit.
I think if you do the math, because the purpose of the game was to get from the six and a half to seven percent, Deficits of GDP, which are definitely not sustainable.
This is why they're meeting in Rio.
They're not going down there to party.
They're going down there to kind of, in their perspective, set things right.
Just saying.
And these are a lot of non-good, there's a whole lot of not good hombres going to be there that don't love the United States of America.
Do not tear up when they see old glory.
Okay?
Some guys in Moscow, a couple, three in Beijing.
Maybe a couple in Persia, in Tehran, these mullahs, right?
They're all for taking us down.
I don't think $4 trillion, if I'm on the path to get to $3.5, which is not great, but somehow it's sustainable.
It's not balanced, but somehow it's sustainable.
I don't know how you get to $4 trillion.
So, get ready for another summer love, because this one's going to be intense.
As we go through the economic plan here in the United States and the financing of the United States government.
E.J. and Tony, I think we get E.J. and Tony on hopefully tomorrow, either morning or afternoon.
He's slamming around, but he's been putting tweets up there, although he was gobsmacked when I sent him the thing on the debt ceiling.
Also, and E.J., we're going to do some work tonight.
I'm not so sure the supply side cuts in this thing, I'm not so sure they're permanent.
So we have to make permanent the cuts to the middle class and to the working class.
They have to be made permanent.
We've got to do it now where we've got Trump.
We also have to make permanent no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
And we've got to figure out there's no tax on – I can't figure out the Social Security thing.
And if I can't figure it at first glance, I'm not a tax guy.
But there's something here that doesn't feel right.
Maybe it is.
I just don't understand.
We'll get to that.
Part of the reason you need that $4 trillion, by the way, that will put us at $40 trillion.
So right after the midterm election of 26, which is a little over 18 months away, we will have 4-0 or hit the big 4-0, $40 trillion.
This month, we just gave it to you $101 billion in interest alone.
At 36. You didn't buy any aircraft carriers.
You didn't get any Head Start programs.
You didn't get any schools or hospitals.
You got nothing.
You paid bondholders.
And then bondholders are going to be asking for a whole lot more.
Watch.
The bond market is going to be part of the decision making.
We've gone long enough when they have it.
I'm telling you, they're going to look at that and go, I don't know.
This is why you had the turmoil you had in the bond market a couple of weeks ago, Gabrielle worked up.
That was not because of President Trump's tariffs.
That was part of it, just a little part, is because they couldn't get their arms around what was going to be the situation with the big, beautiful bill.
And if anything makes my point about not extending tax cuts to the folks doing the best off in this country and not making them permanent.
Just stands at Grove of Norcross.
Your serve.
Okay?
Because I've been preaching this gospel.
The math doesn't work.
And they just showed me the math doesn't work.
Full stop.
The math does not work.
And the supply side cut of this night impermanent.
We're going to get into it.
Games being played on Capitol Hill.
It's time for games in.
You see them down in Texas.
You see them up here.
They're going to fight you every step of the way.
We just got to get into it.
Get the math right.
Now, one of the things I'm absolutely concerned about is obviously defense spending.
I consider myself a hawk, but a trillion dollars worth of true up.
And I understand Russ Vogt's strategy.
We've got to true it up now so we don't get caught.
I got it.
It's too much.
The rent's too damn high and it's too much money in defense.
Full stop.
So I've asked my good friend and colleague.
And brother in arms, Frank Gaffney, to come on and not talk about numbers today.
Frank's quite worked up, as a lot of folks that are quite close to me, about this situation.
The president right now, even as we speak, hurtling towards Saudi Arabia.
At first, I think there was going to be Jerusalem at the tail end of this.
The first trip we took, and we made it symbolic, Riyadh first, Jerusalem second, Rome third.
I think it was a magnificent trip.
Kicked off, which was just a...
I thought we had a great run in the Middle East under President Trump's guidance the first time.
But Frank, what is going on here?
What is actually the state of play, in your opinion?
Your assessment, I should say, not opinion.
Your analysis, because you're very good at this.
And why are you and some of my other colleagues so hepped up?
on a potential military option against the Persians.
Frank Gaffney, the floor is yours.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Steve.
I want to level set a little bit, if I may.
I'd like to start with what I think is the Trump doctrine, if one has emerged, and that is we don't want to be engaged in endless wars.
You say that every day.
We don't want to be responsible for regions of the world.
We want our allies in those regions to be responsible for them.
And yet we also don't want to have our vital interests sacrificed or otherwise squandered.
And where the solution set to that problem, which is, you know, in dynamic tension, let's face it, exists, is those allies with our support can.
And we ought to encourage them to defend our vital interests as well as their own.
And if that has any exemplar in the world today, it sure is not in Europe, right?
Somewhat inadequate in the Pacific as well, alas.
It is Israel.
Israel is prepared to fight her enemies.
Which just happened to bear a pretty perfect correlation to our enemies in the region, whether it's the Iranians or Persians, as you like to call them.
And I want to emphasize one point, Steve.
I've been so proud of you in making the distinction in this other theater that we're both very concerned about between the Li Bajang, the people of China.
And the regime that misrules them, we need to and must and certainly can make that same distinction between the people of Iran and the regime that not only brutalizes them, but threatens us much as the CCP does.
So Israel is prepared to do what needs to be done here.
And I think, just again to level set, it's not a land invasion.
Of a country the size of Iran.
unidentified
Especially since all those people are not opposing us.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Hang on one second.
Hang on one second.
I want to get a level set.
We got some runway here.
I want to go back to October 7th and not talk about the raid, how horrible the raid is, but the military actions of the IDF and the Israelis against enemies to the north, enemies to the east, enemies to the south.
Where do they stand today, of what action they've taken, and where do you think they stand overall?
Whether it's in Syria, potentially against the Turks, in Lebanon, Hezbollah, the proxies, Hamas, the Houthis, where do you think we stand?
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Well, they're in, I think, somewhat dire straits, Steve.
I've lost count.
Some people have said it's a seven-front war.
I think it's at least up to eight, but whatever it is.
They're fighting all comers, but the comers are all basically animated by or certainly aided by Iran, which is why Iran is the key to unlocking this very dangerous situation, again, for us as well as the people of Israel.
And what I was starting to say is this.
If you understand that the Israelis are prepared to take on the Iranians directly, And you asked the question, you know, so how have they been doing?
They've been doing amazingly well.
I mean, brilliantly, one might even say.
October 7th was a disaster, no doubt about it.
We can talk about why.
But since that point, especially since for most of the intervening period, except for the last four or five months, they were having the, you know, chop-locking of the Biden administration at every turn.
It didn't want them to win.
It wanted their enemies to win and ours, by the way.
So despite that, the beeper takedown of Hezbollah, for example, what they have now got going in Gaza, finally, when they're taking and holding territory and they're moving people out of the areas where they can be cared for, fed, clothed, and so on, without feeding and clothing and housing and otherwise enabling their rulers Rulers, Hamas.
But the kicker is this, Steve.
What Israel, I think, is now prepared to do, and I believe must do, is not go do whack-a-mole on countless, I said not a ground invasion, obviously, but not do whack-a-mole on these nuclear facilities.
Because it's clear, even with the incredible intelligence.
That Israel has brought to bear on this, including, by the way, taking out of Iran all of the nuclear secrets of Iran's nuclear program, up to that point, obviously.
They still don't have perfect knowledge, we certainly don't, of exactly where everything is, especially if there may be a nuclear weapon somewhere in some rat hole, someplace in Iran.
But what they can, and I think know they now need to do, is To free the people of Iran, to crush or at least greatly diminish the power of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC,
so that the people of Iran finally have a shot at doing what they've been trying to do repeatedly over the past 45 years or so, which is to get out from under these guys, to return to the civilized world, to live in freedom and peace with their neighbors instead of...
Constantly terrifying them or trying to destroy them and threaten, as I said, not just Israel but us.
And the interesting thing here is much is being made now, including that clip that you read on NBC, that there's some rift between Bibi Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
I don't think that's what's going on here, personally.
For one thing, all of Bibi's enemies are Donald Trump's enemies.
Whether it's the globalists, the global elites, the European Union, of course, all of the Sharia supremacists of both the Sunni and the Shiite stripes.
And, you know, it just goes on down that list, including domestic enemies.
Enemies now like, oh, I don't know, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Party.
They hate Bibi Netanyahu.
And until Donald Trump returned to office, Steve, what they were all about was trying to take him down.
Why?
Because they understood that Bibi Netanyahu, like guys like Millay and our other friends in the world, Orban, Maloney, Wilders, and Bibi, yes, we have people who, like Donald Trump, stand for freedom and are prepared to protect it.
But Donald Trump has added a fill in.
He wants, wherever possible, to have our allies pull their load and do the protecting in the region where they can.
unidentified
So here's the bottom line for me.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Just quickly, the very bottom line.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
You're already scaring me, so go to give me your bottom line.
unidentified
Go ahead.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Thanks to what Israel has already done.
Going back to your question.
There is now a fleeting opportunity.
I think it is very ephemeral, but there is an opportunity for Israel to act militarily with discretion against the IRGC and help free the people of Iran, provided that opportunity is seized.
If it is squandered, Steve, I'm afraid that what we're going to have on our hands here is a situation in which they're no longer able to contend with it, and probably neither are we.
And we get ourselves in that circumstance into a true endless war.
And by the way, it bears saying, if there ever were an endless war, it is the one the Iranian regime has waged against us since Jimmy Carter put the mullahs in business.
As I say, it's over 45 years, and don't take my word for it.
As we were negotiating with them, Steve Witkoff, the deputative great negotiator, as he was doing that, Khomeini was in Tehran, surrounded by mobs of people, and he was encouraging in the chant their mantra, death to America.
We've got a clip of it if you'd like to show it.
The point is, this is not a war of our choosing.
We ignored our peril.
Can I just leave you with one last thought?
This is really important.
Our mutual friend, Dr. Terence.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is not, hold on, hold on.
An Israeli airstrike that we kind of go, yeah, fine, go ahead, is not a war of our choosing?
It's not a war of our choosing.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
It's a war that has been thrust upon us, and we either finish it under our terms and the time of our choosing with the Israelis doing the heavy lifting, or we wind up getting a bedway.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
My head's blown, and I love you.
Last point.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
No, no, no, just last point.
Let me just say this, because you're going to love this.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is actually worse than I thought.
This is actually worse than I thought.
You continue on.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Dr. Karen Sigerman, a dear friend of both of ours, president of the American Freedom Alliance.
unidentified
Yes, love her.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
She's fabulous.
She did a roadshow, which you helped sponsor and contribute to, in the five months leading up to the election.
We went all over the swing states and we took the message that we're sharing here.
Peace through strength.
Donald Trump's doctrine, but for victory, not for surrender of our vital interests.
And she said, let me just give you a thought experiment.
You know, that's an old adage that if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear it, does it make a sound?
And she said, try this on.
If there is a war underway and nobody's paying attention to it, can you still lose it?
The answer to both of those questions, of course, is yes.
unidentified
Over.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Frank, hang on.
I'm actually holding you through the break.
E.J. and Tony, we've got a couple minutes to get there.
E.J. and Tony's going to join me.
We're going to talk some finances, and then you're going to stick around.
We're going to bring you back.
Just a couple observations.
Just on the escalatory ladder, I mean, why, what evidence do you have?
And President Trump, I'd assume, has pretty good evidence.
And he's got Wyckoff negotiating, I guess, some sort of surveillance, not even, or supervision, not even a taking apart, which I'm adamantly against any armed conflict, but saying, hey, it can't be surveillance or supervision.
It has to be taken apart.
You can't trust these guys.
But I'm saying we haven't even begun to start the economic warfare part.
We haven't started it.
What evidence can you put forward to the audience and say, it has to be now?
This kind of sounds like Iraq.
I got yellow cake in Baghdad, and they're about to give me some weapons of mass destruction.
I'm getting a feel of 2003, sir.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Well, let me put it to you this way, Steve.
I believe we have started the economic warfare.
Donald Trump put back in place the sanctions on Iran that were very successful in his first term.
And then Biden, of course, as part of his campaign to prop up the Iranians I know you've been proposing, and I'm okay with it, but I don't think we should kid ourselves that if you start intercepting Ships moving Iranian oil out in violation of those sanctions, you're not going to wind up finding some Chinese ships taking that oil out, and then what are you going to do?
I'm talking about doing something that I think is very urgent because those air defenses that the Israelis took down, one of the great master strokes that they did, are being rebuilt.
And those missiles that they took out are being replaced.
And there is going to be a nuclear weapon.
I don't know.
I've been told for several years that it's a couple of weeks away.
At some point, it's happened.
And I think we may be at that point.
I'd rather see us, with the Israelis leading the fight, taking down, as I say, the people who prop up this regime.
And remember, a famous example, Nicholas Ceausescu.
unidentified
The president for life of Romania went from being that to being dead when his security guards turned on.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's too good to cram in.
Bring me back, coach.
You stick around.
Frank Gaffney going full Dr. Strangelove on us this afternoon.
I'm kidding, Frank.
You know I love you.
And I wanted to get this out for a while because this is...
Let's say this.
There's not a lot of support for this option.
But the people that support it, support it hard.
And the people that support it have been some of the best people we've had in our movement for many, many years.
A lot of the strength through defense crowd.
Peace through strength.
If you want to have peace, prepare for war, as the Romans used to say.
Home title lock, the $1 million triple lock protection.
Don't let anybody get their hands on that piece of paper that is your title.
They can do anything with it.
Sell the house, take the house.
Refinance the house and you are stuck.
HomeTitleLock.com.
Promo code STEVE.
Go check it out today.
24 Protection.
Middle of the night to tell you what's happening.
$1 million restoration project.
Short break.
Back in a moment.
alex jones ▲ ● ▼
War Room.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Wow, what a lineup to finish the show.
I got EJ on debt, deficits, taxes, everything.
Gaffney's back in the bullpen, still limbering up.
Going full Dr. Strangelove on me this afternoon.
And I got D. Terry Schilling, who actually is one of the guys saving Western civilization.
So who am I to question that?
EJ and Tony, I don't even know where to start.
I'm going to toss it to you.
You put a tweet out, $101 billion in April, in interest only.
You've got, oh, by the way, another great article in Town Hall that says everything you said about the lying Biden administration, Biden regime, about the jobs, all a lie.
You were 100% correct.
Then I dropped one on you a second ago.
The, as we called it, bro, the dead ceiling, $4 trillion, and it takes us all the way to like a week after the midterm elections.
I don't know where you, oh, and you told me even the best part of the tax cuts we got are not permanent, the supply side.
I don't know where you want to start.
EJ, but the floor is yours.
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
Well, Steve, thanks so much for having me.
All great topics, all really important that the audience have to know about.
Let's take that last one first.
What we're seeing right now with this latest tax package out of the House, it's a real mixed bag.
There are some good provisions in it, but there's some bad stuff too.
And what's really annoying here, Steve, and I just can't for the life of me figure out what is going on with the GOP, especially Mike Johnson, why they're doing this the way they are.
So, again...
It's not all terrible.
I don't mean to make folks think like, hey, the sky is falling here if they get this bill through.
But I just don't understand why some of these bad provisions are in here.
The bill could be so much better than it is.
So there's good and bad here.
We want to see things like full expensing and R&D.
We want to see those different business deductions that are going to help create jobs.
And we want to see them made permanent.
We don't want to just see them for another year or two.
That doesn't let business...
That doesn't let business do a lot of investing right now and hire a lot of folks, create jobs and grow the economy.
Those are the things that we want.
That's how you get more income.
That's how you get productivity growth.
I'm very happy to see that we don't have these additional millionaire taxes in there and all these crazy ideas that have been thrown around where we're actually going to increase taxes.
I mean, please, that's a surefire way to slow down growth.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Crazy ideas like you're in the war room, but continue on.
Brother, I love you.
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
I love you.
I am totally fine.
I am totally fine with the wealthy paying more.
It just depends on how you're going to do it.
In other words, do stuff like get rid of SALT.
Get rid of the state and local tax deduction.
Don't increase marginal tax rates because the problem here, Steve, is not that we don't want certain people to pay more or less in taxes.
It's that raising marginal tax rates are not the best way to do it.
In fact, if we look at the last hundred years, the history of the income tax, what we find is Without fail, every time we increase that top marginal tax rate, the overall percentage of taxes paid by the top 1% doesn't go up, it goes down.
Because it provides people a huge incentive to shelter their income.
You know, get rid of things like the deduction on municipal economics.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
We don't have time to debate this part of it today, but I'll get you back on and we'll give you, just like I'm giving Frank a fair shot here, we're going to give you a fair shot.
I'm just saying simply, quite simple.
And it's just a snapback.
I'm even off my 40% for the millionaires.
It's just a snapback to the top bracket.
And here's why.
You want to get those business, you want to get the supply cut.
The math doesn't work, brother.
Tell me about the debt ceiling.
Right now we haven't cut anything.
Dude, we're going to have a two or two and a half trillion.
Correct me if I'm wrong, EJ.
This fiscal year, we're going to have a two to two and a half trillion dollar deficit.
And right now, we're not going from the six and a half, even the glide slope to the three and a half.
We're asking for $4 trillion in 18 months.
That means we're in November of 18 months from now, we're at $40 trillion.
And what happens to your monthly?
The only way to make the math work is somebody's got to throw something into the kitty.
And that's going to be the snapback of the upper bracket.
You've heard it here first months ago.
It's going to happen.
It has to happen.
It's the only way to...
I've got all kind of other ideas on financial taxes.
A little kick into the pot is carried interest.
I know that's a bony contention to the wealthy.
But do you see any way from the cuts that you've seen or what they're proposing with the taxes?
You've seen it even some of the great supply-size stuff, not permanent, that...
You get any set of math that doesn't even blow through the $4 trillion they're asking for 18 months for a debt ceiling increase?
E.J., because you're the best guy with the math, sir.
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
Steve, I agree with you 100%.
They got to cut spending more.
Absolutely.
They have cut nowhere near enough.
And this is just basically another Band-Aid.
And this debt ceiling increase, they're just going to bump up against it relatively soon.
It's not going to last long enough, again, because they haven't cut enough spending.
We don't have a revenue problem.
We're taking in a tremendous amount of revenue.
By most measures, it's at a record high.
Our problem is the spending.
In fact, right now, even though the cumulative deficit, in other words, for the current fiscal year, which would be from October through April, that deficit that we've accumulated so far is larger than the same time from the previous fiscal year, except revenue has gone up.
So again, it's not a matter of us having a revenue problem.
We have a spending problem.
We have to get the spending down.
You have to start, again, cutting the spending, and eventually the deficit takes care of itself.
But unless you're going to do that, all of these debt ceiling increases, I mean, I'm sorry, you're actually making the problem worse, not better.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I know you've got to bounce.
Last thing, this amazing piece you wrote in Town Hall, you've been on here for four years now.
I want people to know about these employment numbers.
What does your analysis show now that they're out the door?
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
Well, Steve, unfortunately, you know, we always get these numbers too late because they're so backward looking.
But the latest data that we have, and these are not my numbers, okay, this is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the Labor Department.
They are now admitting that with the best data we have available in the second and third quarter of last year, so this was right before the election, the six months essentially before the election, it turns out that the economy was not adding hundreds of thousands of jobs.
It was actually losing jobs on net.
So, yes, there were some job gains, but they were more than offset by all of the job losses.
And that's especially true when you look at the private sector.
So maybe government was growing, but not enough to make up for the private sector losses.
This, I think, is a big reason why President Trump won such an overwhelming victory in November.
He won not just the popular vote, or excuse me, not just the electoral vote, but the popular vote as well, and he managed to pull in every single swing state.
Why?
Because People looked at all these different news reports, all the mainstream media that told them how great the economy was, and folks just didn't believe it because their own personal finances, their lived experience, as you say, was pretty darn terrible.
It genuinely was.
They weren't able to find jobs because we weren't adding hundreds of thousands of jobs a month like the Biden administration claimed.
And these downward revisions that we always get after the fact, this is something that you very graciously have had me on to talk about.
As you said, for several years now.
And unfortunately, the pattern continues.
And we probably are not going to definitively know.
We're not going to get the final estimate until next year, until January or February, in terms of just what the actual labor market performance genuinely looked like.
Under the Biden administration.
In other words, he's going to be out of out of office a year before we can finally say, all right, this is what the economy was actually doing.
And here are the here's how many jobs we were losing, not adding before he left office.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
E.J., we're going to get you back on breakdown all the spending, all the tax, everything.
The audience loves you and they should.
You did such an amazing job.
And you're the most senior guy with the biggest brain that's not at Treasury or OMB right now.
And we've got to use you where we can because you never know when E.J. is going to get sucked up over into the administration.
E.J., where do they go?
You've got to get to this guy's Twitter feed.
Your head will blow up constantly.
Where do they go, sir?
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
Twitter is the best place to find me.
The handle there is at real E.J. and Tony.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
And you keep it real.
Thank you, sir.
Appreciate you.
ej antoni ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, Steve.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's going to be a little turbulence, folks.
Make sure to take your phone out right now.
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Also, Jim Rickards.
Jim, I think, is on with us tomorrow morning in the morning show.
Jim Rickards, RickardsWarRoom.com.
He's got a landing page to get strategic intelligence.
If you like the capital markets and intelligence and national security stuff like we got with Frank Gaffney, if you like that, want to get even a deeper take on it, the chairman and CEO all over the world, go to RickardsWarRoom.com.
You get access to strategic intelligence, and he throws in a free book on money and artificial intelligence.
Yo, your head will blow up.
So make sure Rick is one of the smartest guys around, and Jim will be with us tomorrow morning.
Frank, I've only got a couple of minutes, because while you're trying to destroy Western civilization, Terry Shilling is going to tell me why Axis is saying he's saving it.
Just real quickly, because I'm going to have you back on.
I want you to make this position today.
Why President Trump is kind of the ultimate strategist here thinking through in that arc of instability all the way from kind of Belarus and Ukraine across Turkey into Syria, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Persia, Afghanistan, and you know, which is a disaster, a breeding ground for terrorists right now.
And then Pakistan, India, the line of control, Red Sea, North Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, all of it, brother.
It's a tinderbox ready to go up.
President Trump is pretty adamant he doesn't believe in a military solution here, at least on the surface and what we're seeing in every pronouncement he makes, every true social he makes.
Why is President Trump wrong, at least at this time in his outlook, and Frank Gaffney in the Gaffneyites?
Right, sir.
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Well, I'm not sure we're saying different things, Steve.
I'm not talking about war in the way I think he's thinking about it.
The kind of war that he has rightly railed against elsewhere in the world.
Large numbers of heavy armored divisions and other kinds of kit that is thrown at some hopeless situation that doesn't lend itself to that kind of warfare.
He's, I think, clear about...
Making sure we protect our vital interests.
And I believe that one of them is something that he has endlessly pledged to do, which is to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because that is an intolerable situation.
It's the world's leading terror organization.
It's got not only these terror proxies that have been raining death and destruction on Israel, but also they're all over the place.
They're including in our own country.
Talk to Sam Faddis, our mutual friend, about could they have a nuclear weapon smuggled inside our country, ready to go?
You bet they could.
So, Steve, we're on borrowed time, is my point.
You kind of laughingly called me Strangelove.
Far from it.
I'm not talking about using nuclear weapons, which is what Dr. Strangelove was doing.
I'm not even talking about using our own forces.
I'm talking about allowing...
Our friends and allies to defend themselves and us in the process.
And if you want to think about somebody who's got a strange Lovian view of the world, let me introduce you to the Ayatollah Khamenei, who thinks that the Mahdi, the Messiah figure of his sect of Islam, is going to come out of a well.
Because of the outpouring of lamentations and pleading for his intercession that sounds an awful lot like the apocalypse.
And this guy thinks that's going to happen on his watch.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is a kickoff conversation of many we have to have.
Where do people go right now?
Send them to the best site of all the groups you work with to get up to speed on this.
There are heads blowing up here.
You've got a hill to climb, but if anybody can do it.
We're going to have more people on to make this case and we'll present opposite facts and see.
We want to make sure the posse is fully informed.
Where do they go to the best set of facts that you can show Frank Gaffney?
frank gaffney ▲ ● ▼
Well, let me just say first, Steve, thank you for giving an opportunity for some of those facts to be presented.
I think it's overdue.
They can find some of the best arguments that we've presented over the weekend at victoryco.org.
That's short for victorycoalition.org.
It's one of the projects of our...
Institute for the American Future, that's usfuture.org.
You'll see all kinds of other things that we do, including our favorite, the Committee on the Present Danger China, presentdangerchina.org.
And by the way, Steve, you outlined the fires that are being inflamed all over the world.
You called it a tinderbox.
We have discussed for some time now Xi Jinping's strategic arson.
Which I believe is why we're in this fix right now with the war against Israel, the war in Ukraine, and the last war.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
God bless you, my friend.
Let me go John Paul Jones and naval blockade, no oil, and see what they do.
Frank, thank you so much, brother.
Love you.
And we're going to continue this tomorrow.
We're going to get more of this.
We've got to get it all on the table.
And I'm going to have the con guys here.
Also, we're going to get people, the Curt Millses of the world, that are not fans of this line of thought.
Let's say this.
Terry, thank you for hanging.
I wanted to get you on this morning with 2 Jam just quickly.
Axios, which is the Washington Consensus, Morning Joe would, you know, the New York Times and Axios, Axios boils it down to what they call smart brevity.
Why does Mike Allen and Jim Vanderhaid, two of the smartest guys in the town, why do they highlight Terry Schilling?
They say MAGA's fight to save Western civilization.
And they highlight a couple others.
What is this about?
Is it real?
Is it meaningful?
Are we making progress?
Or is the left trying to divert our attention?
terry schilling ▲ ● ▼
Well, thanks so much, Steve.
Listen, their article was about how the right-wing MAGA is...
You know, offering a call to save Western civilization.
We see Western civilization collapsing all over the world.
And there are two real threats to Western Civ.
There are those that say there are no rules, and that would be, you know, the blue hairs, the transgender industry, the people that say that, you know, there are no rules, you can change your gender, you can, you know, transition children, nothing matters at all.
But then the other threats are...
Against what the rules are.
And that is more coming from ideologies like Islam, right?
And you see the UK where they've created a two-tiered justice system where Muslim ideologues can run around murdering and raping and sexually assaulting people.
But then the people that notice these things are happening, that call it out and criticize these sexual assaults by those that believe in the ideology of Islam, those are the people that get put in jail.
The people outside of abortion clinics that are praying silently in their own heads, those And so, you know, I think Kind of caught me off guard because he asked me what Western civilization was.
And I haven't been really asked that before.
But if I was to summarize it, I would say three things about it.
One, Western civilization is the belief that there are rules, there's a natural order to things.
And when you go outside of that natural order, bad things happen.
And then two, there's a creator to that natural order, right?
It's the laws of nature and nature's God.
That's what Western civilization has culminated into.
But Steve, third, Western civilization was built by men with families to protect and provide for and feed.
And that is essentially what I talked about.
I do think these threats are real.
Asked me when they saw that article, they didn't understand before I was quoted why I was quoted, because we mostly work on culture war.
We mostly work on families and fatherhood.
But that's what built Western Civilization, and that's why they've been attacking the family.
unidentified
That's why they've been attacking masculinity, which...
terry schilling ▲ ● ▼
True masculinity is ultimately becoming a father and providing and protecting.
And that's why those things are in attack.
It is a way to destroy everything that Western civilization has built.
The beauty and the human rights that Western civilization has introduced to the world, those are really bad things for tyrants.
Tyrants don't like human rights.
They like to be able to use power without any limits.
And that's what we're fighting for.
So I do think we are making progress.
I'm very excited, obviously, for President Trump.
I think he's our best, last hope.
And if we can't continue to make progress under him, I don't know who the hell we're going to make progress under.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Terry, where do people go for your social media feed, also your website, the American Principles Project?
Where do they go to get all this?
And Grace and Mo are going to put the Axios story out.
Terry Schilling and other MAGA leaders to fight to save Western civilization.
Where do they go, sir?
terry schilling ▲ ● ▼
Steve, I'm on all social media channels at Schilling1776.
But Steve, listen.
You've got to come on my podcast.
I'm on episode 7 now.
And it's a weekly podcast.
It's called The Terry Schilling Show.
It's a very original title.
But I've got to have you on, sir.
Because my audience needs to see and hear from you.
You're a genius.
I've got to get you on.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I'm in.
You just talk to Cameron and let's book a time.
Always available for Terry Schilling.
Always available to be a hoplite in the war to save Western civilization.
Love you, brother.
Keep fighting.
Wow.
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robert f kennedy-jr ▲ ● ▼
Check it out today.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
Going to leave you with the right stuff.
Wow, what a show.
Tomorrow, even more on fire.
There's so much.
We've got 20 things we're working on tonight.
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