May 20, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:50
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Today it's the one big beautiful bill that was going to fix pretty much everything. | ||
| The largest tax cut in American history, protection for Medicaid, border security, air traffic control, and even an end to wokeness. | ||
| All of that straight out of the White House's own description of what the bill can do, by the way. | ||
| The problem is... | ||
| It's hard to argue that any of that would happen if the bill doesn't get passed. | ||
| And the deeply divided Republican caucus is still making changes to it as we speak. | ||
| It is in danger. | ||
| Which is probably why Trump himself marched to Capitol Hill today with a couple of warnings to the Republicans standing in his way. | ||
| Number one, to the moderates who are demanding state and local tax deductions. | ||
| Salt. | ||
| He said, quote, let it go. | ||
| He even called out New York Congressman Mike Lawler by name, saying, quote, end it, Mike, just end it. | ||
| And order number two went to the Freedom Caucus. | ||
| Don't F around with Medicaid, he said. | ||
| Bring us to the Hill today. | ||
| What did Donald Trump get out of this meeting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's clear, Katie, that he hoped that he was going to be able to close the deal today, that he was going to be able to walk into that room and look at the dispirited factions of the Republican caucus and tell them the time for fighting is over. | |
| Get out of your corners, come to the floor and vote yes. | ||
| And while there is some signs that he may have moved the needle more in that direction, he has by no means closed the deal. | ||
| There are a number of House Republicans, both on the conservative side of the ledger and those more moderate Republicans from blue states that are worried about the state and local tax deduction, who are still no votes and still want to see demonstrable changes in this bill before they're ready to vote. | ||
| This despite Trump in that meeting specifically calling them out, specifically telling them that the time for grandstanding was over and that they all needed to come together and basically all give a little bit. | ||
| to get to a place where this bill could be passed and over the finish line. | ||
| Now, what's interesting is the dynamic that you see playing out from these Republican members as they exited that meeting. | ||
| They're not necessarily bucking Trump. | ||
| They're not saying that Trump is not the reason that they're going to vote yes, but they're instead putting that responsibility on the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, to tweak the package in a way that can make them feel comfortable voting yes so that they can then do what Trump is asking them to do. | ||
| Trump may have moved things in the right direction. | ||
| It's by no means a done deal. | ||
| And there's a lot of work that needs to happen between now and the deadline, the self-imposed deadline that the speakers put on them to get this done before the memorial holiday. | ||
| The criticism has been that you're complaining about a cover-up about Joe Biden's mental acuity that failed, that right-wing pundits saw, the right-wing in general saw, that independent media saw and reported on, and that... | ||
| Was no mystery even to left-wing and so-called mainstream reporters who were not fooled but chose willful blindness instead of honest reporting and that you were part of it? | ||
| How do you respond? | ||
| It's a tough and fair question. | ||
| I would say that Alex and I, after Election Day, Interviewed more than 200 people, 200 mostly Democratic insiders, and almost all of these interviews were after the election. | ||
| And they justified to themselves what they had done in terms of misrepresenting how the president was, not just... | ||
| To me and Alex and other reporters, but also just to each other and to the world and to Democrats and to the cabinet, etc. | ||
| By saying that there was this existential threat of Donald Trump and only Joe Biden could beat Donald Trump and that justified everything in their minds. | ||
| After that existential threat was over, because the election was over and Donald Trump won, they were, we found, Alex and myself, remarkably willing to talk to us either off the record or on background or in some cases on the record about what they saw. | ||
| One of the things that emerged was that there were two Bidens. | ||
| One was the fine Biden, serviceable, adequate. | ||
| And the other one was a non-functioning Biden. | ||
| And that's the one we saw the night of the debate. | ||
| And that's the one we saw some clips of here and there that you just showed. | ||
| And that non-functioning Biden, the one that lost his train of thought in a significant way, not in the way just that every human loses their train of thought, but in a way that shows that he's having trouble. | ||
| Articulating his very views. | ||
| And the one who forgot the name of close aides, who was not able to come up with George Clooney's name, didn't seem to recognize him, all that sort of thing. | ||
| That non-functioning Biden was, according to our reporting, showed up as far back as 2015, after the death of Beau, where one top aide said that that tragedy, the loss of Beau. | ||
| It was like watching somebody pour water on sand. | ||
| That was the effect on his psyche. | ||
| In the campaign, I promised the American people that I would build a cutting edge missile defense shield to protect our homeland from the threat of foreign missile attack. | ||
| And that's what we're doing. | ||
| Today, I'm pleased to announce that we have officially selected an architecture for this state-of-the-art system that will deploy next-generation technologies across the land, sea, and space, including space-based sensors and interceptors. | ||
| And Canada has called us, and they want to be a part of it. | ||
| So we'll be talking to them. | ||
| They want to have protection also. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, as usual, we help Canada do the best we can. | |
| This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term. | ||
| So we'll have it done in about three years. | ||
| Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we will have the best system ever built. | |
| As you know, we helped Israel with theirs and it was very successful. | ||
| And now we have technology that's even far advanced from that. | ||
| But including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air. | ||
| We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the... | ||
| American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100%, which is incredible. | ||
| When you think of it, you're shooting bullets out of the air. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| You've just not got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
|
unidentified
|
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
|
War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Baff. | ||
| Wow, what an afternoon. | ||
| We're going to try to get Rick Grinnell on. | ||
| Rick Grinnell's got the big breaking news coming out of Venezuela. | ||
| So Ambassador Grinnell hopefully will join us the moment he arrives, I think, at Dulles Airport. | ||
| Philip Patrick's also going to join me. | ||
| I think it's a good time to get him on here and talk about financial stability or personal financial stability because things are bouncing around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So still scheduled? | |
| Tonight at 1 a.m., Wednesday morning, I guess you would call it, Eastern Daylight Time, we will stream that to the degree that Grace can put this thing up. | ||
| It's going to be a rules vote. | ||
| It's still scheduled. | ||
| The president did bring people together to say, hey, we have to get a deal, so those kind of outliers, and we put up... | ||
| One of the tweets from other political reporters kind of showed the scorecard. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's like 25 or 30 people. | ||
| Part of those are the salt. | ||
| And the salt, they're getting changes. | ||
| They're getting changes that, and this is kind of my problem with Johnson. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Why do you need the president in the middle of this negotiation? | ||
| You're the Speaker of the House, and now we've got the salt guys are going to get a better deal for them. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| That's what negotiations are. | ||
| But you bring the president to close, not to do negotiations. | ||
| Now, they're getting it done. | ||
| It looks like they could be happy. | ||
| The Freedom Caucus, I understand, there's tons of meetings going on, lots of numbers going back and forth on the Medicaid part of it. | ||
| But they're also in negotiations. | ||
| Remember, the manager's agreement, or the manager's memo, that would change the bill. | ||
| Has to go out a couple hours, I think, before the Rules Committee vote. | ||
| So that should happen sometime late tonight. | ||
| Or that will be postponed. | ||
| Because I don't think they can pass the rules. | ||
| Although Norman says he would do it. | ||
| And maybe they pass the rule and it goes to the floor and they have a floor fight. | ||
| And that's where it takes place. | ||
| So we'll have to see. | ||
| But a lot of activity. | ||
| And I would say a lot of positive activity since the President's visit this morning. | ||
| Things are at least heading, I think right now you can say, in a way to get actually everybody on board with at least a couple of wins. | ||
| You're not going to get everything you want in the deficit, but people are making progress. | ||
| The president did drop another bomb, no pun intended on this one, over at the White House with Pete Heggs at the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| It was put out beforehand. | ||
| I think they're starting a commission or something to look at the Afghanistan withdrawal, some formal review process, which I guess would be the beginning of court-martials, etc., some review process in a more formal way about Afghanistan. | ||
| Then Paul Sperry of the New York Post had just put out a tweet that said a bunch of senators want something much tougher about Milley. | ||
| About for treason. | ||
| I'll have to get into the... | ||
| I'll try to dig around that as the show progresses. | ||
| But the president's... | ||
| He said, hey, we're doing a Golden Dome. | ||
| It's going to be a version or, I guess, inspired by what's happening in Israel. | ||
| Now, as you can imagine, it's a much larger geographic area. | ||
| And the president said, done, start and done in three years. | ||
| I hope that's why the defense budgets are a trillion dollars in this stamp, because this is quite expensive. | ||
| Remember, he referenced President Reagan in Star Wars. | ||
| I believe, and I made a film about this, about Reagan's war in the face of evil, of his bringing down the evil empire. | ||
| That was kind of the coup de grace. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| That they couldn't match with technology and money on that. | ||
| And they kind of, I'm not saying they gave up, but they realized the game was over if we could take the strategic high ground. | ||
| A lot of people laughed at President Reagan. | ||
| It was so expensive, they didn't really pursue it. | ||
| Also, I guess you had the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. | ||
| You had all types of things that kind of ensnarted at the time. | ||
| But President Trump said, hey, before he leaves office... | ||
| And I would actually say, President Trump, I think that's after your third term, your fourth victory in your third term, so we've got a ways to go. | ||
| But he said in three years, he would have the Golden Dome completed. | ||
| That's got all their heads blown up. | ||
| So President Trump today, on another roll, in victory after victory, the Senate actually put out an act to make sure that they're... | ||
| Showing that they're in the reflective glory of President Trump. | ||
| Talk about grandstanding. | ||
| I thought this was going to be in the reconciliation bill, but whatever. | ||
| They put out the No Tax on Tips Act, going full populist on us, 100 to nothing. | ||
| 100 to zero. | ||
| Is that the poll of populist economic policies? | ||
| They don't vote on... | ||
| Post office, names of post offices that are 100 to nothing. | ||
| That is quite unique. | ||
| 100 to 0, the Senate supported the No Tax on Tips Act. | ||
| Just incredible. | ||
| Another incredible day. | ||
| The President starts with a historic trip to the Capitol to push forward his budget and his tax plan. | ||
| There was a lot of dissension. | ||
| But that looks like it's all coming together. | ||
| Deals are being cut even as we speak. | ||
| They intend tonight at 1 o 'clock in the morning to have a rules vote and get this thing rolling up on Wednesday and Thursday for votes before they go home for their Memorial Day break. | ||
| You wouldn't want them to miss a Memorial Day break, would you? | ||
| Do you get the days off to the guys in the house? | ||
| The only thing you can say... | ||
| Is that they do less damage, I think, when they're out of town than when they're in town. | ||
| So you can't criticize too much being out of town because there's less damage. | ||
| But this right here, they're trying to jam everything together. | ||
| And I do understand there's some progress being made, although a lot of people are saying, hey, they're going to fight this on the floor and we'll have to see. | ||
| But as of now, people are working away behind the scenes. | ||
| Birch Gold, take your phone out. | ||
| Make your money work for you. | ||
| Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, at 989898. | ||
| The ultimate guide. | ||
| And it's an ultimate guide that's totally free. | ||
| On investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. | ||
| Plus you get to make the acquaintance of Philip Patrick and the team at Birch Gold. | ||
| On the road to Rio and the Rio Reset. | ||
| Short break. | ||
| Back in a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | |
| Now, as soon as we know what happens, I thought it was going to be quicker than what I'm going to do. | ||
| So where are we in all this? | ||
| President Trump, as you know, yesterday has the phone call with Putin. | ||
| He's very engaged now with trying to sort out and have everybody lay down their guns on the kinetic part of the Third World War. | ||
| Simultaneously, there's this issue in Gaza. | ||
| President Trump is actually, I think people are talking about maybe a million of the refugees go to Libya. | ||
| There's all types of things in motion. | ||
| All the way from the Red Sea, the Houthis, to the Persians. | ||
| There's tons of negotiations going on behind the scenes with that and in this situation in Gaza, in the Middle East, and in Ukraine. | ||
| So if you look at the arc of instability, number one, what he wanted to do was kind of stop and slow down the kinetic part of the Third World War. | ||
| President Trump, stop the killing. | ||
| He said that again today. | ||
| Stop the killing. | ||
| Get everybody to the negotiating table. | ||
| And as you saw last week with this historic and heroic tour of the Middle East, and, you know, all these people, hey, it's not going to be perfect. | ||
| It's the Middle East. | ||
| You got it? | ||
| We've only been in wars over there since, dragged in since the Arab oil embargo and the In the situation in Persia in the late 70s, as a young naval officer was part of. | ||
| We've been there forever. | ||
| It's not a perfect place with a lot of imperfect people. | ||
| But President Trump has laid out a philosophy of, hey, economic betterment. | ||
| We're not there to tell you how to live your lives. | ||
| Now, hey, you've got to be realistic. | ||
| This is still a hotbed of radical jihad. | ||
| It's still exporting, you know, hundreds of thousands of people into Europe every year, particularly through North Africa, that the European nation still in Spain and these places still welcoming with open arms the socialist. | ||
| But the take on it is totally different than just national security or just weapons or guns or let's send troops. | ||
| Let's have economic development. | ||
| Let's take your oil resources. | ||
| You're reinvesting them in technology. | ||
| To better your population. | ||
| How do we partner together? | ||
| How do we make the region start to have some economic opportunities? | ||
| Because you've got a ticking time bomb in Egypt, right? | ||
| Which is now playing footsies with the Chinese Communist Party on one side of Israel. | ||
| You've got Turkey to the north of Israel. | ||
| You've got Persia. | ||
| So they're kind of surrounded. | ||
| And the economic situation for the masses in Persia and Egypt are horrible. | ||
| And Turkey, definitely better. | ||
| But there's not a lot of opportunities in the Middle East. | ||
| Massive populations, fairly corrupt regimes, and what President Trump's trying to say is that, hey, let's take the cash flow from oil and you're reinvesting it in things. | ||
| Let's see if we can't work together. | ||
| That's not the end of the world. | ||
| It's a different take. | ||
| It's a different take than we had, and clearly what we had was not working. | ||
| We got sucked into, you know, wars of choice. | ||
| In Iraq, in Afghanistan, it was not to put down Osama bin Laden. | ||
| In Afghanistan, it was a long 20-year project for democracy, for nation-building. | ||
| And in Iraq also. | ||
| 20 years, $9 trillion, net present value. | ||
| What, 8,000 to 10,000 troops killed. | ||
| Tons of others, up to I think another 50,000 of wounded. | ||
| And that doesn't count the contractors. | ||
| Contractor dead, who are just... | ||
| American troops are off the balance sheet, off the direct payroll. | ||
| And at the same time, in the courts, and, you know, I didn't have a chance for Burr Howell, Rudy is going to join us tomorrow. | ||
| I got Rudy coming on. | ||
| Rudy nailed this Biden thing early on, as you know. | ||
| I want to get Rudy's take on all that, but also ask Rudy about some of these radical judges that he's had to deal with. | ||
| Burr Howell yesterday put a scathing 100-page opinion. | ||
| About President Trump and his Article 2 power. | ||
| So he's fighting the whole courts on that. | ||
| In other big fights today, although we won on the Venezuelans, the temporary protective order or whatever, their temporary status revoked of 350,000 Venezuelans. | ||
| But they're trying to chop block Trump everywhere. | ||
| In fact, in the next hour, we're going to get Texans for a strong border. | ||
| There's all these issues in the Texas Senate. | ||
| About tuition for illegal aliens, about E-Verify, and particularly about getting local law enforcement to work with ICE, the way to cut this cost, $170 billion. | ||
| And I noticed on the $170 billion, we still don't have Mayorkas or any of these guys under criminal investigation, which I think has to happen. | ||
| What they did is they did a systematic invasion of the country. | ||
| Mark Green said today it's the new number here in the war room. | ||
| Because Green is the head of the Homeland Security. | ||
| He's the chairman. | ||
| He's the big kahuna. | ||
| Not a ranking member and not some vice chair. | ||
| He's the chairman. | ||
| He said, hey, the number's 13 million that came in on Biden's watch. | ||
| His number, not mine, but that's my new number. | ||
| Mark Green says it's money good. | ||
| Say of Trump and all that. | ||
| And on top of this, hey, let's face it, Trump's whipping votes. | ||
| Going up to the Capitol to whip votes for Johnson. | ||
| And what happens now? | ||
| They're entering into negotiation, which is fine. | ||
| I'm not sure you have to bring the president to do that, but hey, whatever it takes now for the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| And we know they're making progress on the SALT guys. | ||
| I hear they're making progress, some progress, on the Medicaid to cut the deficits and to still keep Medicaid for the folks that need it. | ||
| And if you're able-bodied, you're going to have to work. | ||
| If the left's going to sit there and go, oh, they're cutting Medicaid benefits, and they're supposed to be working class, and they're supposed to be populist, hey, the folks on MAGA don't want to be on Medicaid. | ||
| They want better high-paying jobs, of which the tariff situation is going to provide. | ||
| But until then, if you're on Medicaid, you've got to work, and the requirements can't be to 29. Who in the hell thought of that? | ||
| If you're going to do it, start it right away. | ||
| Now, coming out this afternoon, they've moved it to 27. That's still not good enough. | ||
| Move it to 26. Enough time to make the bureaucrats, make people get ready for this. | ||
| Have them work a couple of weekends. | ||
| Where's the sense of urgency? | ||
| There's no sense of urgency. | ||
| Andy Klein said it best. | ||
| And this is about this audience. | ||
| When you ask anybody, you ask Kali, you ask all these guys, hey, tell me about what the folks back home say. | ||
| They go, hold the line. | ||
| People, you're smarter than the political class. | ||
| You're much farther ahead than the political class. | ||
| Number one, you've spent more time on the numbers. | ||
| You're ahead of the political class, and you know that these massive deficits drive inflation. | ||
| It's too much money chasing too few goods, and it's embedded into the financing now. | ||
| You see this happen in businesses all the time, where the financing of the thing, of the entity, starts to really affect operations, or starts to affect profitability, or starts to affect cash flow. | ||
| Because your credit worthiness, maybe you do some things and hit an air pocket, and in a company, your credit worthiness drops, and next thing you know, you've got to issue junk bonds with warrants attached. | ||
| So all of a sudden, you don't get as much equity as you thought. | ||
| Your interest rates are higher. | ||
| Maybe they don't let you pay in what they call PIC, payment in kind, which is just add, you don't pay in cash, you just add to the face amount of the debt, and then you pay it off in a bullet payment later on. | ||
| Maybe that goes away. | ||
| Because why? | ||
| Your operations are not good. | ||
| This is what's happening in the country. | ||
| I agree with Scott Besant. | ||
| The Moody's rating was backward, kind of looking about Biden, but the implications are forward because that's where it's going to get more expensive. | ||
| And that's what's going to restrict Besant from financing out long in 10s and 30s and get some stability in the situation instead of having to continue to do it short. | ||
| But Andy Clyde had this morning. | ||
| He's preaching the gospel. | ||
| He's got 10-year treasuries. | ||
| They got it. | ||
| All these congressmen get it now. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Why did they get it? | ||
| Why did you never hear this talk before, ever? | ||
| You listened to Fox for a decade, never heard anything about this. | ||
| Because you people are now savvy. | ||
| You kind of understand it's money and power. | ||
| Oh yeah, okay, I got it. | ||
| And we're getting screwed on both. | ||
| And somebody's making a lot of money. | ||
| Who is it? | ||
| The elites in this country. | ||
| That's why they continue to reject cutting. | ||
| They're not putting any pressure on the political class to cut spending. | ||
| Because they all own the entities where it's flowing through. | ||
| You should have seen that. | ||
| And when Trump went after the law firms and after the universities, what was his leverage? | ||
| What was his superpower? | ||
| Federal spending. | ||
| Note to self. | ||
| Number two principle, write that down. | ||
| Federal spending. | ||
| The law firms talked a big game. | ||
| They're going to do this, and they're going to do that, and they're not going to give people to work on MAGA stuff, and they're going to come after us. | ||
| They're going to give us that big talk until Trump put in, okay, security clearance gone, and that means no more government contracts. | ||
| And oh, by the way, put a line in there, no clients of yours will be able to have government contracts as long as you're signed up. | ||
| Hello? | ||
| Paul Weiss collapsed in 24 hours. | ||
| The toughest of the tough. | ||
| The guy Karp, the chairman. | ||
| Big talk. | ||
| 24 hours. | ||
| Skadden Arps. | ||
| The biggest, baddest M&A firm on Wall Street. | ||
| 48 hours. | ||
| You had associates sending out these emails. | ||
| I cannot believe it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went to law school and all the ethics I taught and all the left-wing progressive stuff and you guys followed. | |
| Not one partner at any law firm quit because they're all in on the take. | ||
| In the universities, big talking Harvard and all these, Columbia. | ||
| Hey, stop the government funding. | ||
| You're big talk until you cut the money back and you've got to go back to your state, you've got to go back to your alumni. | ||
| The other scam is the foreign students. | ||
| The business model doesn't work because it's all 60% foreign students. | ||
| How does that happen to an American institution supported by American taxpayers? | ||
| It ain't right. | ||
| And these people are not going to change until you change them. | ||
| But what is the thing that ties them all together? | ||
| Your... | ||
| Tax dollars. | ||
| Federal money. | ||
| So hold the line. | ||
| Hold the line. | ||
| They're coming together. | ||
| They're going to make deals tonight. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Or they'll get on the floor tomorrow and argue it out. | ||
| This thing will be put together. | ||
| I wish that the President of the United States, who's got the weight of the world on his shoulders, you know, he's only stopping World War III and sealing the border and deporting 13 million. | ||
| Illegal aliens with the court fighting him every day and coming up with some ridiculous judicial supremacy opinion that maybe, you know, he didn't have to take on another job as the whip in the House of Representatives. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| He had to. | ||
| And of course, it's Trump. | ||
| He's doing a damn good job. | ||
| It's going to come together. | ||
| Unbelievable. | ||
| Anything else we can load him up with? | ||
| But hey. | ||
| Johnson's doing a great job. | ||
| Just saying. | ||
| Short break. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Van. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Grace is a warrior. | ||
| She volunteered for the 1 a.m. shift. | ||
| I'll be up. | ||
| I don't know if you'll be. | ||
| To see what happens tonight. | ||
| And then tomorrow, probably a floor fight. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Around, I don't know, Medicaid. | ||
| Things could change. | ||
| This thing is a very, as you say in deal terms, a very fluid situation. | ||
| We're socializing a lot of alternatives. | ||
| Very fluid situation. | ||
| But I think the president did, and I think this was positive that came out today, he did, I think, put a sense of unity into people and that this has got to get done and you've got to do it in the smartest way possible. | ||
| Now, obviously... | ||
| This thing on the deficit should have been handled earlier, but we are where we are. | ||
| So you can't whine about it and you can't bitch and moan about it. | ||
| But you can try to make the best of it. | ||
| People are thinking of the best interest of the president and his program and going forward. | ||
| And I got Philip Patrick on today. | ||
| I am concerned about, you know, exploding. | ||
| You put $4 trillion in for a new cap to the debt ceiling and we just blow through that. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Because we still have not grasped, you know, coming together on the spending. | ||
| And the defense budget at a trillion, I hope that this Golden Dome, I think part of it's in this top-up that gets us over a trillion. | ||
| But for three years, you've got to face facts. | ||
| That's going to be expensive. | ||
| We've got to think this through. | ||
| Philip Patrick, what is your concern? | ||
| I mean, the 10 years around four and a half. | ||
| The 30 is around 5, you know, a little below, a little above. | ||
| I think the 30-year mortgage is at 7. You know, my fear is that the financing cost of this, when factored in, you're going to have now embedded real inflation. | ||
| Although Trump's, you know, he's bringing drug prices down, he's bringing energy down, he's bringing commodities down. | ||
| So there's good things happening on that side, on the supply chain side and the inputs. | ||
| I'm worried about the financing and the financing costs. | ||
| Birch Gold's Philip Patrick, the man, I thank you for breaking away from the desk today to come and join us. | ||
| Your thoughts? | ||
| I mean, look, the financing costs are the biggest problem we have at the moment. | ||
| It's debt services working against everything that Trump and Besson are trying to do. | ||
| And it takes a lot of it out of our hands, right? | ||
| I mentioned before, we tried to negotiate tariffs. | ||
| China, Japan, sold U.S. debt. | ||
| Borrowing rates skyrocketed. | ||
| Same with the downgrade recently from Moody's. | ||
| Nothing dramatically has changed. | ||
| As Besant said, it's backward-looking, not forward. | ||
| But... | ||
| It's a sign that global investors are realizing we're looking more and more like a bad investment. | ||
| The more they pull away, the more that debt service skyrockets, it's going to be impossible to deal with the problem. | ||
| I've been torn on the big, beautiful bill, right? | ||
| On the one hand, as I said last time, Trump was elected with a mandate, right? | ||
| Lowering taxes, border security, revitalizing the industrial base. | ||
| That's not cheap, right? | ||
| But on the other hand, we're not seeing Congress take the necessary steps to rein in out of control spending. | ||
| And as long as we don't do that, long term, this problem is going to explode. | ||
| So it's a tough one. | ||
| I was hoping Trump would have a little bit more time. | ||
| The reality is it's coming to a head. | ||
| So we need to see more spending controls. | ||
| But we've got to remember Trump's trying to walk a tightrope here, and it's a difficult one. | ||
| And, you know, the stakes are very high. | ||
| We cannot afford to fall. | ||
| But he's got to balance the real cost of an economic renaissance, tax cuts, tariffs, business incentives, with the political cost of saying no to Congress, right? | ||
| Got to face it, certain programs have to go, and that's going to affect voters. | ||
| So it's this tough thing, this tough balance that he's trying to walk. | ||
| I, like you, think they'll come to a deal. | ||
| I'm hoping we'll curb spending, because if we don't get a handle on it soon, it's going to be too late. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Now, the biggest buyer of our bonds is Japan. | ||
| They own over a trillion. | ||
| They said in this negotiations on tariffs and trade, They dropped it. | ||
| Bomb said, hey, no offense. | ||
| These deficits, we understand. | ||
| We've got non-tariff barriers. | ||
| We admit we're going to get in negotiations. | ||
| We'll make a deal. | ||
| But our purchase of these securities are going to be on the table. | ||
| So that was a shot the FT reported a couple weeks ago. | ||
| I just want to read to the audience. | ||
| In Japan, they've had three decades, lost decade, because of the asset inflation in the late 80s. | ||
| Everybody remembers that. | ||
| This is what got Trump first talking about tariffs and trade was Japan. | ||
| Now, they're different, although we've had an asset inflation problem, right? | ||
| President Trump tried to take, in his first term, tried to take the air of the balloon slowly to make sure that we can handle this. | ||
| Biden, you know, jacked it up with his out-of-control spending. | ||
| I'm just going to read you headlines coming off the Bloomberg and other terminals. | ||
| Japan's 20-year bond auction gets weakest demand since 2012. | ||
| That's Bloomberg. | ||
| Wolf Street, which is another one of these great sites. | ||
| Japan's 30-year and 40-year bonds crater yields spike. | ||
| Huge mess coming home to roost. | ||
| From Reuters, Bank of Japan urged to boost bond buying in wake of spike in super-long yields. | ||
| Yahoo Finance, Japan's super-long bond yields soar to records as market frets about demand. | ||
| Financial Times of London, Japan's long-term borrowing costs hit record high on demand fears. | ||
| This is what Ray Dalio, who's no friend of Trump, no friend of the war room, but a smart guy, has been warning about demand for treasuries. | ||
| And this is the whole thing of the Rio reset. | ||
| Right now, and it's not going to happen tomorrow, but in Japan it hit today. | ||
| A lack of demand of these bonds, at least at the price they're offered. | ||
| That means you've got to offer a higher price. | ||
| That means you've got a higher financing cost. | ||
| That means it rolls back to the economy. | ||
| Philip Patrick, what's happening in Japan? | ||
| Is that any warning sign, particularly when these brothers got to be buying U.S. government securities big league, sir? | ||
| Look, Japan is an indicator, right? | ||
| Normally, a rising yield solves investor problems. | ||
| But Japan's rising bond yields are a reflection of investor fears, right? | ||
| And when the Bank of Japan buys government bonds, it devalues currency. | ||
| It's a warning signal to what's happening to us here in the United States. | ||
| We're seeing yields rise now on our government debt, and it's not a sort of a reflection of a sort of strengthening economy. | ||
| This is a reflection of global demand for our debt waning. | ||
| One dollar out of every four that we borrow comes from foreign investors. | ||
| As soon as they start to view us as a bad investment, start to pull away, it's going to be problematic. | ||
| And it's happening already. | ||
| US dollar holdings by central banks are at 30-year lows. | ||
| We're seeing last year the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, yet borrowing rates on our debt are increasing. | ||
| This is what we cannot afford to happen. | ||
| And the more we continue to run deficits, the more we continue to spend, the more this will happen, right? | ||
| Factor in, as we've said many times, Biden's weaponization. | ||
| We're creating an argument for foreign investors to try and diversify. | ||
| And that's my biggest concern, right? | ||
| The U.S. today has 25% of the world's GDP and 60% of the world's capital. | ||
| I think we're moving into a more multipolar world, and I think we could lose on the back of that. | ||
| Who's going to, if the Chinese, look, when England is, the United Kingdom right now is the second biggest holder of government bonds, I think at $850 billion. | ||
| The Chinese are under a trillion for the first time in a long time. | ||
| When England's the second biggest, and not that we don't love our brothers and sisters from our mother country, but when they're the second biggest holders, that makes me a little nervous. | ||
| It doesn't deal with some of the other nations of the world. | ||
| That maybe have bigger balance sheets they could buy. | ||
| Does that make you nervous that England is the second biggest buyer? | ||
| Because who knows what their appetite is. | ||
| Folks, this is the problem with these deficits. | ||
| And you increase the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, you've got to finance that. | ||
| That's a theoretical, okay, you can go up to this. | ||
| All that means is you're going to sell $4 trillion of additional bonds, government bonds, on top of the $36 trillion, which are essentially one-third of it. | ||
| Right? | ||
| It's roughly one-third of it's refinanced every year. | ||
| Does that not concern you that some of these foreign buyers, Japan looks like it's in trouble? | ||
| England's a financial mess. | ||
| And now they're the guy that owns the second biggest group of bonds. | ||
| Is that concerning you about when you talk about demand? | ||
| Because we're one failed treasury auction away from a new reality in this country. | ||
| This is what I keep telling people. | ||
| We're getting out of the situation where we, American citizens, through our elected officials, including the president of the United States and the Congress, actually control our own destiny, our own fate. | ||
| Are you getting more and more worried about this, Philip Patrick? | ||
| Much more. | ||
| And we talk about Great Britain. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| The economy is smaller than California, right? | ||
| They're not the great power we or they once were. | ||
| I get confused. | ||
| Look, the Brits are struggling with stagflation right now. | ||
| So they have their own problems domestically. | ||
| When demand for our debt is waning and we're relying on our key allies with small economies to fund our debt, yes, I'm getting more and more concerned. | ||
| And that's what... | ||
| The Rio Reset's about, right? | ||
| That's what Russia, China, they understand the weakness, right? | ||
| They understand our Achilles heel, and they know sort of... | ||
| How to get us. | ||
| So, yes, I'm becoming more and more and more concerned. | ||
| The more countries we see moving away from the dollar, the more international transactions we see happening outside of US dollars, ultimately, the bigger the problem gets. | ||
| It is my biggest concern. | ||
| We've been talking about bond vigilantes for a long time, and they are coming here now. | ||
| If you look at the three crises I think we've had, the 2008 financial collapse, the 2000 internet stock, Fiasco and then the whole Arab Bowl embargo off the gold thing, the whole thing Reagan took over from Carter, the high inflation. | ||
| We were a different country then. | ||
| In the early, in the 70s, we had a relatively pristine balance sheet. | ||
| We're a manufacturer, a hegemon. | ||
| We had an incredibly educated working class, particularly skills-based. | ||
| Reagan, for all those monumental problems, he had something to fall back on. | ||
| In 2000, it turned out the internet stock fiasco affected equities, but we left that in pretty good shape. | ||
| 2008, we had the balance sheet to be able... | ||
| I don't agree with the bailouts, but you had the balance sheet to do it. | ||
| The balance sheet of the Fed was only $880 billion on the day of the collapse. | ||
| So they went to Bush. | ||
| They took it up to $4.5 trillion. | ||
| Before President Trump got in, it took a trillion dollars off. | ||
| Never forget that. | ||
| His first term took a trillion dollars off, took liquidity out of the market. | ||
| But you had the ability to do it. | ||
| Now, $36 trillion. | ||
| And the day that the debt ceiling increases, the debt's going to increase $500 billion to $800 billion because of what Besson's been doing to kind of make sure he's paying off using cash that's coming in. | ||
| To pay off the securities. | ||
| We're in a very different situation. | ||
| Are we not now, Philip Patrick? | ||
| Completely different. | ||
| A few weeks ago, we saw something unprecedented in modern history, and that is the unholy trifecta of sort of market stress. | ||
| We saw government debt, American capital markets, and the dollar itself all falling in sync. | ||
| And this doesn't happen, right? | ||
| And it's a result of a number of things we're talking about. | ||
| We've got foreign buyers now withdrawing from US assets. | ||
| We have rising yields. | ||
| We've got persistent inflation. | ||
| We're seeing just political dysfunction, right? | ||
| We're seeing expanding deficits, even under a Republican Congress, which wasn't expected. | ||
| And I think markets are finally noticing now, especially foreign holders, some of whom are pulling back from U.S. assets. | ||
| And that's working against everything we're trying to do, factoring in massive national debt. | ||
| And it becomes really problematic. | ||
| So as much as Besant sort of underplayed the Moody's downgrade, This isn't a catalyst for more problems, but what it is is a confirmation signal. | ||
| And confirmation signals matter a lot when investors are already uncertain. | ||
| And uncertainty is the name of the game at the moment. | ||
| Where do people get you? | ||
| I know you've got to bounce. | ||
| We've got about 30 seconds. | ||
| Where do they get you to get all the information from Birch Gold? | ||
| Yeah, so birchgold.com forward slash Bannon or it's Bannon to 989898. | ||
| That gets them access to all the free written information, End of the Dollar Empire series, and they can reach me at Philip Patrick on Getter. | ||
| The road to Rio and Philip's going. | ||
| Philip Patrick, thank you for joining us on the afternoon show of The War Room. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann. | |
| Okay, 1 o 'clock. | ||
| We're going to be up tonight on Getter. | ||
| Chip Roy saying, hey, we're in a better spot. | ||
| We're in a week ago, better spot than 48 hours ago. | ||
| President did a lot, but there's still a lot of dissension and fighting, etc. | ||
| So, all that. | ||
| Rick Grinnell, Ambassador Rick Grinnell joins us. | ||
| Just landed. | ||
| Sir, give us an update on what's going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, Steve. | |
| Well, thanks for having me. | ||
| Well, we just landed back in Washington, D.C., spent the day leaving very early, went to Antigua to meet the Venezuelans. | ||
| We have been in discussions with them. | ||
| Obviously, we've got more than a few Americans stuck down there as hostages. | ||
| And we've been trying to get them out. | ||
| We've got a lot of issues with them, and our priority is to put America first, bring home Americans, and do what's best for America. | ||
| And I think it was a very successful day. | ||
| We returned with Joe St. Clair, a young man who served in the military and found himself in a Venezuelan prison. | ||
| For really no reason at all, held against his will. | ||
| And today, Joe is now an American free in America. | ||
| Ambassador, look, you're doing yeoman's work on freeing these Americans from these prisons. | ||
| The question is that people are talking about an overall deal, maybe getting the Chinese and the Russian Navy out of there. | ||
| You deal with these guys almost daily, the Venezuelan government. | ||
| Are they... | ||
| Are they trustworthy enough in your mind that we could actually do some bigger deal with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, look, I think that's a good question. | |
| We get it a lot, I would say, as a diplomat. | ||
| As a diplomat, it's been around for a long time. | ||
| I'm not sure that we just worry about trusting. | ||
| I think we want to always verify. | ||
| We want to make sure that... | ||
| We test and build confidence. | ||
| A lot of the discussions about diplomacy and trying to find solutions is literally confidence building to make sure that one side does what they say and you start with little things and you build confidence towards that. | ||
| Because remember, they're skeptical of us and we're skeptical of them. | ||
| And so building trust, I think, is what we need to do for the American people. | ||
| What President Trump wants us to do... | ||
| When he was over in Saudi Arabia, he made it very clear that it is not his position to try to do regime change, but to think about what is best for America, what's best for Americans, and how do we make sure that we're doing everything we can to make America stronger tomorrow. | ||
| And what that means is, you know, in our... | ||
| We want to make sure that the Chinese are not coming in and taking oil and minerals and gold and keeping us on the outside. | ||
| And President Trump is just very clear about sanctions penalize American companies. | ||
| And if we believe in engagement, if we believe in capitalism, capitalism beats socialism and communism every single time. | ||
| And so we want to put America first and do what's best for America. | ||
| That means making sure that the Chinese do not take the Venezuelan oil. | ||
| Is there some discussion about an extension of Chevron? | ||
| Is that in the cards or is that something President Trump's working on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, President Trump authorized that extension if we were able to get some progress, if we were able to build some confidence that we were able to do that today. | |
| So that extension will be granted. | ||
| Ambassador, real quickly, I know you've got to bounce. | ||
| You hosted at the White House the president with the board of the Kennedy Center. | ||
| Then you're up pre-dawn to go down to Antigua to rescue hostages. | ||
| Are you living your best life right now? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know about that. | |
| I'm doing what the president wants us to do. | ||
| You know, we're living in this time where President Trump is completely transforming Washington, D.C. and America for the better. | ||
| And, you know, it's not always things that I want to do, but I feel really compelled to do everything we can to help this guy. | ||
| Help the President of the United States really make this change. | ||
| He needs as many people that are willing to sacrifice, step up, and do what they can do. | ||
| And so whenever he asks me to do something, I do it. | ||
| Ambassador, what's your social media? | ||
| How do people follow particularly all the ins and outs of these tough negotiations to free Americans down in Venezuela, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would just say on X, it's at Richard Grinnell, and on Instagram, it's at Richard Grinnell, and those are the two main accounts. | |
| Congratulations. | ||
| Bravo, Zula. | ||
| Great job, sir. | ||
| Thank you, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Glad you're back. | ||
| Rick Cannell, he hosted last night an incredible board of the Kennedy Center with the president, and the president kind of, you know, went there, let's say. | ||
| It was an amazing meeting, and President Trump reinforced the Kennedy Center as a cultural uniter in this country, putting forward the best of American culture. | ||
| Very powerful with some of the heavy hitters from the cultural side that Rick, Ambassador Renown, and others have put on the board. | ||
| And then today, pre-dawn, to go down and to work on these hostages. | ||
| Mike Lindell. | ||
| Both sales are going great, I understand. | ||
| We're running up to the Memorial Day weekend. | ||
| What do you got for us, sir? | ||
| Well, we put it all together, Steve. | ||
| We're making it the War Room 50% off sale. | ||
| As you all know, all the beach towels and beach blankets and beach bags, they all came in. | ||
| And then the kitchen towels, that whole new assortment of them came in. | ||
| We have pillows, different roll-and-go pillows. | ||
| So you guys go. | ||
| If we put that up, and by the way, there it is, the War Room that saved 50% or more. | ||
| All these products we put in one spot. | ||
| Go to the website. | ||
| Click on that. | ||
| Click on Steve there and go down. | ||
| Use promo code WARROOM, everybody. | ||
| And you're going to see all the beach stuff that came in. | ||
| All the new kitchen towels that came in. | ||
| Kitchen. | ||
| A bunch of stuff for the kitchen. | ||
| There's all kinds of stuff. | ||
| There's aprons. | ||
| Everything you would use for a barbecue and stuff around the kitchen. | ||
| All these new products came in, saved 50% or more. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Go there now. | ||
| You see the 50% off the beach sale. | ||
| They have it for lawn chairs. | ||
| They have bags. | ||
| You name it. | ||
| For Memorial Day, it's going to be awesome. | ||
| You save as low as $9.98 for the... | ||
| The kitchen stuff. | ||
| And then we have the crosses. | ||
| We kept that since it's the 50% off sale. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Perfect. | |
| We've got the crosses. | ||
| The Made in America crosses. | ||
| The War Room Posse gets them for 50% off. | ||
| And that's the biggest savings in the country with what? | ||
| Promo code WARROOM. | ||
| Promo code WARROOM. | ||
| Most powerful promo code out there. | ||
| MyPillow.com. | ||
| Promo code WARROOM. | ||
| We'll see you tomorrow morning. | ||
| Mike Lindell. | ||
| Get back to work. | ||
| Get back to the factory floor. | ||
| Next hour. | ||
| We're going to get a top surgeon here to talk about the situation, Biden, and we're going to Texas. | ||
| All next in the war room. |
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