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May 23, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:46
Episode 4507: Who Really Is Pope Leo The XIV; Our Power Grid Is Compromised
Participants
Main voices
b
ben harnwell
06:26
d
dave walsh
08:20
s
steve bannon
21:54
Appearances
j
jonathan lemire
01:48
n
natalie winters
04:57
Clips
j
jake tapper
00:08
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
unidentified
To put together one's own birthday with the martial might of the country gets us very, very close to what we fought a revolution not to have, which is an autocratic, monarchical system in which we mistake the loyalty to a person.
And we confuse loyalty to a person and loyalty to country.
jonathan lemire
Grip on the Republican Party remains vice-like.
More news from the Trump administration yesterday.
It has now revoked Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, the latest escalation in its battle against that Ivy League school.
The Department of Justice announced in a letter yesterday that it is pulling the school's Exchange Visitor Program certification, saying Harvard's created an unsafe campus environment that is, quote, hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies, and employs racist diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
The DOJ also accused the university of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.
Harvard called the action unlawful.
And says it's working to provide guidance and support to students and the community.
The university has nearly 7,000 international students, which make up about 27% of the entire student body.
Meanwhile, just a few moments ago, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, a big elite school there, shared an open invitation to international undergraduate and postgraduate students currently enrolled at Harvard, inviting them to continue their academic career at Their school over in Hong Kong.
The university says it will prioritize expedited admissions, credit transfers, and tailored support, including visa assistance and housing to ensure a smooth transition.
unidentified
I mean, look, I think one of the ways to assess those odds is to look at what's happening with the real powers in the Republican Party, and that is the larger right-wing media.
I mean, they have narrative dominance.
That is where they build and organize power.
That is how they maintain it.
That is the real whip when it comes to counting votes.
And if you look at how the right-wing media is handling this, they're enthusiastic about the bill.
There isn't really any discussion or lamenting about the effects of Medicaid.
Yeah, they accept the fact that it's going to add some money to the deficit, but they're largely bought in on this idea that somehow this legislation is going to lead to this.
This bounty of riches at some point that will easily offset any of the debts and costs and deficits.
And I think that's the real tell.
The only one out there really driving any warning signs that I think has any legs is Bannon, who's really reminding the rest of MAGA and Trump's world that they really need to be careful and tread lightly when it comes to Medicaid, given how many of Trump's supporters are actually on it.
So when this comes into pass.
So what do I honestly think the odds are right now?
They're in favor of the bill passing in as close to form as possible.
And I think the fact that you have to point to Rand Paul as the principal person opposing this, who's been opposed to a bunch of other things and it hasn't really been reflective of where the rest of the party is, is a really big tell.
They might get some sandpaper on the edges, but at the end of the day, they've demonstrated that Trump is...
I don't see why this would be any different.
They've already abdicated their role and responsibility as a separate branch of government.
steve bannon
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.
jake tapper
And where do people like that go to share the big line?
unidentified
MAGA 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. Bannon.
you you Welcome.
steve bannon
It is Friday, 23 May, in the year of our Lord, 2025.
An explosive day already from the President of the United States.
Overnight, he shut down all foreign students from Harvard and said directly, his head of DHS said directly, their involvement with the Chinese Communist Party is very, very concerning.
Just an absolute blockbuster piece of news.
Also this morning, the President of the United States getting very frustrated.
That we have two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea, keeping the Suez Canal open, and literally no progress coming out of the G7 on getting a deal with the EU, particularly since we've already closed a deal with the United Kingdom on trade.
Trump put them on blast and said, "Yo, June 1st, we don't have a deal.
Terrorists are 50 percent." Also, Apple, I think he met with Tim Apple.
And came out and said, hey, this whole move from China to India is not good.
You've got to make these funds here in the United States.
We're going to put a big tariff on you.
President of the United States has been on quite a roll.
Also right there, the Media Matters president.
Media Matters now being investigated by the FTC about trying to take advertisers off of, I think, a Twitter, an Elon Musk.
That guy's a pretty smart guy.
He understands that we are trying to have a balance here.
Between the big, beautiful bill, debt, all of it.
The one thing I think people have recognized as we've been hammering here in the world in the last couple of days is that you've got to present the entire package.
You have to present the tariff revenue, you know, the external revenue service.
You have to get in back of this 3% to 3.5% growth rate.
If that's what you believe internally, which is quite high, it's a lot higher than the 2.6% used by the House in their calculations and far higher.
Then CBO is scoring this.
It's one of the reasons the deficits look so terrible in the first couple of years is that the CBO is scoring this as like a 1.7, 1.8 growth rate.
Those numbers, although they seem small, are actually huge when you work through the system.
I think the White House is now coming out.
I think you saw Scott Besson this morning doing some TV.
We'll have some clips about this a little later in the show.
We're also going to go to the White House.
Some breaking news with Natalie Winters.
My co-host, let me bring in Ben Harnwell in Rome.
Ben, one of the reasons I want you to co-host this morning, kind of big news is President Trump seems to be pretty serious about trying to get the Vatican to be an intermediary here in this negotiation between the direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.
Is that a thing, sir?
ben harnwell
Well, yes, it is a thing.
President Trump has spoken in favour of it.
Marco Rubio spoke in favour of it.
But breaking news, within the last hour and a half or so, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has actually said no to this.
He's ruled it out.
He's vetoed it.
And I have two takeaways on this story, right, Steve?
Two takeaways.
The first one is that, and I think you might have some comments on my second point here, but the first point is that the administration believed on a prudential level that it was wise to indicate Pope Leo as a valid interlocutor, intermediate.
mediator in this war at this stage.
And I flag that up because as...
So for the administration to have given him this position of moral authority is something I'm just highlighting.
The second thing, Steve, about Pope Leo, and this is sort of probably even more important, is that we don't know what his view is with regards to China.
And him, Pope Leo himself, publicly speaking about willing to be an intermediator in this war, with the whole situation of China in the background, I think is another illustration of something that we've been mentioning on this show for the last few days, Steve, is that we need to know where Pope Leo stands on China.
Hence, it's something that we've suggested a couple of times about a potential, a suggested joint statement condemning.
The practice of forced organ harvesting on behalf of the president, just to find out where Pope Leo is.
So there are these two points here with the Vatican.
steve bannon
Let me break this down for a second, and if Cameron and Denver can get these up.
So the Wall Street Journal had a very smart piece this morning about the fortress that China has been building in the last couple of years, and I want to go back to May of 2019.
President Trump worked two years with Bob Lighthizer and Jameson Graham, Peter Navarro, and others to come up with a comprehensive deal that would really couple the Chinese Communist Party and their economy into the world economy and take away all the abuses they've had, all the abuses of Lao Bajang, of their people, all the abuses they've had of state-owned industries, all of that.
After two years of negotiation and really having preparatory documents, To be signed in May of 2019, after they had the One Belt, One Road meeting with Putin, I think it was in Shanghai he came to, they tore it up and really spit in President Trump's face.
And as everybody knows, a couple of months later at the World Military Games in Wuhan, that was the first beginning of people noticing this thing that would later be called COVID-19.
It's called COVID-19 for a reason.
It ain't called COVID-20 for a reason.
It started to show up in 2019.
At that time, And Frank Gaffney and the Committee on the President, we've gone over this over and over again, they declared a people's war against the United States.
This is when she actually put them on war footing.
Now, you take that Wall Street Journal article, they have been preparing to build a digital fortress and really a fortress around their own technology and preparing for a trade war, also preparing for a cyber war.
This is one of the reasons we're going to have Natalie on today.
A lot of rumors going around, a lot of speculation, a lot of discussion about the grid.
So we got Dave Walsh and Natalie about our grid, EMP, potential threats to all that.
President Trump's frustration, let's go to the G7.
Besant, the Secretary of Treasury, goes from Riyadh, goes from the meeting in the Middle East where all these deals are being announced and look like a stabilizing influence and using economy and growth and upside.
To calm the issues of jihad and all these issues that have kind of rolled the Middle East.
He then goes to the G7 meeting.
Now, the G7 meeting, there is positive movement on getting the G7, right?
Those nations, which are principally European, right?
The G20 has expanded out.
That includes Brazil and some other nations.
The G7 is really the United States and North America, United States, Canada, and Western Europe.
In the G7, they did make progress.
I think President Trump is very appreciative.
They did make progress like we're making in East Asia with Japan and South Korea and Taiwan of putting together this new trading or commercial relationships that basically puts China on notice that no longer are you going to be able to basically beggar thy neighbor, including the United States.
However, I think the frustration, and this is just my read on it, I think the frustration is that We have two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea, basically taking on the Houthis, but keeping the sea lanes in the Red Sea open for the Suez Canal, of which 97% of trade from the Gulf, from the Persian Gulf, or I guess now the Arabian Gulf, the oil that comes from there, and everything that comes from Asia, including China, India, all of it, all come through.
Of the Suez Canal.
We have two carrier battle groups.
I don't know.
Somebody said it was like a billion dollars a week or something.
Some enormous operating expense to have this there.
unidentified
Plus, we've lost a couple of planes.
steve bannon
The EU is not making the progress I believe the president wants to see.
And he's saying, hey, I've already got a deal with the UK.
That took like a month.
Why are we having such a problem?
And as you know, Ben, Some of the people in the EU, now this was a finance minister's meeting, not a head of state, but Georgia Maloney and others, you know, and these G7 nations propped themselves up as a bridge.
I just don't think he thinks it's going quickly enough.
That's why you see today, this was a shotgun blast.
He basically told Apple, hey, I want to see manufacturing back here in the United States of America.
That's my point of these tariffs.
It's not just blocking China.
Going to India doesn't really work for me.
Because we're still in the process of getting a deal with India.
I want manufacturing for the new golden age back here in the United States of America.
In addition, with the EU, and people should understand, this is a storm warning for everybody else, the Indies of the world, etc.
He basically said, if I don't have a deal by June 1st, I'm putting 50% tariffs off.
Now, that has rocked the markets.
I would also say to the president and others, hey.
Right now, we're going to work through the system of this bill that, at least on the surface, the way it's been scored, looks like the deficits are up in the short term.
I don't think it's that bad, but I don't think we're making the case.
Ron John, Senator Ron Johnson in the Senate has already said, hey, to him, this thing's dead on arrival.
He's looking for a lot more cuts.
We're going to get a clip, I think, of Scott Besson.
I think actually saying something positive about Johnson, about what's going to happen in the what's going to happen in the in the Senate and the House.
OK, short commercial break.
Ben Harnwell's co-anchoring with me this morning.
We've got a lot going on.
We're absolutely packed with the kickoff Memorial Day weekend.
Of course, we're going to have wall to wall coverage of President Trump at the United States Military Academy at West Point tomorrow.
And then at Arlington National Cemetery to commemorate the honored dead of the United States military.
Short break.
Back in the warm in just a moment.
unidentified
I got American faith in America.
jonathan lemire
We've already seen these research grants be cut, you know, earlier in the administration.
And now, international students, if they can't practice their craft here, if they can't learn here and then potentially go on to careers here, other universities around the world, other countries, will be happy to have them and will be poorer for it.
unidentified
Yeah, just in order, Jonathan.
First of all, Harvard says this is unlawful.
It seems to me to be yet another, you know, bill of attainder, which is prohibited by the Constitution.
steve bannon
Okay, I've already heard enough.
That clip is a lot longer.
I think it's 6,000 foreign students.
Harvard itself, and if Grace, I think, can get this to Cameron, I want to put it up.
Harvard just tweeted out on the official site.
Harvard without international students, not Harvard.
Well, it's not the Harvard of now, which is a disaster.
And I say this as a graduate.
The Harvard, I don't think in the 18th and 19th century, they were packed with foreign students when Harvard was the top of its game.
You know, being one of the forerunners, you know, helping us with the Revolution, the Civil War, all of it.
Sending patriots at the college and the university.
To fight our wars, defend America, and stand up for the Constitution.
What's today is a complete disaster.
All 6,000 of those billets ought to be immediately filled with, wait for it, American citizens.
Kids of American citizens that are American citizens.
Let's just load it up.
This is the outrage that I think people detest.
It's all federal money funding these things besides their endowment, which they hate spending.
They want to take your tax dollars.
That's why Trump's got them up against the rope.
ben harnwell
Let me just read the quotes here from Secretary Noem's statement.
She said, this administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, anti-Semitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus.
Your point just now about that this will offer an opportunity for actual Americans to study at Harvard, I think can't be overstated enough.
This is not only is it a throw down directly in the face of the CCP, but it also has the added blessing of being 100%, 1000% America first, because this is prioritising actual Americans and their opportunities to get ahead.
And, you know, I can't close without noticing that...
Straight away, that's their, you know, their bias against actual Americans couldn't be more stark.
steve bannon
But I think your point, hang on, your point, I think, is perfect here is that this shows Let them go!
The Hong Kong University, and that's the Hong Kong University that we first went to to explain the pandemic and how the CCP was rolling it out.
That's not independent anymore since the CCP has taken over Hong Kong.
If these foreign students want to go anywhere else and the Chinese students want to go anywhere else, go!
There's a big world out there.
A lot of great universities.
unidentified
Go.
steve bannon
If you want to take jobs in foreign countries, take jobs in foreign countries.
When they say this is a brain drain, they denigrate American kids and American citizens.
This, to me, and I've always said, even the ones that come here, clip an exit visa on when they graduate.
Get the hell out.
Go back to your country and make your country great.
That's what nationalism is.
Go back and make your country great.
It's not that we have any problem with foreigners.
What we have is foreigners taking billets, limited billets in Where's the letter?
We should send the letter today to the University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin.
You got to break, you got to bring to heel these public Ivies.
This is the MSNBC immediately goes to the globalist argument.
Right?
We want to invite the world and do all this for the world and screw American students.
This is why American students aren't in Silicon Valley.
Also, the reason I love this more than anything, I don't know how you send this and the next logical conclusion is not H-1B visas.
Oh, yeah.
The logical extension of this is H-1B visas.
Ben Harnwell.
Let's talk about Ben.
Let's talk about national globalism.
President Trump is furious this morning.
That true social, he ain't happy with what happened at the G7.
And I think the growing frustration is that he's got a trillion-dollar defense bill, and part of it is still because we've got troops and everything deployed on the Eurasian landmass.
Now, yesterday, there's a discussion inside the administration about pulling out a lot of the combat troops of Korea.
But you've still got carrier battle groups protecting the Suez Canal for the trade of Europe.
Is President Trump right to be frustrated with the EU, given that the United Kingdom did a deal with us in four weeks?
ben harnwell
You know, of course he's right.
Of course he's right.
The point about the European Union for the last 70 years is that it's been operating a grift.
At American taxpayers' expense.
And the European nations, thanks to the consistent pressure that Donald Trump has been applying now on these EU nations, is confronting them with a choice.
And America has a choice.
We've been watching this just yesterday over the big, beautiful bill.
You know, if you want to spend money, you have to tax or you have to borrow or you have to print.
Those are the three options.
And for various financial and the need The Europeans don't have that, so they're basically either talking about borrowing, which would go against the Maastricht criteria of the single currency, the euro, or it would have to print new dollars.
And, of course, that goes against...
Now, so Donald Trump is putting this pressure on the European nations.
And you have the historic centre-right Christian democratic parties that are Atlanticist, which means that they are open to the dictates of the American military industrial complex.
The problem is...
So the very consequence of Donald Trump putting this pressure on the European nations is that they either do what they're trying to do here in Europe, which is pacify, or they don't pacify.
They don't have the political courage to go against Donald Trump.
And what they're going to do is create a massive sort of 30-40% of the electorate.
Which will go to the nationalist iterations.
So Donald Trump, yes, you're right.
He is absolutely right to be frustrated with the European Union.
But this pressure that he's giving will have fruit on the European continent far beyond what his specific first-degree intentions are.
steve bannon
I want to go to something you just said.
I don't want to bury the lead here.
And this is why make sure to go to birchgold.com.
The end of the dollar empire.
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Seven free installments, including the latest, The Real Reset.
You've got the bond market bouncing around.
President Trump is both in a trade war, trying to redo the commercial relationships of the world.
Also, he is making a huge bet, let's call it a bet, on a supply-side tax cut that generates real growth, over 3% growth.
But it's a bet.
That's one of the reasons I want the White House and others to come out and put more information, more about the plan, particularly the growth rates, the tariffs, cash coming in, the show, to make an argument that the deficits that are shown by CBO and others are kind of artificially high, potentially, because they're not including everything.
But go back, this is about currency, and that's why you've got to learn about currency.
This is why we did the end of the dollar empire for 40 years with Birch Gold, because before you can understand gold, you've got to understand fiat currency.
Talk to people.
We've got a minute or two.
Did Britain have the ability even to get their sovereignty back because they kept the pound and they didn't go into a common currency?
Has going into a common currency and giving up their own currencies, has that really limited the European nations to kind of break free and stand on their own?
And this is why they're negotiating as a bloc, and you can tell Italy and others would probably like to break out and cut their own side deals, sir?
ben harnwell
Not sure whether Italy would like to cut out.
I mean, that's really the problem with the heart of Giorgio Maloney and her philosophy and her administration.
Open brackets in this big story of the last couple of days over the World Health Organization and this pandemic treaty.
Italy abstained.
It was, I think, one of the 11 states that abstained.
Perhaps we'll dig into that a little later on in the show.
Because that's very important, that pandemic treaty.
Look.
It was absolutely imperative for the UK, if it ever had an idea of itself on the world stage, as a proper sovereign nation, that it wouldn't enter the Eurozone, take the Euro, and that gave it the independence to pull out.
Your question is absolutely perfect, because...
practically, to pull out of the union having already given up their currency.
That's how, because, you know, sovereign nations, one of the...
So the European peoples, like the Italian people, I think Italy's seen like 5% growth over the last 30 years compared to 30% in Germany.
Italy has been betrayed.
For the last two generations, by its class of political leadership and joining the single currency, as you correctly put your finger on, was a very cunning manoeuvre on behalf of the European elites to stop a future independent movement pulling back that power in election time.
steve bannon
Short break.
Ben's going to stay with me in Rome, but we're going to go to the White House, Natalie Winter's breaking story.
That everyone, kicking off Memorial Day weekend, talking about the black hand of the Chinese Communist Party.
Is it in back of an attack on the grid, the electoral grid of the United States of America?
Short break.
unidentified
back in a moment.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
Band.
steve bannon
you Okay, welcome back.
The bond market's bouncing around, stock market's bouncing around.
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That would be gold, not fiat currency.
Make sure you go to take your phone out, text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N, 989898.
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A lot of controversy about the big, beautiful bill.
Did it cut enough?
Do we show enough economic growth?
It's going to the Senate.
Semaphore is reporting, and they're pretty dialed in, that the core of the bill is going to stay the same.
They may change it on the margins.
However, people like Senator Johnson and others are saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
This doesn't cut enough, and we're really going to get down to this and really make some cuts.
Ben Harnwell's with me in Rome, and I want to bring in, we've got Natalie, we're trying to get her up at the White House.
I've got Dave Walsh.
Dave, one of the reasons the president's driving down cost and inflation is being driven down is full-spectrum energy dominance.
They just had the G7, and Trump's not happy with the progress being made for a deal.
As I said, guys, June 1st are 50%.
One of the reasons you have this problem is Germany.
And now you're getting reports out of there that Germany is now panicked because not only have they done this net carbon zero, but they also got rid of all their nuclear power.
I guess France did a lot of it, too.
The president's been signing executive orders.
He's throwing down hard on nuclear power across energy across the board.
And then I want to get into, and Natalie's got some information about maybe a potential problem with the American energy grid.
Let's start with nuclear power at these executive orders.
President Trump's looking at Europe and saying, no way we're going to do what the Europeans did.
We're going to do the exact opposite.
Your thoughts, sir?
dave walsh
Well, you know, Europe, Spain, who had the big outage two weeks ago, are hard fast to shut down their seven remaining nuclear reactors, which is insanity.
Fully supported by all parties.
Nuclear power, which had been damned and abandoned by the left and Democrats 60 years, now back in vogue.
It is an essentially important ingredient, provides baseload continuous duty power.
What he's looking at are incentives that would provide some loan guarantees to spur the building of a lot more nuclear capacity, de-risk it somewhat.
We just had a bad experience with Plant Vogel in Georgia, seven years late, eight years late, $22 billion over budget.
So the support for loan guarantees he's seeking, but also, more importantly, deregulating the construction of existing technology nuclear plants, BWRs, PWRs, GE technology, Westinghouse technology.
It's been around for 65 years.
Doesn't need the same degree of NRC oversight as it's had.
Over a 65-year period is proven technology.
He appears to be all about streamlining that, which is essentially important, and allowing for U.S. fuel reprocessing.
This is the ability to reprocess, not turn it into nuclear weapons, but reprocess spent nuclear fuel to reuse.
Once again, in a reactor, which would be essential to driving the cost of nuclear power down.
It is expensive.
As built at Plant Vogel was $32 billion for a 2,200 megawatt plant that just got opened up.
So the actions he's taking to streamline the regulatory space around it are essentially important and to localize yellow cake mining in Utah, in Nevada, in Florida.
The Clinton era and the Uranium One deal basically sent all that to Russia.
steve bannon
Hold it for our audience.
One of the reasons I was brought into the campaign at 16 was about Clinton cash and about uranium.
Take a second.
Give me a minute.
So the audience members, particularly our newer audience members who may not be up to speed on this, what Hillary and Bill Clinton did about uranium in the United States vis-a-vis the great mortal enemy, Russia, sir.
dave walsh
Well, they hid behind a theory of displacement, and that is, well, if we can get the Russians to use their enriched uranium and uranium resources for nuclear power in this country by importing it from them, we can get them to use less of it making nuclear weapons.
That whole naive theory was then surrounded by personal interest in the Uranium One deal that they had personal interest in, causing the U.S. nuclear fuel supply to be shifted entirely from a domestic one over time to a Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, 58% of our nuclear fuel comes from those countries.
Even through this so-called war, that supply chain has been unabated to the U.S. and Western Europe, the yellow cake uranium coming from Russia and allied states.
We need to restart.
And I think the EO will get at the appropriate boundary conditions off now to begin to restart mining uranium in this country, which we once again can be self-sufficient with completely.
But no, the Clinton aspect of that was very, very suspicious and drove under false pretenses of denuclearizing Russia's military presence a shifting of transition to buying their nuclear fuel.
steve bannon
One of the reasons I want to have you on today is because I don't think we're putting forward the best case of President Trump's overall economic plan in regards to the big, beautiful bill.
The big, beautiful bill.
Listen, the way it's being scored by the official people that scored because of the constraints of reconciliation process, these deficits in the first couple of years are big and nobody can doubt that.
My point is that you don't have to just stick with that.
You can actually put forward a true business case of exactly what you're doing.
Incorporate tariffs.
Incorporate the growth rate.
The growth rate of 3% or above of which they're pitching.
The foundational element of that is full-spectrum energy dominance.
Now, four or five months into this, you're our expert.
How would you grade President Trump of going after the entire, you know, waterfront on this, the full spectrum, to make sure he's driving down energy cars?
Because Trump gets something that it appears that other political leaders throughout the world don't get, that the fundamental foundation of an industrial economy is.
Dave Walsh.
dave walsh
Well, on the full-spectrum energy dominance grading, A-plus on freeing up federal lands and for oil and gas production offshore, onshore, in the Arctic Refuge, everywhere.
That's an A-plus.
And then reopening the LNG export permitting through the DOE to go ahead and more rapidly build LNG export facilities.
That's all great.
The part that's been a little bit slow to emerge here is the electrification issue.
Electrification is 40% of the cost of U.S. energy all in, and we need a profound return in the near term, not to nuclear, just nuclear still 10, 15 years out.
There is no supply chain left here for building nuclear power plants.
That's going to take a long time.
We have an immediate, urgent crisis of an energy shortage depicted by grid leadership in MISO, PJM, and WEC.
We need more combined cycle gas-fired plants built rapidly in this country.
That's the technology that's known.
That's the American fuel.
That's the drill baby drill, plus use the gas domestically to provide low-cost, abundant American electrification with known existing clean technology.
Gas-fired combined cycle is that.
We need to move more strongly in that.
And the way forward, really, is to remove the incentives on all this trivial stuff that really doesn't matter and produces very little electrification.
Solar, wind, battery storage, carbon capture, which is in the way, all drive up the cost of electrification hugely, minimize the quantity of it.
Put us in net zero electricity growth.
That stuff is so deficient in supply.
But most importantly, has us rely entirely on China, who build 88% of the solar panels, battery storage, and inverters in the world.
So we're actually presently incenting Chinese supply.
We need to get in front of the Chinese supply, but more importantly, get back to power generation aspects and technology that works, is proven, and is decidedly low cost.
And is presently available, and that's combined cycle gas-fired power with U.S. natural gas at its core.
And that, you know, the best way forward is eliminate the incentivization of things opposite that.
Wind, solar and battery storage.
steve bannon
Can he, at the federal level, You got the issues in Florida, you've mentioned, the issues in South Carolina, the issues in Texas, right?
I'm not talking about blue states.
I'm talking about the core backbone of the MAACA movement and President Trump's political power.
We're all upside down on this very issue at the federal level.
Is this still, we just gotta get down the trenches on the state level and get this sorted out?
dave walsh
Well, because you have now deregulated power generation markets in a lot of the country, PGM, MISO, in the Midwest, the Northeast, WEC, out in the far West, ERCOT, all deregulated, where the generation companies are disaggregated from distribution, you have investors following the incentives.
And the incentives are as high as 52%, 53% when adding in the PTC, the ITC, and the depreciation benefit of accelerated depreciation in this stuff.
The incentives are too hard for independent investors who form the bulk of power generation build-out to resist.
So that's all they're building.
Even ERCOT and Florida, the next 5-year and 10-year plans respectively, are all 91% renewables.
Solar, mainly, now, and battery storage because of the incentives.
Then you move over to regulated markets like the utility ones.
You've got people like Florida Power& Light and Duke Energy in regulated markets.
Actually starving consumers of electric power, sending out notices about, hey, we're going to give you a cheap rate to use power between midnight and five in the morning because they're running into massive shortages due to over-applying solar power that works only five hours a day in utility-scale farms.
So the incentives have to be removed from paying Duke Energy, paying NextEra, paying Iberdrola, Exxon.
These are the firms that enjoy the benefits of the incentives to build this stuff out.
There's no cost benefit to ratepayers.
Four to five times more costly to rely on this kind of equipment for electric power supply.
So you've got massive, massive large-cap utilities and investors benefiting from the incentives.
They need to be eliminated.
steve bannon
Obscene.
Obscene.
Isn't this big rush for nuclear power and now that you're seeing, even President Trump on what he's doing on power overall, you're not seeing the pushback?
Before, which was hysteria, you know, they just, it's the end of the world, it's climate change.
Isn't it because the progressive Brolicarchs, who have now flipped to kind of our side, need unlimited virtual, they need power for artificial intelligence?
They're thirsty for it, and that's why you're seeing Google come up with their own compact nuclear power plants, right?
Plug and play, and you don't see anybody melting down.
Isn't it?
We got about a minute.
Here, I'm going to hold you through the break.
Natalie's going to join us also.
Isn't the drive here is because the folks that run the country essentially know they need unlimited power now to drive artificial intelligence, and it's devil catch the hindmost on this?
dave walsh
Yeah, I mean, Fink and Morgan Stanley both out there acknowledged this a year ago.
You can't have AI in data centers without baseload, continuous duty, huge, huge quantities of power.
Nuclear is one of the options, absolutely.
Combined cycle gas is another one of the options.
They're all over it.
But we've even had blue states, Michigan and California.
Whitmer and Newsom, respectively, running out of electricity, acknowledging, well, in the case of California, we've got to keep Diablo Canyon open and subsidize that.
Michigan keeping the Palisades plant open, now favoring nuclear after 70 years of adamantly resisting it.
So, you know, we have general bipartisan support now for nuclear power.
The trouble is the supply chain to begin making lots of these plants, building them, is way out there.
We've built 320 combined cycle plants in the country in the last 25 years.
That supply chain, due to a six-year timeout from 2000 to now, is half gone.
Half the contractors are gone, and now lead time is just to build those.
That easy technology is now six, seven years.
Nuclear is going to be quite a ways out.
steve bannon
Hang on for a second.
We're going to talk when we get Natalie in here.
We're talking energy as a driver of President Trump's growth plan.
Next in the War Room.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
steve bannon
you you Welcome back.
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Today, over on World Day weekend, go talk to Natalie Dominguez and the team and work it all out.
Okay, I'm going to go to the White House now.
Our own Natalie Winters joins us.
Natalie, it looks pretty quiet at the White House.
You're the hardest working White House correspondent by far.
Is any other media, is any other White House correspondents there today?
Are they all gone to the beach a day early?
natalie winters
You know, I think they're maybe too busy stealth editing all their old articles and tweets about Joe Biden's health, or they're too busy on the book tours.
I guess there's a lot of coverage for them to catch up on, particularly on that vertical.
This is probably the most quiet I've ever seen it, which is absolutely wild, given the big, beautiful bill, of course, back ending.
And what I want to come on to talk about the idea of China's off switch for the United States of America segues quite nicely with what Dave Walsh was talking about.
But I think important just to set the stage, you know, people might say that talking about these EMP attacks, the sort of technological attacks on America's critical infrastructure are hyperbolic or fear mongering.
But I think those are the exact same attacks that we heard in the early 2000s, right, about China's assault.
to the World Trade Organization and more broadly, their integration into the global economy.
And I'd also add just as a humble, I would say, warning to all of our media betters, the people who got Joe Biden's mental health so wrong, I'm so glad that they're going on their mea culpa book tours right now.
But we've been vindicated not just on Joe Biden, but of course on the threat that the PRC poses.
And if we allow the mainstream media narrative to dominate, particularly on the threat that the EMP poses, their apology It's going to be in the form of book deals.
It's going to be in the form of the United States becoming a failed state that has been replaced from a geopolitically hegemony perspective.
By the PRC.
So I want to get into this story, this article published on The Hill.
Of course, coming on the heels of President Trump's EO to counter a lot of these sort of alternative unrestricted warfare tactics.
But they highlight a myriad of sort of unconventional war strategies, including but not limited to EMP attacks, deep-sea fiber, the undersea cables cuts, anti-satellite weapons, and of course, cyber attacks.
And I know our audience is always ahead of the curve, but just for those of you who aren't aware what exactly EMP attacks are, there's been a lot of discussion about these sort of behind the scenes.
But these are basically bursts of electromagnetic energy We're talking about dismantling physical systems, whether it's financial systems, water system, hospitals, critical infrastructure, essentially reverting the United States to a pre-electric age.
And why it's so concerning, sort of springboarding off of what Dave Walsh was saying, is even in terms of repairing our systems, right?
We are so reliant on China, not just from a critical mineral and energy perspective,
And I think there's about 1.5% being done in Australia, which of course is essentially a proxy state of the PRC.
But what's really interesting but in solar equipment right here in the United States, manufactured, operated, and controlled by the PRC.
Which is really concerning.
We're not talking about, you know, toggling on and off and messing with the power.
You're talking about a complete kill switch on the United States of America.
And to make this, I think, really go global when you talk about what's going on in the Middle East, of course, I would raise the fact that it's the PRC that essentially dominates Iranian airspace, not that we're advocating for any troops on the ground or kinetic movement there, but if it were to get to that point because of the Diva State warmongers, You know, that's an interesting proposition.
And when you look at the fact that what is it, If China were to preemptively strike from the cable cutting perspective, which they've done against Taiwan and in the Baltic, and we've already seen some of these funky technological manipulations go on at the Denver airport, obviously in Spain and Portugal, that would be a really, really bad thing to see the complete severance between Indopaycom and the broader United States military.
So this is a huge, huge concern.
President Trump, like I said, has been ahead of this with the EO.
He pushed very early in the administration.
And a lot of what the Golden Dome could do could potentially prevent against these EMP attacks as well.
steve bannon
So, Natalie, his exit interview with 60 Minutes, Chris Wray, actually said, they asked him, what's the greatest threat to the United States?
And he says, embedded technology or kill switch.
of the Chinese Communist Party throughout all the infrastructure, communications infrastructure, healthcare infrastructure, logistics infrastructure, but he particularly highlighted the electrical grid and electrical infrastructure.
Now, Ray had lost so much credibility that even on this warning, nobody paid attention to him.
We're hearing chatter.
We've got about a minute here.
I'm going to hold you through the break.
There is a lot of discussion behind the scenes now of senior level people that, you know, from the Frank Gaffneys and War Room, we've been pounding this for years.
It's like the early parts of the COVID pandemic.
When we were banging on it, it came from Wuhan.
You got to look at this and we're dismissed.
There's a lot of people now really talking about this EMP threat.
Are there not?
natalie winters
Well, look, for all of Ray's faults, one thing that the FBI did very well under him was go after these CCP-linked researchers at American universities.
And to link this to what the Trump administration did at Harvard, all of these technological capabilities that the PRC now has, right, rather overtly or covertly, being able to hack into these grids, these are technologies and chips and just in general knowledge that is being given to them by Western institutions.
So that's why cutting them off, creating the chokehold, not letting them in, not creating this class of Western educated elites who right now are waging, you know, electrical and information and economic warfare, not basically training the soldiers that we may very one day come to meet on the kinetic warfare battlefield.
So this is why this is all part of one very important plan.
steve bannon
Natalie, hang on.
Natalie Winters at the White House today with none of the other mainstream media there.
Obviously, they're already at the beach.
Ben Harnwell.
Orin Cass is going to join us.
We're packed.
In the second hour, stick around.
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