June 26, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:40
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| The head of the UN Atomic Energy Agency this morning, Rafael Grossi. | ||
| U.S. and Israeli strikes caused enormous damage to Iran's nuclear sites. | ||
| Don't take my word for it. | ||
| How about the IDF's chief of staff? | ||
| I can say here that the assessment is that we significantly damaged the nuclear program, setting it back by years. | ||
| I repeat, years. | ||
| The Iranian foreign minister, the spokesman, our nuclear instructions have been badly damaged, that's for sure. | ||
| I'm sure that's an understatement. | ||
| John Radcliffe, the director of the CIA, putting out a statement just last night. | ||
| CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted strikes. | ||
| This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable, very different than preliminary assessment with low confidence. | ||
| He's saying historically reliable and accurate source and method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years. | ||
| CIA continues to collect additionally reliably sourced information to keep appropriate decision makers fully informed. | ||
| How about DNI Tulsi Gabbard yesterday? | ||
| She writes, and I quote, new intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times. | ||
| Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed. | ||
| Institute for Science Albright, overall Israel and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran's centrifuge enrichment program. | ||
| Let me now turn to the bomber crews themselves, give you a few details about them. | ||
| The crews that attacked Ford were from the active duty Air Force and the Missouri Air National Guard. | ||
| The crews ranked from captain to colonel, and most were graduates of the Air Force Weapons School headquartered at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. | ||
| I will state for the record that there is no beach volleyball or football at the Air Force Weapons School. | ||
| They were male and female aviators on this mission, and a crew member told me when I talked to them on video the other day that this felt like the Super Bowl, the thousands of scientists, airmen, and maintainers all coming together. | ||
| One last story about people. | ||
| When the crews went to work on Friday, they kissed their loved ones goodbye, not knowing when or if they'd be home. | ||
| Late on Saturday night, their families became aware of what was happening. | ||
| And on Sunday, when those jets returned from Whiteman, their families were there. | ||
| Flags flying and tears flowing. | ||
| I have chills literally talking about this. | ||
| The jets rejoined into a formation of four airplanes, followed by a formation of three and came up overhead Whiteman proudly in the traffic pattern pitching out to land right over the base and landing to the incredible cheers of their families who sacrifice and serve right alongside their family members. | ||
| Like I said, there were a lot of flags and a lot of tears. | ||
| Because you, you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump, because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. | ||
| You have to hope maybe they weren't effective. | ||
| Maybe the way the Trump administration has represented them isn't true. | ||
| So let's take half-truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it. | ||
| Spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful. | ||
| How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? | ||
| Has MSNBC done that story? | ||
| Has Fox? | ||
| Have we done the story, how hard that is? | ||
| Have we done it two or three times? | ||
| So that American people understand, how about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F-15 or 16 or F-22 or F-35? | ||
| Or what it's like to man a Patriot battery? | ||
| Or how hard it is to refuel mid-air, giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was. | ||
| There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful. | ||
| It's irresponsible. | ||
| And folks in this room are privy to that information because of the proximity here in the Pentagon. | ||
| It's an important responsibility. | ||
| And time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad. | ||
| And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B-2 pilots and incredible F-35 pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed. | ||
| How about we celebrate that? | ||
| How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities? | ||
| I think it's too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news. | ||
| So we're used to that. | ||
| But we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what's really happening. | ||
| And the reality is you want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated, choose your word. | ||
| This was an historically successful attack, and we should celebrate it as Americans. | ||
| And it gives us a chance to have peace, chance to have a deal, and an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years and no other presidents had the courage to actually do. | ||
| How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? | ||
| Has MSNBC done that story? | ||
| Has Fox? | ||
| Have we done the story how hard that is? | ||
| Have we done it two or three times so that American people understand how about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F-15 or 16 or F-22 or F-35? | ||
| Or what it's like to man a Patriot battery? | ||
| Or how hard it is to refuel mid-air, giving the American people An understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was. | ||
| There are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful. | ||
| It's irresponsible. | ||
| Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Ford Mountain or some of it? | ||
| Because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. | ||
| Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved? | ||
| Of course we're watching every single aspect. | ||
| But Jennifer, you've been about the worst. | ||
| The one who misrepresents the most intentionally reported about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. | ||
| And in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. | ||
| So I take issue with that. | ||
| I appreciate you acknowledging that this is the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here. | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
| So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where. | ||
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Why don't acknowledge the female pilots that also participated in this mission? | |
| The early messages that you sent out only congratulated the boys. | ||
| So when I say something like our boys and bombers, see, this is the kind of thing the press does, right? | ||
| Of course, the chairman mentioned a female bomber pilot. | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| She's fantastic. | ||
| She's a hero. | ||
| I want more female bomber pilots. | ||
| I hope the men and women of our country sign up to do such brave and audacious things. | ||
| But when you spin it as, because I say our boys and bombers as a common phrase, I'll keep saying things like that, whether they're men or women. | ||
| I'm very proud of that female pilot, just like I'm very proud of those male pilots. | ||
| And I don't care if it's a male or a female in that cockpit, and the American people don't care. | ||
| But it's the obsession with race and gender in this department that's changed priorities. | ||
| We don't do that anymore. | ||
| We don't play your little games. | ||
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I'm not sure that the uranium was removed from the facility before the B-2 struck. | |
| So I'm not aware of any intelligence that I've reviewed that says things were not where they were supposed to be, moved or otherwise. | ||
| Do you feel like this is being results of political pressure from the White House or are these good faith takes? | ||
| I don't know what's causing it, and I do want, I guess, as a national security editor, sort of explain what he said that was false. | ||
| He said that, you know, the media and specifically name us has ignored these reports. | ||
| Here is our report, our story last night that I personally published, written by my colleagues Dan DeLuce and Gordon Lubold. | ||
| CIA says Iran's nuclear program severely damaged by U.S. strikes. | ||
| As soon as that was said, we reported it. | ||
| This story has the CIA assessment, Chelsea Gabbard's statement on this, the Israeli statement on this. | ||
| So so many of the things he said just about this mission and just about the press coverage was exaggerated. | ||
| You mentioned D-Day. | ||
| I mean, again, the most complex and historic operation in history. | ||
| There were 11,000, I looked this up, 11,000 aircraft involved in D-Day. | ||
| 73,000 U.S. troops participated in it. | ||
| 2,500 Americans died. | ||
| And I don't know, again, what's causing him to say that, you know, President Trump carried out the most complex and historic operation in U.S. history, but that's not true. | ||
| And then Hegseth himself, you know, in the very first briefing said, Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated. | ||
| And this goes back to this broader issue of what happened to the enriched uranium. | ||
| And that's the question we should be talking about. | ||
| It was a successful mission. | ||
| I salute the men and women who carried it out. | ||
| But I think distracting people by blaming the press and not addressing the real issues is, you know, again, national security needs facts and honest debate, and that's what's so concerning. | ||
| This is the final screen of a dying beam. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
| Because we're going to be the evil on these people. | ||
| You're going to not get a free shot of all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything you want to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
| Mega Media. | ||
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
| Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | ||
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
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War Room, here's your host, Stephen K. Max. | |
| Okay, it's Thursday, 26th, June in the year of our Lord 2025. | ||
| I want to read from the Commander-in-Chief right at the conclusion of this morning's press briefing. | ||
| And I quote, one of the greatest, most professional, and most confirming news conferences I have ever seen. | ||
| The fake news should fire everyone involved in this witch hunt and apologize to our great warriors and everyone else. | ||
| We would tend to agree. | ||
| I have Jack Pasovic, I have Captain Jim Finnell, I have two extraordinary naval intelligence officers who can get down to it. | ||
| So first off, what you're seeing there in the media, which is the information arm of the globalists, and particularly the deep state, especially when you're talking about the Pentagon. | ||
| They do not want this war to be over. | ||
| Because remember, three-quarters of the people in that room are from smaller publications, especially publications that focus on defense. | ||
| All of their advertisers are the defense industry. | ||
| If you look at the mainstream media and you go over to Fox News, you go over to, you see Grumman and Martin Marietta or all the new, because they're all combined into three companies, right? | ||
| Lockheed, Martin, all of it. | ||
| They've all combined into three huge companies. | ||
| They're taking ads all the time. | ||
| You don't see those ads on War Room? | ||
| Not going to take them, just like we don't take pharma ads. | ||
| We wouldn't take pharma sponsors or Defense industry sponsors. | ||
| They're paid by the weapons industry. | ||
| It's like MSNBC, having Fauci up there. | ||
| You watch MSNBC at night, each advertising segment's got two or three bizarro ads from the big pharma. | ||
| The media is 100% captured over the Pentagon for the weapons and arms manufacturers. | ||
| They want the war to continue. | ||
| President Trump, what this briefing showed, once again, total obliteration, one and done. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| The 12-day war is over, and President Trump and the country are moving on. | ||
| There's not going to be any, oh, the search. | ||
| We're going to do the search now for the material because they had trucks outside. | ||
| We're going to do a search for material. | ||
| Maybe we need dev groups. | ||
| We need SEAL Team 6 and some EOD specials to go over and help the IDF, the Israeli commandos. | ||
| No, if you want to go do it, go do it yourself. | ||
| There's not regime change, not going to do it. | ||
| President Trump said it. | ||
| Total obliteration. | ||
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And the 12-day war is over. | |
| And, of course, the heads of Tel Aviv Levin and the Fox News. | ||
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And right there, you saw it, not on the war room, live. | |
| You saw Pete Hegsett, the Secretary of Defense, called out Fox News and said, you are the worst. | ||
| They are the cheerleaders of the forever wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, and now in Iran and Persia. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| All they want is forever wars. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Does it have to do with the Murdoch's relationships with the deep state or the globalists or the defense industry? | ||
| I'm just asking questions. | ||
| Short break. | ||
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America Tom! | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Battle. | ||
| There's explosive news coming out about the Big Beautiful Bill, about things are not in it. | ||
| There's so much going on. | ||
| President Trump's talking about deportations, mass deportations, amazing news coming out on that, because you know why? | ||
| The Commander-in-Chief in the President of the United States has done his duty. | ||
| And we're going to talk, I got Finnell and Pasova Shoe, talk about the real news is what happened in NATO yesterday. | ||
| That's the real news. | ||
| This news is the President of the United States' Commander-in-Chief called upon his uniformed services and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and CENTCOM to do basically a shattering and catastrophic attack on both the nuclear science part of it and the industrial process of the Persians. | ||
| It delivered a death blow, one and done. | ||
| He declared victory on the 12-day war and said, guess what? | ||
| We're out of there. | ||
| And so the Fox News and all these folks that, you know, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and now in Iran have to have a permanent war are in shock. | ||
| And Fox News got called out brutally on global television this morning, on something watched by tens of millions of people because they're so fascinated by what's going on and needed to hear the results. | ||
| It got called out as the worst by the Secretary of Defense, who used to work there. | ||
| I want to start with Captain Finnell. | ||
| Captain, in just in your professional assessment, what did you hear this morning and what are your thoughts on this? | ||
| Well, Steve, first of all, thanks for having me on. | ||
| What we've observed since this strike and all the reactions from people, it's a little bit typical of people second-guessing what the military does. | ||
| 34 years ago, I was a lieutenant and I was stationed in Hawaii and I was doing bomb damage assessment for Desert Storm through various other technical means that we have. | ||
| And 34 years ago, those results, as you remember, General Schwartzkopf wasn't very happy about the BDA that he was getting to conduct that war. | ||
| And in the last 34 years, there's been a tremendous amount of effort put into, you know, not just analyzing. | ||
| I'm a trained targeting officer, doing target analysis and finding the vulnerabilities. | ||
| As General Kane pointed out, that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DITRA, had a team of people examining these facilities for over a decade. | ||
| Not only were we examining the facilities and doing the targeting work, but we were also having in place the ability to do battle damage assessment. | ||
| And it takes in all forms of intelligence, human intelligence, imagery intelligence, signals intelligence, all kinds of intelligence that comes together to give that assessment. | ||
| And so far from everything that I've heard, not only from General Kane and from the Secretary of Defense, but from other retired officers and people that I talk to, there's a unanimity that the facility was, we were destroyed and destroyed significantly. | ||
| And the equipment that is in there is very sensitive equipment, so it doesn't take a lot of destruction, but they received that kind of destruction that will take them offline for a significant portion of time, much longer than what the press has been saying in the last few days, about just a couple of months. | ||
| It's going to be years, if not decades. | ||
| And so I think we have to be careful and cautious. | ||
| I think Sam Fattis is right that we don't want to be played by people feeding us information. | ||
| But we should also acknowledge, as the President has repeatedly stated, we should acknowledge the great work that's been done by the Defense Department in this operation. | ||
| And so I think to that extent, we should be confident that we've made a significant impact. | ||
| And you combine that with what the Israelis did in terms of taking out scientists and people that were specifically working on that. | ||
| And I think we have a significant impact on Iran's nuclear capabilities and their ability to produce or even to have somebody try to import nuclear programs from either Russia or China or North Korea. | ||
| So I think their setback and we should be confident in that. | ||
| We should continue to investigate, you know, do more analysis and look at this. | ||
| But the report that the Secretary or the chairman just laid out here in this last couple of hours is pretty definitive. | ||
| And so, I'm really also, I think we should call out that this leak of this interim preliminary report from DIA smacks of the kind of politicization that we've seen in the intelligence community over the last few years. | ||
| I have a personal opinion on this. | ||
| We saw this kind of leaking last year when we were told by leakers in the intelligence community that China's 350 ICBM silos in western and central China were non-operational. | ||
| And I had talked to a lot of folks in the IC, and they all said that that leak was cherry-picked out of the report and did not accurately reflect the IC's assessment. | ||
| So we have a problem right now. | ||
| We have a bloated bureaucracy, we have a bloated IC, and we need to start taking some actions to draw this down. | ||
| We don't need all of the people that we have in the IC, especially the management level, the people that don't actually do intelligence work, the people that are non-experts. | ||
| We have way too many managers and not enough analysts. | ||
| And so I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done there by the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Central Intelligence. | ||
| But the ODNI, Ms. Gabber, has her work cut out for her to take on how do we draw this IC down and make it more effective and less politicized. | ||
| Just real quickly, before I go to Psovic, and just give me like 30 seconds or a minute on this. | ||
| Your area of expertise, you did this under Schwarzkopf. | ||
| Talk to me about your area of expertise as kind of the thing we're actually talking about, correct? | ||
| Right. | ||
| I joined the Navy and I was a targeting officer. | ||
| I did many tours on aircraft carriers and I was a trained combat targeting officer down at Goodfellow Air Force Base. | ||
| So I worked in targeting for the first half of my career and I did battle damage assessment with my Air Force counterparts during Desert Storm. | ||
| And I'll just say it again. | ||
| I mean, it was a hard job in terms of getting it right. | ||
| And there were things that were made mistakes back then, but that was 34 years ago. | ||
| And I'm here to tell you that we have new systems, new technologies, and we have much more sophisticated ways of determining what's happened. | ||
| Not 100% accurate all the time, but you have a unanimity amongst the retired officers that have watched this, seen what's going on. | ||
| They know the measures of effectiveness for these munitions against these target types. | ||
| And when I see the chairman get up and talk about a DITRA team that spent over a decade analyzing these facilities, and then they know exactly what munitions were used, exactly what time they were delivered, and in what succession, with what spacing, and how those munitions performed through test and evaluation, observed test and evaluation of these munitions, then you can rest assured that when they say that it's destroyed, that they're not politicizing this. | ||
| This is kind of an empirical science when it comes to the effectiveness of munitions when they go into certain types of materials. | ||
| We do that. | ||
| And that's what battle damage assessment does. | ||
| It takes that into account and measures it. | ||
| Jack Pasobic, your thoughts and observations, sir? | ||
| Well, Steve, of course, it's always great to be here on the war room with Captain Finnell. | ||
| For longtime war room listeners, they will remember that I had the honor of serving under Captain Finnell. | ||
| It was attached to one of his PACOM delegations at one point for a Korea visit, working with our ROK forces over there while I was with the Office of Naval Intelligence. | ||
| Look, Steve, when it comes to this, we're looking at, they're trying to play games between battle damage assessment and the media assessment. | ||
| These are two completely separate things. | ||
| And you and I said earlier on the morning show that we hopped in and I said, I think what we need here is a battle damage assessment of the mainstream media's credibility after that press conference this morning with Secretary Hegseth and Chairman King. | ||
| Because it's clear what's going on here is that after they couldn't get their questions answered, Jen Griffin starts bringing up, what about the female pilots? | ||
| And you said we support our boys and you didn't say boys and girls. | ||
| Like, Jen, just cut it, all right? | ||
| Just cut it. | ||
| The current battle damage assessment of Jen Griffin completely and totally obliterated. | ||
| Absolutely obliterated. | ||
| And this at this point honestly becomes the president's new operation. | ||
| He's conducting information warfare at the same time that he conducted the third generation warfare. | ||
| So you've got third generation warfare, that's the strikes, going up against fourth generation information warfare. | ||
| That's what the mainstream media is doing. | ||
| Their counterattack has been all fourth generation warfare to try to throw up, oh, there's this assessment and the assessment says it was no good and we got to keep hunting these things. | ||
| We need boots on the ground. | ||
| We can see exactly what they're doing. | ||
| And the bad actors who have these influences from Raytheon, from Boeing, et cetera, et cetera, that want to push forward with more military combat operations there from the Air Force, but also from the great Navy, of course, that's what this is all about. | ||
| They're trying to push for more war. | ||
| No, and the President was pretty adamant. | ||
| That's why this, this was the second. | ||
| We did one on Sunday morning. | ||
| We did another on Thursday morning. | ||
| It's conclusive. | ||
| He added in the CIA and DNI reports. | ||
| I do think it might have been helpful, particularly if Tulsi's not going to the Hill today, bring her in and let her give her assessment because they're all, oh, well, we're the Intel guys. | ||
| Do that. | ||
| And just drop the mic and move on. | ||
| This is what the forever war crowd, and particularly Fox, because they're particularly obnoxious about this and so obvious. | ||
| They don't hide their punch. | ||
| The 12-day war is over. | ||
| President Trump put together a unique strike package of naval assets, Air Force assets. | ||
| They had, in combination with the Israelis, delivered a deathblow to whatever nuclear power program, nuclear weapons program they had, both the science and the industrial process. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| And you heard Captain Fenel, and you've heard other people in this for, I don't know, years and years and years, maybe decades. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| And the 12-day war is over. | ||
| And President Trump as commander-in-chief has moved on. | ||
| So all this about, oh, we got to put boots on the ground and find a thing because you're here. | ||
| They're always going to do Jack and Captain Finnell the upsell. | ||
| The urgency and the upsell constantly. | ||
| But they got called out today. | ||
| They got called out in a brutal fashion. | ||
| The quote from the Secretary of Defense is, Fox News is the worst. | ||
| I rest my case on Fox News. | ||
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Short commercial break, Birch Golder's our sponsor. | |
| Talk a little bit more about the Rio Reset when we return. | ||
| Certainty that all the highly enrich uranium was inside the Ford Mountain or some of it because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance. | ||
| Are you certain none of that highly enrich uranium was moved? | ||
| Of course we're watching every single aspect. | ||
| But Jennifer, you've been about the worst. | ||
| The one who misrepresents the most intentionally reported about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. | ||
| And in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. | ||
| So I take issue with that. | ||
| I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here. | ||
| And I appreciate that. | ||
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Absolutely. | |
| We're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making sure we have a sense of what was where. | ||
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The President lifted, and the administration lifted some of the sanctions on Iran to be able to ship crude oil to China yesterday as well. | |
| Why was that necessary? | ||
| And how does that perhaps create the beginning of a pathway towards this more prosperous Iran that you speak of? | ||
| Well, I think it was a signal from the president. | ||
| You know, he's got this uncanny ability to take the temperature of how people are feeling about certain things. | ||
| I think, you know, this was a signal to the Chinese that we want to work with you, that we're not interested in hurting your economy. | ||
| We're interested in working together with you in unison. | ||
| And hopefully that becomes a signal to the Iranians. | ||
| So I think it was a great decision. | ||
| And I'm not sure if it was unexpected or not, but I have come to expect President Trump doing these sorts of things. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Full stop. | ||
| You've heard on this show a million times, economic warfare, cut off the oil, make sort of the CCP. | ||
| You'll crush the CCP. | ||
| You'll crush the Moolahs. | ||
| I got it. | ||
| We're big boys and girls here. | ||
| We got Captain Fenel and Jack Pasovic. | ||
| The president doesn't agree with that. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| He's commander-in-chief. | ||
| And I kind of dig his style. | ||
| But for the forever war guys, this is a crushing, this is womp, womp. | ||
| This is a crushing blow to Tel Aviv Levin and the Fox guys. | ||
| Not only say the war is over, yeah, I'm going to let them get a little cash. | ||
| Keep the economy going, see what can happen. | ||
| I don't think he's going to do regime change because he just helped the regime get some cash money. | ||
| This is my point. | ||
| And let me say something here. | ||
| And this gets back to the amazing Washington Post story yesterday that Netanyahu's government has not refuted. | ||
| What they did is came out and goes, it's nonsense. | ||
| Because it's brutal. | ||
| It's brutal about the Mossad. | ||
| It's brutal about what Netanyahu's been doing with various American governments for a long time. | ||
| The whole nuclear power thing, and President Trump obliterated it, as Captain Finnell said, and so many experts said, it's one and done. | ||
| This thing's back years, if not decades. | ||
| I think it's totally over. | ||
| And here's why. | ||
| Jack Basovic, I actually believe the more you actually drill into this, I'm so glad President Trump has taken it off the table by saying the 12-day war, I did it, I eradicated it. | ||
| The 12-day war is over. | ||
| We can stop talking about it, and we're moving on. | ||
| And by the way, we're going to let him sell a little oil to the Chinese, get some cash. | ||
| The nuclear weapons entire program was a MacGuffin. | ||
| Now, you say, well, Steve, what's a MacGuffin? | ||
| A MacGuffin's a plot device, particularly in the classic age of Hollywood, particularly in the 30s. | ||
| The MacGuffin is a plot device that drives the narrative forward in the story, but has no real meaning in reality. | ||
| Now what I mean by that, a couple of classic examples is the Maltese Falcon, the Falcon itself. | ||
| And let's take Casablanca, the papers, the signed papers, because obviously if the Germans didn't want you to go, it didn't go. | ||
| So it had no meaning in reality, but in the movie, it drives all the action. | ||
| That's a MacGuffin. | ||
| A MacGuffin is the Maltese Falcon. | ||
| The entire nuclear weapons thing, because you're seeing it right now. | ||
| We destroyed it in one turn. | ||
| And not just that, the Mossad, and if you go to Citizens Free Press, Citizen Kane's got great links to all these stories. | ||
| The Mossad put out one of the most detailed stories of Mossad operations they've ever put out about how they so infiltrated every aspect of Iran to kill these nuclear scientists everywhere. | ||
| The story is kind of a self-owned. | ||
| This is the head of Mossad told it because you know what's missing in the story? | ||
| A smoking gun. | ||
| Like, where is the exact thing that you said had to be so urgent that we had to bomb two Thursdays ago? | ||
| You know why? | ||
| It's a MacGuffin. | ||
| Jack Basovic, am I right or wrong on that, sir? | ||
| Lee, Steve, if I have my Hollywood history correct, isn't that the end of the Maltese Falcon when they go and actually check the statue, they chip off the black paint, and then underneath it's just, it's not, it's fake. | ||
| There's no jewels, right, isn't it? | ||
| So Humphrey Bogart, what is it really? | ||
| And he says, the stuff that dreams are made of, right? | ||
| That's the famous line. | ||
| But I think the real Falcon at the end of the movie is actually fake. | ||
| So I don't know if that helps or hurts your feelings. | ||
| No, my point is they had aspects of this, but were they prepared to get a weapon and a bomb immediately? | ||
| The answer is the Mossad put out details of the story, no smoking gun. | ||
| The Washington Post put out a brutal story on Netanyahu's efforts to manipulate the United States into this. | ||
| No smoking gun. | ||
| The reason Tulsi Gabbard's not going up to the hill today is not about the battle damage assessment. | ||
| It's because Ratcliffe and the Mossad are going to make their presentation on whatever it is, and some declassified version of that should be brought forward. | ||
| But this is the power of President Trump. | ||
| What he did, he shut it all down. | ||
| He set up the most sophisticated, complicated military action since the Second World War. | ||
| I actually think maybe since D-Day, or at least maybe the bombing of Tokyo and the bombing of Japan at the end of the war. | ||
| He did this to shut down the conversation and say, hey, guess what? | ||
| The 12-day war is over. | ||
| I don't want to hear any more about it, and we're moving on. | ||
| Is Pasobic, has he done that? | ||
| Because you got Witkoff. | ||
| And I know nothing could blow up Finel, Bannon, or Pasobik's heads more than we're letting them sell oil to the Chinese Communist Party, but he's got a bigger strategic vision here. | ||
| Particularly, he doesn't want, it appears he's not actually supporting regime change. | ||
| He's going in the opposite direction because he's letting them get a little cash. | ||
| Pasovic, your thoughts on that? | ||
| Well, Steve, that's right. | ||
| And China just completed, the People's Liberation Army Navy just completed this massive, first time they ever did this, two carrier deployment. | ||
| So a dual deployment to the South China Sea. | ||
| This is the largest deployment of carriers that we've ever seen from China. | ||
| And as their Navy pushes out further and further into, we used to say they were a brownwater Navy. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| They're showing us that their Navy is more and more blue water. | ||
| Brownwater, meaning it's closer to the littorals, it's shallower depth, shallow depth like the South China Sea. | ||
| Now they're pushing out beyond what? | ||
| The first island chain. | ||
| They got the second island chain in their sites now. | ||
| They're moving, and that means further and further across the Pacific. | ||
| That's what those island chains are. | ||
| We'll go through the maps later on Human Events Daily to get people an understanding of what we mean from the op-intel perspective of all this. | ||
| But at the end of the day, as China needs to push out more, they want their Navy to be able to backstop the Belt and Road Initiative, the One Belt, One Road. | ||
| They need their Navy to be able to protect more and more of their shipping. | ||
| And what do you need for all that? | ||
| You need cheap oil. | ||
| So they're already getting one source from the Russians, and then they need another source from the Iranians. | ||
| This is their cheapest producer, and they are the number one customer by far of the Iranians. | ||
| So with President Trump putting that out, it seems to me that what he's doing with the Iranians, it's a carrot and stick approach. | ||
| So on one hand, it's, hey, you guys are building nukes. | ||
| Boom, you get the bunker busters. | ||
| You get those penetrators dropped from the B2s. | ||
| But on the other hand, when you're moving in the right direction, okay, you're doing ceasefire. | ||
| You're not restarting the nuclear program. | ||
| You've denuclearized. | ||
| Now you get the carrot of the oil sales to China. | ||
| So he knows exactly where the pressure points are. | ||
| He knows exactly where the levers are with Iran. | ||
| And I think he's playing them right into a spot where he wants everyone. | ||
| This is absolutely amazing. | ||
| Captain Finnell, we didn't have time to play the clip, but when they talked about General Raisin Kane actually started with the attacks on Qatar, and he talked about the Patriot batteries. | ||
| And he said, hey, we pulled this from Korea. | ||
| We pulled it from the Pacific. | ||
| As you know, we've been huge advocates of this is the problem with these Mideast wars. | ||
| They're taking so many assets. | ||
| We had the Los Angeles class. | ||
| We had the submarines shooting the Tomahawk missiles. | ||
| We have way too many assets around this situation. | ||
| We got to stand down as the president wants to do and make the main thing the main thing. | ||
| Put in perspective, the NATO, what happened in NATO, also with what Jack just talked about, we got to pivot back outside the gravitational force of CENTCOM, and we got to pivot back to what is the most important thing. | ||
| That's Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party, sir. | ||
| Yeah, this is the thrust of the last quarter century. | ||
| It's been this essentially control of the Pentagon and our strategic outlook as a nation in terms of national defense and security and warfighting has been focused on the CENTCOM area of responsibility, going back to Desert Storm, 1990-91, Desert Shield, Desert Storm. | ||
| So we're in a 35-year period of where we had some strategic interests in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we can debate all that. | ||
| But after time, after a quarter of a century of watching the People's Republic of China modernize their military across all fronts, it's become clear that we have not altered the Defense Department's focus on how we should address the rise of the PRC and the PLA, the People's Liberation Army. | ||
| And so when we have things like this, we do siphon off resources from the Indo-Pacific theater, and it puts that stability at risk. | ||
| We've largely had peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific for 80 years, vice the Korean War, which is still an armistice, and the Vietnam War. | ||
| But for the most part, it's been very passive and calm there. | ||
| And that's largely because of the presence of the U.S. military and the U.S. Navy and the 7th Fleet. | ||
| But we've been sucking those off. | ||
| In the last year, we've sent four carriers from the Pacific out to the Gulf at various times to cover down on these emerging situations that have been like this for 25 years. | ||
| And so we need to stop and ask ourselves, are we preparing the nation for the future war that will come with the People's Republic of China who's declared it against us, the people's war that they declared against us and are in fact pursuing it. | ||
| They want to pursue it non-kinetically, but they've also prepared themselves kinetically. | ||
| And so we're in a position right now where the president has taken action, very strategic action that hasn't been done since 1979. | ||
| No president has done and attacked Iran like this. | ||
| And so we have taken that action, and for the most part, it appears that Iran is going to crawl into their cave and wait things and let things percolate. | ||
| And so the question is, what now can we do to change the atmosphere? | ||
| We just saw, as you mentioned, in the NATO summit, remember, in Trump's first administration, they scoffed and ridiculed him here in Europe and said, how dare you ask people to pay these nations to pay their obligation of 2% that they had previously committed to? | ||
| We just got them yesterday to all sign on and say 5%, except for Spain. | ||
| So that's a dramatic, dramatic event that happened yesterday. | ||
| And it's not getting the press that it deserves. | ||
| And what that does, it means trillions of dollars from European governments are going to go into rebuilding the NATO structure, which will then allow the American military to get back to, or not get back to, but get to focusing on the main thing, which is dealing with the People's Republic of China. | ||
| And Jack mentioned the two carriers that were operating. | ||
| Not only did they operate inside the first island chain, but the Oliaoning operated outside the second island chain for the first time ever. | ||
| And we can talk about that if you want. | ||
| But there's a lot there that happened, and it's a growing trend line that's very, very concerning. | ||
| And our Defense Department continues to prioritize spending on the Army, not the Navy. | ||
| On CENCOM, hang on for one second. | ||
| We're going to come back. | ||
| Jack's going to wrap up. | ||
| He's got so much going on and getting ready for human events daily. | ||
| Jack's going to wrap up. | ||
| I'm going to keep Captain Finnell. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| Pesovic, Captain Finnell. | ||
|
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The geostrategic initiatives of the United States. | |
| Next. | ||
|
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. | |
| Two thing. | ||
| Birch Gold, the end of the dollar empire. | ||
| Make sure you slash Bannon. | ||
| Go to birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| End of the dollar empire. | ||
| We're sending the entire Birch team down. | ||
| And maybe some other folks, I don't know. | ||
| Rumor has it. | ||
| Eric Bowling, Jack Pesovic, who knows is going to go. | ||
| The Rio reset. | ||
| They're trying to get off the dollar. | ||
| They're trying to use the dollar now, turn it against us economically. | ||
| You want to be part of that. | ||
| But most importantly, find out why gold has been a hedge. | ||
| You need to learn this. | ||
| It's not the price of gold. | ||
| It's the process of how it gets there. | ||
| This is how you can understand how gold has risen so much in the last couple of years. | ||
| Birch gold. | ||
| Also, take your phone app. | ||
| Bannon. | ||
| Text Bannon at 989898. | ||
| Get the ultimate guide to investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. | ||
| And they've got all the methodologies, the IRAs, the 401ks, all of it. | ||
| So you can get the details. | ||
| Plus, you can talk to Philip Patrick and the team. | ||
| And since 80% or 90% of your net worth is tied up in your home, just remember that. | ||
| That one piece of paper in this kind of rudimentary system of titles throughout the country. | ||
| You need the Home Title Lock $1 million triple lock protection. | ||
| What is triple lock? | ||
| 24-hour coverage, alerts at any time that anybody's messing with that title. | ||
| And if all else fails, if they let you down, a $1 million restoration project. | ||
| HometitalLock.com. | ||
| Promo code Steve. | ||
| Talk to Natalie Dominguez and the team and do it today. | ||
| Do not let anybody mess or take out a second mortgage on your home because then you will not be able to get to the ramparts and fight for MAGA and for President Trump. | ||
| By the way, all kind of just amazing news coming out of the parliamentarian in the Senate. | ||
| I think we're going to have to kind of refocus and recalibrate the big, beautiful bill. | ||
| It looks like this morning they pulled the rug on a couple of things. | ||
| We'll get to that in the second hour. | ||
| Jack Pasovic, any closing thoughts or observations on President Trump, total obliteration. | ||
| He's given the second briefing. | ||
| He said this was good. | ||
| Move on. | ||
| Talked about letting the Moolahs have some cash, whatever. | ||
| They're dealing with them. | ||
| I think they're going to meet with a delegation of them. | ||
| Bad news for Tel Aviv, Levin, and the crowd. | ||
| There ain't going to be no war in Persia right now. | ||
| Your thoughts, sir? | ||
| Well, Steve, I think President Trump is very clear on this, that this has been put to bed. | ||
| The threat was the threat. | ||
| The threat has now been eliminated, has been neutralized, obliterated. | ||
| Whatever one of the adjective of the thesaurus of words that you want to go through, we can walk down the line. | ||
| But President Trump is clearly sending the message. | ||
| I don't know how many more briefings these guys need before they realize that the threat has been eliminated. | ||
| It is over. | ||
| We're not doing the regime change upsell. | ||
| President Trump has rejected the regime change upsell. | ||
| He is out the door and he is not coming back. | ||
| All right. | ||
| You guys could not close the upsell. | ||
| You couldn't close the upsell. | ||
| And it's as simple as that. | ||
| We knew what you were doing when you were doing it. | ||
| Now you're sending Jen Griffin in there. | ||
| And what does she do? | ||
| Boom. | ||
| She gets hit with a bunker buster right there. | ||
| We need a battle damage assessment on Jen Griffin. | ||
| Meanwhile, meanwhile, right, the rest of this, the rest of this is going in. | ||
| And while we're all sucked down, and China wants us to be bogged down, and President Trump, by the way, talking about Iran selling the oil to China, is he's saying, I know what you're doing. | ||
| I know the connection here. | ||
| He understands the way this all flows. | ||
| He understands the way power flows. | ||
| And it's something that he just understands intrinsically. | ||
| It is a natural ability that he has, and he's had it his entire life. | ||
| And look at this. | ||
| When you put your Navy officer hat on, you put your China hat on, June 2025. | ||
| This was the first time that we've seen a Chinese aircraft carrier cross the second island chain, past Guam, past Iwo Jima, headed towards where the next goal, the next goalpost, the next milestone for them will be Hawaii, operations towards Hawaii. | ||
| This is how far out the Chinese aircraft carrier program, which by the way, by the way, I love this because I could thread the needle on all this. | ||
| You got a Chinese aircraft carrier that's powered by Iranian, powered by Iranian oil, and it was built where? | ||
| It was built in Ukraine. | ||
| So it was built in Ukraine, powered by Iranian oil. | ||
| Now it's fueling the Chinese military ambitions across the Pacific. | ||
| It just, it threads the entire thing all the way through and explains how it explains really the hodgepodge and dog's breakfast of threats to our geopolitical world that President Trump is navigating as commander-in-chief, our United States through to understand, look, I got stuff, I've got incoming all over the place. | ||
| I'm going to handle the biggest stuff and then I'm going to push it out to the regional allies. | ||
| And if you want that reset with Israel, it's look, Israel, you got to manage this now because this is on your portfolio. | ||
| This is on your department, and I'm going to move off to the next thing. | ||
| There's going to be a reset. | ||
| I mean, Tel Aviv, Levin, and these guys can throw the toys out of the param. | ||
| They can scream and yell. | ||
| They can call people names. | ||
| No, but we don't care. | ||
| We're about results. | ||
| And the United States is going to a hemispheric defense that will have expeditionary forces, and the hemispheric defense goes out to the island chains. | ||
| We'll explain this. | ||
| You also, in explaining this, you understand the strategic genius of the people that built this country. | ||
| You'll understand Manifest Destiny. | ||
| You'll understand why they saw the Pacific as this great physical barrier. | ||
| You'll understand why they were interested in the Philippines and these places in the 19th century. | ||
| You'll also understand in the Pacific War why it was so central, the island hopping and the taking back of what looks like these small atolls in these islands. | ||
| It all fits into a grand strategic structure for the defense of this country. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| You're not in the Middle East where you don't need to be in these endless wars. | ||
| And that's what the Israel First Lobby has to understand. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| Okay, it's over. | ||
| You're a protectorate. | ||
| We understand that. | ||
| People love Israel, support Israel, and want to see Israel not just survive, but thrive. | ||
| The people that continue to push to try to get the United States entangled, entangled into these forever wars in the Middle East are hurting Israel and hurting the Jewish people. | ||
| Jack Bosobic, where do people go for Human Events Daily in your social media where you're on fire all the time, sir? | ||
| Steve, we're going to be up at Human Events Daily. | ||
| We're going to be doing a whole briefing on this, maps and all. | ||
| And who knows, Steve, maybe we will be playing some volleyball over on the U.S. Navy supporting show later today. | ||
| Wow. | ||
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Wow. | |
| Jack, thank you. | ||
| A real shot taken by General Raisin Kane today. | ||
| A top gun naval aviators, my kid brothers, Navy pilot. | ||
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Hey, Steve, his head blew up. | |
| What do they call roughing it in the Air Force? | ||
| When the room service's not built first? | ||
| No room service. | ||
| Raisin Kane had that postman's, had the mailman's uniform on this morning. | ||
| Kaboom. | ||
| Oof. | ||
| Jack Pasovic, thank you. | ||
| Captain Finnell's going to stick around. | ||
| Carrie Lake. | ||
| Big, big decision at the Supreme Court this morning on Planned Parenthood. | ||
| So much going on. |
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