July 14, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
57:52
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the final screen of a dying mag. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
| Because we're going to be the evil ones. | ||
| You're going to 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 it, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
| 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. | ||
|
unidentified
|
War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Matt. | ||
| Monday, 14 July, Yervalore, 2025. | ||
| War and the rumor of wars are throughout the Imperial Capitol. | ||
| The Secretary General of NATO is in Washington, and he will be meeting this morning, supposedly, with the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief. | ||
| And I think that thing's been bumped back at least an hour. | ||
| Tentatively, it was scheduled, I think, to come and start, at least show up at 10, maybe start 11. | ||
| So we're going to figure all this out. | ||
| We've got a crew there. | ||
| If anything happens live, we'll jump right into it. | ||
| Ben Harnwell. | ||
| Oh, excuse me, I got Dan calling. | ||
| Dan, make us smart. | ||
| You're going to punch out, but make us smart on what we should be thinking about this NATO meeting with the president. | ||
| Contextualize it for us and what do you see coming out of it? | ||
| So details really matter here. | ||
| And I think we need to be very hesitant about initial reports about what is agreed to. | ||
| So to get specific is, are the Europeans just paying for arms we already agreed to deliver? | ||
| Something I mentioned earlier. | ||
| The second thing is, are the Europeans going to send patriots from their stocks to Ukraine, which they've done a little bit, but they've been hesitant to give more because they want to make Uncle Sam Uncle Sucker and get us to send their stuff? | ||
| Is President Trump going to be able to get them to send their stuff first and then we backfill it for the normal production process? | ||
| Or are we going to send our stuff to the Europeans immediately to backfill their stocks? | ||
| And that creates readiness issues across the board. | ||
| And the final thing I would just say is, is we got to more long term, is this increased defense spending in Europe actually going to happen? | ||
| There is a very, very long history of people like the Germans, the French, the British making these promises. | ||
| And then when they see the United States doubling down in Europe, they eventually don't follow through. | ||
| So I think this is going to be a key thing. | ||
| Is this additional defense spending actually going to lead to not just burden sharing, but burden shifting in the long term? | ||
| And that's what we need to achieve. | ||
| And I will just say in closing here is that to incentivize that burden shift, we have to pull back. | ||
| Because if we don't, then the Europeans aren't going to feel like that they actually have to follow through. | ||
| So that's essential is that President Trump needs to make sure these promises are actually kept. | ||
| But really, if you look at history, I agree. | ||
| Dan, the one way he's doing that, I think he's saying you're paying for these. | ||
| We're not giving to Ukrainian. | ||
| You are going to be the middleman. | ||
| You're going to buy the weapons. | ||
| So this is going to go on your account. | ||
| You're talking about 5%. | ||
| I agree with you. | ||
| And I think President Trump agrees with you. | ||
| He understands their wily and Ruta is a shifty guy, or a slick guy, I should say, not shifty, a slick guy. | ||
| And that's why it's even on the offensive weapons, they're buying them and they're giving them to Ukraine, correct? | ||
| That's currently the deal that at least our limited knowledge is what's on the table. | ||
| Yes, that's what President Trump has said. | ||
| That has been discussed in the past. | ||
| It's just the question, the most important detail, I think, is how are the Europeans going to backfill their stocks and how we're going to do that? | ||
| Is it going to be through the regular production process, which could take years to backfill their stocks? | ||
| Or are we going to send them something from our own stocks right away? | ||
| And that latter scenario, I think, is where you run into trouble because you make the readiness issues you've talked about a lot worse, specifically in the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| No, against the CCP, which is keep the main thing the main thing is Captain Finnell always reminds me. | ||
| It's like a Zen master. | ||
| Every day he's hit me with a stick if I lose my concentration and focus. | ||
| What you're supposed to do. | ||
| Berkowitz and these other guys, they're great because the CCP is the threat. | ||
| That's why we can't get sucked into this side event, in this site event. | ||
| Caldwell, where do people get you, particularly on social media? | ||
| I'm on X at Dan D. Caldwell. | ||
| That's the best place to find my work. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Appreciate you. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| Take out your phone. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Take out your phone and text Bannon B-A-N-N-O-N at 989898. | ||
| Get the free guide, which is also the ultimate guide to investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. | ||
| I would only add to that, this brochure is fantastic. | ||
| I would just add to that, the increased turbulence of a major conflict on the Eurasian landmass, which looks like it's upon us. | ||
| It's already started. | ||
| It's two years, almost three years old, right? | ||
| Or two and a half years old. | ||
| And it's not winding down. | ||
| I would argue it may be winding up. | ||
| We're going to go to the White House as soon as something happens. | ||
| John Solomon up yet? | ||
| I'm looking at my producer. | ||
| We're trying to get John Solomon up because this is not wag the dog. | ||
| Trust me. | ||
| President Trump, this is deeper than that. | ||
| So it's not a wag the dog moment. | ||
| And we are going to discuss what's going on in the deep state because the deep state's hands, the dark hand of the deep state, is behind these decisions, folks. | ||
| Ben Harnwell, the New York Times kind of exposes this, and it's a brilliant piece. | ||
| Also, Ben, I think you got some other comments in Ukraine. | ||
| So before we shift off Ukraine, give me your closing thoughts from your perch in the internal city. | ||
| Yeah, look, so the actual spin on this pre-announced deal, and I flagged that up, that it was this kind of announcement one would expect to come out in the joint statement after the meeting between POTUS and the NATO Secretary-General Mark Ruta. | ||
| It's been pre-announced. | ||
| Now, we can all have interpretations as to why that is. | ||
| But it seemed to me, Steve, that President Trump was very much wanting to take ownership of this. | ||
| And he didn't want it to make it look, he didn't want it to appear like NATO had bounced him into this. | ||
| He wanted to be seen leading this initiative. | ||
| But the interesting thing in this article, in the word aggressive there in that headline, you can see actually comes from Lindsey Graham, which should tell you all you need to know approvingly comes from Lindsey Graham. | ||
| But the interesting thing about that article is that it's not just about the Patriot missiles, which has been announced last week, well, several times over the last few weeks, but most lately last week, as a defensive measure. | ||
| Also in this package, President Trump is offering, according to Axios, offensive weapons. | ||
| And I say that, I flag that up. | ||
| I know that you hit that earlier with Dan on the show. | ||
| I flag that up because a lot of the feedback I had on Geta was saying, Hanwell, don't be a panicker and you're panicking over nothing. | ||
| President Trump is just maneuvering here to give Zelensky some sort of greater defensive capability. | ||
| This would definitely, you know, for those who are still living that narrative, this would very much go beyond that. | ||
| Look, see, can I pivot now to this article that came out, I think, on Saturday? | ||
| I put it out on Ghetto on Saturday from the New York Times, how Netanyahu prolonged the war. | ||
| And just Ben. | ||
| Ben. | ||
| Ben, just hang on for one second. | ||
| Just put a pin up. | ||
| We're going to get right to that. | ||
| But I got John Solomon up. | ||
| So, John, you broke on our show on Friday the extended version. | ||
| This situation about the FBI looking at going after the deep state on a host of things, going back to the beginning, a crossfire hurricane before Trump was president, going into the nullification project and the Russia hoax, including the impeachment and the perfect phone call, doing maybe potentially the 2020 election, the J6, a whole raft of things. | ||
| You've got additional reporting. | ||
| Can you get us up to speed on this? | ||
| And are we close? | ||
| How much effort did the FBI have to put into this investigation before we actually announce a special counsel, sir? | ||
| Yeah, listen, I think there's enough evidence already there that they could name a special counsel as early this week. | ||
| It's really just up to Pam Bondi. | ||
| This is an opportunity for her to change the subject from Epstein to something that is perhaps more consequential to the American people long term. | ||
| And they can clean up Epstein with someone else, perhaps. | ||
| Secondly, their evidence is all laying out in public view except for two highly classified pieces of intelligence. | ||
| One is in the Inspector General report on Hillary Clinton's email that reveals that the United States intelligence community got new evidence of possible criminality in the Hillary Clinton email scandal, but did not pursue it just before James Comey cleared her of all criminal wrongdoing. | ||
| That has stayed secret for eight years. | ||
| Chuck Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, has been relentlessly pursuing it. | ||
| He has President Trump's ear. | ||
| I think that's going to get declassified in the next few days. | ||
| That will show that there was reason to pursue Hillary Clinton, not clear her, and not pursue Donald Trump. | ||
| They should have not ever investigated him for Russia collusion. | ||
| The second piece of classified evidence that could be released is referred to by John Durham as the Clinton Plan Intelligence. | ||
| It's an intercept five days before the FBI opened up on Crossfire Hurricane that Hillary Clinton was about to concoct a Russian scandal and try to pretend that Vladimir Putin was helping Donald Trump win the election. | ||
| That means that the CIA, the FBI, and President Obama himself personally was aware that what Hillary Clinton was doing was a ruse, a political, dirty trick. | ||
| And still, James Comey's FBI opened up on the information. | ||
| If those two pieces of evidence get declassified so grand jurors can see it, Pam Bondi names a special prosecutor, we could be rolling by the end of this week. | ||
| End of this week. | ||
| Part of this, because you had Durham, you had all this, you reported extensively. | ||
| Part of this is not going to be just what they tried to do to President Trump, but isn't a big part of this also going to be the cover-up? | ||
| Because you had Durham, you had people, but it looks like obviously now information was specifically buried. | ||
| Either people lied, perjured themselves, or buried information. | ||
| Because this stuff should have come out. | ||
| I mean, this is the whole purpose of Durham and these other things. | ||
| This should have come out, and even these House investigations, this should have come out years ago, correct? | ||
| Yeah, listen, look at the China interference in the 2020 election. | ||
| That allegation, that was buried until just a few weeks ago. | ||
| Remember, Cash Patel said when he got in there, he found this room full of documents that were never released to Congress, mostly on Russia gate. | ||
| That is a whole new tranche. | ||
| So the cover-up, as it often is, can be a big part of the scandal, and it could be a part of the ongoing conspiracy as the FBI looks at this. | ||
| They're looking at it as one grand conspiracy that a constant pattern of clearing Democrats of criminal wrongdoing in the face of criminal wrongs. | ||
| Hey, John, Mr. Biden. | ||
| John, we got to go to the live shot. | ||
| Let's go and cut. | ||
| Mark is the head of NATO, Mark Ruta, Secretary General of NATO. | ||
| Highly respected by everybody that knows him, but in particular the European countries. | ||
| They have great reliance on him. | ||
| And he's done a fantastic job. | ||
| And we had a tremendous meeting, I guess it's about a month now, a month ago. | ||
| And I think Mark will tell you that it was really perhaps more important the date of November 5th. | ||
| That was the election day. | ||
| Maybe that was the most important, because we've made tremendous progress together. | ||
| And one of the reasons that you're here today is to hear that we are very unhappy, I am, with Russia. | ||
| But we'll discuss that maybe a different day. | ||
| But we're very, very unhappy with them, and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100%. | ||
| You'd call them secondary tariffs, you know what that means. | ||
| But today we're going to talk about something else. | ||
| And as you know, we've spent $350 billion approximately on this war with Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| And we'd like to see it end. | ||
| It wasn't my war. | ||
| It was Biden's war. | ||
| It's not my war. | ||
| I'm trying to get you out of it. | ||
| And we want to see it end. | ||
| And I'm disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn't seem to get there. | ||
| So based on that, we're going to be doing secondary tariffs. | ||
| If we don't have a deal in 50 days, it's very simple. | ||
| And they'll be at 100%. | ||
| And that's the way it is. | ||
| That can be more simple. | ||
| That's just the way it is. | ||
| I hope we don't have to do it. | ||
| But regardless, we are going to be, we make the greatest military equipment in the world, whether it's missiles. | ||
| You saw that recently in Iran, the way those planes flew in. | ||
| They had every single 14 bombs at every target. | ||
| And you had the helicopters shoot a total of 30 bombs, 30 missiles. | ||
| And they hit every single, Marco, is that right? | ||
| Every single piece? | ||
| Every single target. | ||
| And it was, I guess on a scale of zero to 10, they say it was about a 15. | ||
| That's how successful it was. | ||
| That's how lethal it was, a word they like to use nowadays. | ||
| But it was an amazing, well-organized attack that people in this country wanted to do for 24 years. | ||
| You know, when we had the pilots in last week, they were saying, sir, we've been practicing this for 24 years, meaning people, not them, but other people that are a little older now, but they too. | ||
| And you were the one that let us do it. | ||
| But we've been practicing it three to four times a year for 22, 24 years, because they always knew that it stopped Iran from doing what they were doing, which is trying to come up with a nuclear weapon, a nuclear bomb. | ||
| And we did it very successfully. | ||
| And we make the best equipment, the best missiles, the best of everything. | ||
| The European nations know that. | ||
| And we've made a deal today, and I'm going to have Mark speak about it, but we've made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons and they're going to be paying for them. | ||
| The United States will not be having any payment made. | ||
| We're not buying it, but we will manufacture it and they're going to be paying for it. | ||
| Our last meeting of a month ago was very successful in that they agreed to 5%, which is more than a trillion dollars a year, so they have a lot of money. | ||
| And these are wealthy nations. | ||
| They have a lot of money and they want to do it. | ||
| They feel very strongly about it. | ||
| And we feel strongly about it too. | ||
| But we're in for a lot of money and we just, we don't want to do it anymore. | ||
| And we can. | ||
| But we make the best and we're going to be sending the best to NATO and in some cases to maybe at Mark's suggestion if we go to Germany where they're going to send early-on missiles and they'll be replaced and NATO is going to take care of it. | ||
| It's going to be coordinated by NATO and they're going to work very much with Matt Whitaker who's right here as a great ambassador and Matt's going to be coordinating. | ||
| You better do a good job, Matt. | ||
|
unidentified
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I will. | |
| But Matt's going to coordinate. | ||
| He's a very talented guy. | ||
| He's going to coordinate everything. | ||
| So in a nutshell, we're going to make top-of-the-line weapons and they'll be sent to NATO. | ||
| NATO may choose to have certain of them sent to other countries where we can get a little additional speed, where the country will release something and it'll be mostly in the form of a replacement. | ||
| And I'd like to have Mark, and again, just a highly respected, pretty young guy, pretty young guy, for having had the career that he's had. | ||
| He had an amazing career before going to NATO. | ||
| So we spent a lot of time together over the last couple of months. | ||
| And if you could say a few words. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| No, Mr. President, dear Donald, this is really big. | ||
| This is really big. | ||
| You called me on Thursday that you have taken a decision. | ||
| And the decision is that you want Ukraine what it needs to have to maintain, to be able to defend itself against Russia, but you want Europeans to pay for it, which is totally logical. | ||
| And this is building on the tremendous success of the NATO summit, the 5%, but also the decision to keep Ukraine strong and the decision to increase our defense industrial production. | ||
| So based on that, that was Europe stepping up. | ||
| This is again Europeans stepping up. | ||
| So I've been in contact with many countries, I can tell you that at this moment, Germany, massively, but also Finland and Denmark and Sweden and Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, they all want to be part of this. | ||
| And this is only the first wave. | ||
| There will be more. | ||
| So what we will do is work through the NATO systems to make sure that we know what Ukrainians need so that we can make packages. | ||
| Of course, in a way, we discussed it this morning, as Pete Heck said, at the Pentagon, in a way that, of course, the US will put on its stockpiles necessary to defend this country. | ||
| That's absolutely clear. | ||
| But it will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defense, but also missiles, ammunition, etc. | ||
| So if I was Vladimir Putin today and hear you speaking about what you were planning to do in 50 days and this announcement, I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously than I was doing at the moment, if I was Vladimir Putin. | ||
| But when I'm Ukraine, I think this is really great news for them. | ||
| So I really want to thank you for that. | ||
| And it means Europe is paying for it. | ||
| And again, I mentioned all these countries, we will deal with that. | ||
| And exactly as you said, it might also mean that countries will move equipment fast into Ukraine and then the US later backfilling it because speech is of the essence here. | ||
| So really, thank you. | ||
| This is important. | ||
| You did a great job. | ||
| That's a really great job. | ||
| We've been very successful in settling wars. | ||
| You have India, Pakistan. | ||
| You have Rwanda and the Congo. | ||
| That was going on for 30 years. | ||
| India, by the way, and Pakistan would have been a nuclear war within another week, the way that was going. | ||
| That was going very badly. | ||
| We did that through trade. | ||
| I said, we're not going to talk to you about trade unless you get this thing settled. | ||
| And they did. | ||
| And they were both great, great leaders. | ||
| And they were great. | ||
| But Rwanda and the Congo, that was going on for 30 years. | ||
| And at least 7 million people killed and killed with a lot of pretty rough weapons like machetes, heads chopped off, going on for many years. | ||
| You couldn't even get near the countries. | ||
| Nobody wanted to get near it. | ||
| It's so frightening. | ||
| And we got that one solved. | ||
| Serbia, Kosovo, got that solved. | ||
| That was going to be one that was going to happen. | ||
| And again, that was something I use. | ||
| I use TRAIP for a lot of things, but it's great for settling wars. | ||
| That was really very important. | ||
| We're working, Marco is working very hard with everybody here on the Strip, the Gaza Strip. | ||
| I call it the Gaza Strip, one of the worst real estate deals ever made. | ||
| They gave up the Ocean Front property. | ||
| One of the worst deals ever made. | ||
| But it was supposed to bring peace, and it didn't bring peace, it brought the opposite. | ||
| But we're doing pretty well on Gaza. | ||
| Steve Woodcoff is here, and I think we could have something fairly soon to talk about. | ||
| And we solved other one, one that we just seem to have, Armenia and Azer, Bajan. | ||
| It looks like that's going to come to a conclusion, successful conclusion. | ||
| We worked on Egypt with a next-door neighbor who is a good neighbor. | ||
| They're friends of mine, but they happened to build a dam which closed up water going into a thing called the Nile. | ||
| I think if I'm Egypt, I want to have water in the Nile. | ||
| And we're working on that one. | ||
| It's a problem, but it's going to get solved. | ||
| They built one of the biggest dams in the world, a little bit outside of Egypt. | ||
| You know about that? | ||
| You've been hearing about that one. | ||
| I think the United States funded the dam. | ||
| I don't know why they didn't solve the problem before they built the dam. | ||
| But it's nice when the Nile River has water. | ||
| It's a very important source of income and life. | ||
| It's the life of Egypt. | ||
| And to take that away is pretty incredible. | ||
| But we think we're going to have that solved very quickly. | ||
| So we do good. | ||
| The only one we haven't been able to get to yet is Russia. | ||
| And I'm not happy. | ||
| And I will tell you that Ukraine wants to do something. | ||
| Again, it's a war that should have never started. | ||
| If I were president, it never would have happened. | ||
| I used to speak to President Putin about it a lot. | ||
| It was the apple of his eye. | ||
| But once I saw what was going on, I said, you know, they're going to have a war here. | ||
| I was outside. | ||
| Election was rigged. | ||
| I was outside looking in. | ||
| And I said, you know, that thing's going to be a war. | ||
| Couldn't believe it. | ||
| Because what Biden said was the exact opposite of what should have been said. | ||
| And it started, and it's a real mess. | ||
| We're losing, I guess they're losing 5,000 or 6,000 people. | ||
| There's actually now more. | ||
| I used to, I was saying 5,000. | ||
| There's actually more now. | ||
| Mostly soldiers, but a lot of people in cities and towns that are getting blown up too. | ||
| It's a horrible war. | ||
| And it should be stopped. | ||
| And so if it's not done, if we don't have an agreement in 50 days, that's what we're doing. | ||
| Secondary tariffs. | ||
| And they're biting. | ||
| And I hope we don't get to the point where we do. | ||
| But I've been hearing so much talk. | ||
| It's all talk. | ||
| It's all talk, and then missiles go into Kiev and kill 60 people. | ||
| It's got to stop. | ||
| It's got to stop. | ||
| But the purpose of this is to say that this is a very big deal we've made. | ||
| Billions of dollars worth of military equipment is going to be purchased from the United States, going to NATO, et cetera. | ||
| And that's going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield. | ||
| Ukraine will take it up. | ||
| And you know, say what you want about Ukraine. | ||
| When the war started, they had no chance. | ||
| And they still would have had no chance if the equipment, they had the best equipment, because we do make the best planes and missiles. | ||
| We make the best military equipment in the world by far. | ||
| We have new things coming out that are beyond belief. | ||
| And I'm very excited about the Golden Dome. | ||
| It's going to give us very strong protection. | ||
| We've already started that. | ||
| But they had courage, because somebody has to use that equipment. | ||
| And they fought with tremendous courage, and they continue to fight with tremendous courage. | ||
| But they don't have, they're losing on equipment. | ||
| And Russia's really taken a very positive, very, very strong, I mean, what they've done the last couple of weeks. | ||
| Without military reasons, so what they are doing is 700 drones a day, missiles, bombing cities. | ||
| This is not because of military goals. | ||
| It is just creating panic, hitting towns. | ||
| People out of their sleeps, hitting towns. | ||
| It's really terrible, and it is meaning a lot of people lose their lives. | ||
| But also the infrastructure, whole cities being wiping out the electric, it's going to take years to rebuild it. | ||
| That's going to be the next problem. | ||
| But that's going to take a long time. | ||
| Many of the cities are knocked down to the ground. | ||
| Many of the people have left. | ||
| But many have stayed. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| They actually stay. | ||
| Most have stayed, actually. | ||
| It's incredible that they stay knowing that a missile could be hitting your apartment house and your apartment house that you're sitting in could collapse on top of you. | ||
| And they do very heavy construction. | ||
| They don't use rebar. | ||
| They do very thick concrete construction. | ||
| Those are heavy buildings, big buildings and heavy buildings, and they collapse like they're made out of paper. | ||
| It's unbelievable to see this happening with people, so many people being killed. | ||
| So we think we're going to make progress, and we hope we're going to make progress. | ||
| In the meantime, we're going to get you good service on what you need. | ||
| And we really became friendly with NATO this last meeting. | ||
| You know, we went from 2% to 5%, which everyone said was not even a possibility. | ||
| They weren't paying 2%. | ||
| Many of them were paying much less than 2%. | ||
| But even those, since you became president, all committed to the 2% before the summit. | ||
| And now, collectively, they committed to the 5%. | ||
| That's right, they did. | ||
| They've been very good. | ||
| And I think I made a lot of friends over there. | ||
| We had a couple of days of very intensive talks. | ||
| And they're great people. | ||
| They're leaders of countries. | ||
| Leaders of countries. | ||
| Many of them, great countries, some of them smaller countries, but for the most part, I'd say very solid, strong countries, and very successful. | ||
| Some of them are among the most successful countries in the world. | ||
| So that's the story. | ||
| We hope that's going to have an impact on Vladimir Putin, and we hope it's going to have an impact on Ukraine also. | ||
| We want to make sure that Ukraine does what they have to do. | ||
| All of a sudden, they may feel emboldened, and maybe they don't want it. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, this is a very difficult situation. | |
| Ukraine wants the peace deal. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| And they will stay committed to that. | ||
| There's no doubt they want it. | ||
| But the Russians have to be committed. | ||
| They have to continue to want it, though. | ||
| Yeah, I agree. | ||
| You and I will make sure of that. | ||
| All of a sudden, they get no less. | ||
| You and I will make sure of that. | ||
| We'll make sure. | ||
| I feel confident that they will do what has to be done. | ||
| Plus, we have certain parameters that both sides know. | ||
| And we already know what should be done. | ||
| So I think that's going to be very strong. | ||
| We want everlasting peace. | ||
| Any questions, France? | ||
| Yes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| What was the tipping point for you in making this decision? | ||
| Was it a conversation with President Putin? | ||
| Was it a piece of intelligence? | ||
| And why are you giving 50 more days? | ||
| I think, well, I think it's a very short period of time. | ||
| I think they'll forget. | ||
| I've just really been involved in this for not very long. | ||
| And it wasn't initial focus. | ||
| This is, again, this is a Biden war. | ||
| This is a Democrat war, not a Republican or Trump war. | ||
| This is a war that would have never happened. | ||
| It shouldn't have happened. | ||
| A lot of people being killed. | ||
| When the final numbers come in, you're going to see a lot more people are being killed in this war than you think, than you've been writing about. | ||
| It's a very deadly war. | ||
| They're all bad, but this is a very deadly war. | ||
| The numbers are going to be far greater. | ||
| When an apartment house comes down and they say two people were slightly injured, no. | ||
| Many people were killed. | ||
| And those numbers will be at some point accurately reported. | ||
| So far, they're not. | ||
| It's a deadly war. | ||
| I think you're going to see strong movement. | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| I hope so. | ||
| You know, the secondary tariffs are very, very powerful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What about the tariffs that the Republicans in the House and the Senate have ready? | |
| Those are 500%. | ||
| Why are you doing 100%? | ||
| Well, the Republicans are moving very strongly in the Senate, giving us total control of it. | ||
| But I'm not sure we need it, but it's certainly good that they're doing it. | ||
| And Lindsey Graham's working hard. | ||
| Holrick Johnson, all of them. | ||
| They're all working hard. | ||
| And they're in coordination with Mike Johnson, Speaker in the House. | ||
| And I think they've actually crafted a pretty good piece of legislation. | ||
| It's probably going to pass very easily. | ||
| And that includes Democrats. | ||
| And there are some little tweaks. | ||
| But I don't want to say I don't need it because I don't want them to waste their time. | ||
| It could be very useful. | ||
| We'll have to see. | ||
| But we can do secondary. | ||
| We're probably talking about 100% or something like that. | ||
| We could do secondary tariffs without the Senate, without the House. | ||
| But what they're crafting also could be very good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So are you suggesting then that the Congress should move forward with those sanctions, the 500%, and that your 100 would be a separate additional package? | |
| Yeah, I mean the 500 is sort of meaningless after a while because at a certain point it doesn't matter. | ||
| It's not going to be 100 is going to serve the same function. | ||
| But yeah, I have it at 100%. | ||
| They may have it. | ||
| I don't know what they're going to end up with. | ||
| They may have it at 100 too. | ||
| They may have it at 500. | ||
| But they're doing some good work in the House and I think in the House and the Senate. | ||
| And as you know, they're coordinated. | ||
| And they can have it done quickly. | ||
| They said they'll have it as quickly as I need it. | ||
| So we'll see. | ||
| We're talking to him. | ||
| In fact, Jonathan's coming over later on to talk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you talk? | |
| Yeah, he's going to come over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| Is it in your view that Vladimir Putin mischaracterized his dedication? | ||
| And what happens now in the next phase? | ||
| Maybe you'll start negotiating. | ||
| I think we felt, I felt, I don't know about you, Mark, but I felt that we had a deal about four times. | ||
| And here we are, still talking about it. | ||
| And we didn't send serious people to the negotiations. | ||
| So I remember that you were able with Mark Rubio and with Steve Vitkov to get these talks going in Istanbul. | ||
| I remember I was myself in Turkey for NATO business in May and we really put pressure on the Ukrainians to send a senior team into Istanbul and they did. | ||
| But then the Russians came up with this historian explaining history of Russia since 1250. | ||
| We thought, and I thought, we should have had a deal done a long time ago. | ||
| But it just keeps going on and on and on. | ||
| Every night people are dying. | ||
| A lot of Russian soldiers are dying, by the way. | ||
| And a lot of Ukrainian soldiers too. | ||
| But a lot of Russian soldiers are dying. | ||
| 100,000 Russian soldiers since 1st of January. | ||
| Since January. | ||
| 100,000 Russian soldiers dead since January. | ||
| So if anybody in Moscow is listening to this, again, 100,000 dead Russians since January. | ||
| This is what President Putin is doing at the moment. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Will these be Patriot missiles specifically or Patriot batteries that you're planning? | |
| It's everything. | ||
| It's Patriots. | ||
| It's all of them. | ||
| It's a full compliment with the batteries. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And when do you expect them to arrive in Ukraine, sir? | |
| Well, we're going to have some come very soon, within days, actually. | ||
| A couple of the countries that have Patriots are going to swap over and will replace the Patriots with the ones they have, and Matt will coordinate with NATO. | ||
| But so it's going to be, they're going to start arriving very soon. | ||
| And this afternoon, Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, is visiting Piet Hackset, the Secretary of Defense, and we'll discuss also, I think, on this whole Patriot thing. | ||
| Norway is involved, so that's on the Patriots, but this whole deal is also about missiles or ammunition, so it's broader than the Patriots. | ||
| We have one country that has 17 Patriots getting ready to be shipped. | ||
| They're not going to need them for that. | ||
| So we're going to work a deal where the 17 will go, or a big portion of the 17 will go to the war side. | ||
| Mr. President, that can be done very quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Could this transaction with NATO be viewed as a step towards achieving peace, letting Putin know that now Zelensky has a little bit more powerful tools in his tool chest, and maybe that brings him to the table to achieve peace? | |
| I know that you wanted to do that. | ||
| Brian, that's what we've been saying. | ||
| I think you might have expressed it better, if you want to know the truth. | ||
| I'm just trying exactly what I'm saying. | ||
| That was a summary. | ||
| It was a nice summary. | ||
| I think he's done better than us. | ||
| He's a very good guy, I can tell you that. | ||
| But no, it's well, well said. | ||
| Yeah, I think this is a chance at getting peace. | ||
| Or it's just going to be the same thing. | ||
| I have to tell you, Europe has a lot of spirit for this war. | ||
| A lot of people, you know, when I first got involved, I really didn't think they did, but they do. | ||
| And I saw that a month ago, and then you were there, most of you, many of you were there. | ||
| The level of esprit de corps spirit that they have is amazing. | ||
| They really think it's a very, very important thing to do, or they wouldn't be doing it. | ||
| Look, they're agreeing to, just, you know, they're paying for everything. | ||
| We're not paying anymore. | ||
| We have an ocean separating us. | ||
| They said, we have a problem. | ||
| We make the best stuff, but we can't keep doing this. | ||
| And Biden should have done this years ago. | ||
| He should have done it from the beginning, but he didn't. | ||
| He didn't know he was there. | ||
| This guy, what a horrible job they did for this country. | ||
| And I just hope between the border and this and so many other inflation, what a horrible administration. | ||
| The worst administration in history, in my opinion. | ||
| That's not my opinion. | ||
| I think it's everybody's opinion. | ||
| But this is something that shouldn't have happened, and we're going to see if we can end it. | ||
| I do want to make one statement. | ||
| Again, I said it before. | ||
| This is not Trump's war. | ||
| We're here to try and get it finished and settled and whatever. | ||
| Because nobody wins with this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a loser from every standpoint. | |
| This was Biden, and this was other people. | ||
| And it's a very sad. | ||
| It's a very sad situation. | ||
| This gentleman's doing a great job. | ||
| I think he's going to get it, and Matt and everybody else that's working on it, I think he'll get this thing over with all this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've praised European countries today as standing up for Ukraine, as being strong. | |
| Will you allow them to continue to negotiate tariffs lower than 30% before August 1st, or is the deal set at this point? | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| You mean you're talking about the tariffs? | ||
| You're back on tariffs. | ||
| You're on a more friendly tariff, right? | ||
| A little bit more friendly tariffs. | ||
| No, we're going to be talking to people. | ||
| We have, you know, I watched the show this morning. | ||
| They were talking about, well, when's he going to make the deal? | ||
| The deals are already made. | ||
| The letters are the deals. | ||
| The deals are made. | ||
| There are no deals to make. | ||
| They would like to do a different kind of a deal, and we're always open to talk. | ||
| We are open to talk, including to Europe. | ||
| In fact, they're coming over. | ||
| They'd like to talk to us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Rusty, is there any concern about the U.S. stockpiles? | |
| There was a pause in delivery of weaponry to Ukraine in order to evaluate, apparently, the U.S. stockpiles. | ||
| What came out of that? | ||
| Evaluation. | ||
| I mean, this was a very big, what we're talking about today is a very, very big day. | ||
| And what Pete was doing, and me too, I knew what Pete was doing, was evaluation because we knew this was going to happen. | ||
| And now we actually announced it. | ||
| They voted on it. | ||
| It's all been done. | ||
| So obviously that has a big impact on, you know, when you say pause, obviously you're not going to be doing things if you don't know what's going to happen here. | ||
| But we were pretty sure this was going to happen, so we did a little bit of a pause. | ||
| But this is a very big event today. | ||
| In what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How far are you willing to go if Putin were to escalate, send more bombs in the coming decades? | |
| Ask me a question like that. | ||
| How far? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I want to get the war settled. | ||
| They're not Americans that are dying in it, and I have a problem, and JD has a problem. | ||
| It's a stance that he's had for a long time. | ||
| They're not Americans dying, but there are a lot of people dying on something that should be able to be settled. | ||
| And we all agree with that. | ||
| This group of people that want to defend our country. | ||
| But ultimately, having a strong Europe is a very good thing. | ||
| It's a very good thing. | ||
| So I'm okay with that. | ||
| Yeah, please, in the back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is there a ceiling on what the Europeans are willing to pay for? | |
| And it sounds like, well, are you ruling out the U.S. paying for some additional weapons through drawdown authority? | ||
| Shall I try to answer that? | ||
| Because basically what the President is saying, that he's willing, of course, taking consideration what the U.S. needs itself. | ||
| So it's not that you can have a shopping list and you can order whatever you want, because the US has to make sure that the US keeps its hands on what the U.S. needs, also to keep the whole world safe, because in the end, you are the police agent of the whole world. | ||
| You're the most powerful nation on earth, the most powerful military on earth. | ||
| But given that, the US has decided to indeed massively supply Ukraine with what is necessary through NATO. | ||
| Europeans 100% paying for that. | ||
| And what we have been doing over the last couple of days is talking with countries. | ||
| And I just mentioned the ones who in the first wave immediately said, we want to chip in. | ||
| And then you are really talking about big numbers. | ||
| Take Germany visiting today. | ||
| They're really talking about big numbers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you get some clarity on this? | |
| I will say that I spoke with Germany, spoke with most of the larger countries. | ||
| And they are really enthusiastic about this. | ||
| And they're willing to go very far. | ||
| I will tell you, as per your question, how far would I go? | ||
| They want to go very far. | ||
| They don't want this to happen. | ||
| That's why I think from Putin's standpoint, it would really be good. | ||
| He gets the country's economy doing very poorly, and he's got to get His economy back. | ||
| He's got to save his economy. | ||
| He could save his country in a sense, but the economy can destroy, destroyed a lot of countries over the years. | ||
| He wants to get that economy back. | ||
| And, you know, he's got a great country for trading and other things. | ||
| If they could use the assets instead of war, he's got some tremendous potential. | ||
| That's what I would say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How did you deliver this news to Putin, sir? | |
| How did you tell Putin this was coming? | ||
| I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. | ||
| And I always hang up and say, well, there was a nice phone call. | ||
| And then missiles are launched into Kiev or some other city. | ||
| And I said, strange. | ||
| And after that happens, three or four times, you say, the talk doesn't mean anything. | ||
| My conversations with him are always very pleasant. | ||
| They say, isn't that good? | ||
| Very lovely conversation. | ||
| And then the missiles go off that night. | ||
| I go home, I tell the first lady, you know, I spoke to Vladimir today. | ||
| We had a wonderful conversation. | ||
| She said, oh, really? | ||
| Another city was just hit. | ||
| So it's like, look, he's, I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy. | ||
| It's been proven over the years. | ||
| He's fooled a lot of people. | ||
| He fooled Bush. | ||
| He fooled a lot of people. | ||
| He fooled Clinton, Bush, Obama. | ||
| Biden didn't fool me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But what I do say is that at a certain point, you know, ultimately Tolkien doesn't froze it from the White House. | |
| We're going to go back to the old office. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| Let's go right back to it. | ||
| We got another feedback. | ||
| Every since 150 days. | ||
| I mean, look, I hope he's going to do it. | ||
| He knows the deal. | ||
| He knows what a fair deal is. | ||
| If there is such a thing as a fair deal, there's no winners here. | ||
| This is a loser. | ||
| This is a loser. | ||
| And I dealt with him from the beginning. | ||
| It wouldn't have happened, but I will say Ukraine was the apple of his eye. | ||
| We talk about it. | ||
| It was the apple of his eye. | ||
| But it wasn't going to happen. | ||
| And he understood that. | ||
| It wasn't going to happen. | ||
| And then I noticed, after I was out, I noticed soldiers forming at the border. | ||
| And then I heard horrible, stupid things being said from the other side. | ||
| And I said, they're really handling it very, very wrong. | ||
| It's a shame. | ||
| Can I add one thing? | ||
| And that is about President Trump, because if you came to office in January, we tell some February, your first phone call is Putin. | ||
| I think you did exactly what I hoped you would do. | ||
| That is breaking the deadlock, starting the conversation, because you have to test him. | ||
| I know Putin very well from the days when I was Prime Minister. | ||
| Nevertheless, you have to test him. | ||
| And you did this, and you really gave him a chance to be serious, to get to the table, to start negotiations. | ||
| Steve Witkov, Markov, we all tried to help him. | ||
| But you've now come to a point where you say, well, hey. | ||
| We actually thought we had probably four times a deal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, you would have called and you would have said, this looks good. | |
| And then the deal wouldn't happen because bombs would be thrown out that night and you'd say, we're not making any deals. | ||
| It was like... | ||
| And you were the only one who was able to do that. | ||
| I think we'll get it done. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think he's reasonable enough to negotiate this? | |
| I think he's going to get it done. | ||
| I think, look, this is a very powerful situation. | ||
| You have very wealthy countries buying the best equipment in the world. | ||
| And we have the best equipment in the world. | ||
| We make equipment like no other. | ||
| You know, our submarines, nuclear submarines, are so powerful, they're the most powerful weapon ever built. | ||
| And we have the best in the world by 20 years behind, 25 years behind us. | ||
| We have the greatest equipment anywhere in the world. | ||
| I just hope we don't have to use it. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| On a separate topic here, President Biden, of all people, spoke to the New York Times over the weekend. | ||
| He did not speak to them on the record during his time in office at all, but he spoke to them recently. | ||
| And he defended his use of the AutoPen and said that he signed off on every decision. | ||
| But at the same time, the Times reports that he did not individually approve each name for the categorical pardons that applied to large numbers of people. | ||
| What are your take on that? | ||
| Any new revelations from that? | ||
| Well, I mean, you're talking about the AutoPen. | ||
| Look, the AutoPen, I think, is maybe one of the biggest scandals that we've had in 50 to 100 years. | ||
| This is a tremendous scandal. | ||
| And I know the people on the other side of the desk, that Resolute desk, unfortunately, he used it before me. | ||
| But, you know, we have our choice of seven desks. | ||
| They're all beautiful. | ||
| But I chose the Resolute, and so did he, unfortunately. | ||
| But the people on the other side of the Resolute desk, I know them. | ||
| Lisa, the whole group, and they're no good. | ||
| They're sick people. | ||
| And I guarantee you he knew nothing about what he was signing. | ||
| I guarantee it. | ||
| So they're going to figure it out, and we'll see what happens. | ||
| But to me, the AutoPen, you know, you elected president. | ||
| You know what the AutoPen is supposed to do? | ||
| Sign thousands of letters from young people that write. | ||
| We get thousands of letters a week, Susie, right? | ||
| Thousands. | ||
| I mean, tens of thousands sometimes. | ||
| I look at a room, there's a room where we have many, many people working, responding and sending letters back. | ||
| That's what an AutoPen is supposed to be. | ||
| To write to a young seven-year-old boy that writes to the president and he wants to be president someday and he loves America. | ||
| That's what the Autopen's supposed to be. | ||
| It's not supposed to be for signing major legislation and all other things. | ||
| No, the Autopen, and I doubt he knew. | ||
| I doubt they even spoke to him about it. | ||
| I think they had, it's called the freewheeling Autopen. | ||
| Like, Biden was never for open borders. | ||
| Biden was never for transgender for everyone. | ||
| So I don't think he, I think the radical left people that took, they took over the White House. | ||
| And if I didn't win, our country was finished. | ||
| You know, when I was in, and I said this a couple of times, I hope I don't bore you with it, but when I was in Saudi Arabia, I was in Qatar, I was in UAE, and then I met with all of your leaders, including you, a great leader. | ||
| He's now the leader of many countries, not just. | ||
| No, no, no, no, no. | ||
| But I met with a lot of leaders over the last two months in the Middle East and all of the NATO countries. | ||
| And I will tell you, they had one common phrase. | ||
| They thought America was dead one year ago. | ||
| And today they say, and they all say it, and I hope you'll back me up on this, but they say now it's the hottest country anywhere in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| Look at our numbers. | ||
| Look at the numbers we made. | ||
| You see, we made 25 billion last month. | ||
| We didn't make that for years. | ||
| The tariffs are kicking in. | ||
| The economy is very strong. | ||
| Even though we have a Fed person who's terrible, he doesn't know what the hell he's doing, but that's all right. | ||
| We blow through interest rates. | ||
| We're doing so well we blow through it. | ||
| It'd be nice because people would be able to buy housing a lot easier. | ||
| But think of it. | ||
| We thought your country was dead. | ||
| And they were dealing with China because they were really going to China, but not anymore. | ||
| But we thought your country was dead, and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world. | ||
| So we've done a really good job, and it's an honor to have this man. | ||
| This man is a star, and he's going to be dealing with another one of my stars, Matt. | ||
| And you're going to do a great job, Matt Whitaker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay? | |
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Question at the end. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| We got Ben Harnwell. | ||
| I think we'll probably get Mike Bence this afternoon then. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pretty blunt. | |
| And I know the America First, our America First audiences, I can tell by the chat, are a little bit in shock. | ||
| Ben Harnwell, a couple of things. | ||
| Number one, it's both. | ||
| Now, part of it's from a standoff basis, and that is the escalatory nature of the military equipment. | ||
| He is pretty adamant. | ||
| We're not providing this. | ||
| We're not going to run up on debt. | ||
| We are selling this. | ||
| We're selling this to NATO, to the NATO allies. | ||
| Rute seemed, not ambivalent. | ||
| I didn't exactly get a, hey, yeah, these countries are buying this and this is what they're paying. | ||
| But the president is pretty adamant. | ||
| We're not supplying particularly offensive weaponry and even defensive. | ||
| We're not giving them anything. | ||
| This is being bought by NATO. | ||
| But he did say, to start off with, is the sanctions and secondary sanctions. | ||
| And secondary sanctions are direct economic warfare. | ||
| I'm a big believer in sanctions, and I think they work and they can work. | ||
| They can be very strong. | ||
| This is the way I think we bring the Persians. | ||
| If you want regime change, you want the people to, regime change to come from the people, do it with sanctions and security sanctions and cutting off their capital. | ||
| But he announced in 50 days there'll be, I think, additional tariffs on Russia, although we don't buy, we don't purchase a lot from Russia. | ||
| The EU does because of the natural gas. | ||
| But he said secondary sanctions, secretary sanctions would get any trading party. | ||
| That would be the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| So we got to work through this after the show. | ||
| Is he saying he's going to put 100% tariff on the CCP who trade for them? | ||
| That's all going to be worked out. | ||
| President Trump did sound like all of a sudden, he kept saying, this is not Trump's war. | ||
| This is not Trump's war. | ||
| He's absolutely correct. | ||
| This is one of the things we've on the show said over and over again. | ||
| This is not Trump's war. | ||
| That's why you've got to either get in there, try to make a deal. | ||
| If you can't make a deal, just cut bait. | ||
| Because if you go down this path, you may say it's not Trump's war, and it hasn't been up till Dow. | ||
| But you get into the sense of even if you're selling them, you know, if a Russian mother and father denote their kid was killed on a battlefield with American weaponries are going to miss the nuance that NATO bought it and the Americans didn't give it. | ||
| If offensive missiles strike the suburbs of Moscow and take out a couple of city blocks, the Russian people, who are our greatest ally in World War II, are going to miss the subtlety of the point that that missile was paid for by Estonia. | ||
| And this is where it will become Trump's war. | ||
| As sure as the turning of the earth, they'll stick it to him. | ||
| And NATO will want to stick it to him because they'll want him as an active combatant. | ||
| Now, obviously, on the economic side, you're now getting engaged more than ever with the secondary sanctions potential in 50 days. | ||
| And you can tell President Trump believes that he can bring this to a head in 50 days. | ||
| Ben Harnwell, and coming back from that NATO trip where they talked about increasing the thing, we said he was very moved. | ||
| You could tell him by that. | ||
| Nothing really should have changed. | ||
| The Ukraine war is a European war. | ||
| It is a European war. | ||
| Let me go back in history and make sure everybody in this audience understands something and the Trump folks over the administration understand something. | ||
| From 1939 until even after the Vermock went in Barbarossa in June of 1941, but all the way up to Pearl Harbor, that part of it was a European war. | ||
| When the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, that night in the White House, just go read all the histories about it, which I've read basically anything that's important. | ||
| There was discussion the next day about when they went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Japan. | ||
| They worded it very precisely. | ||
| A state of war existed because Japan had attacked us while they were negotiating with the State Department. | ||
| The worst of the worst, correct? | ||
| There was discussion about do we declare war on Germany at the same time? | ||
| And The politicians and folks were adamant. | ||
| No, we're not going to declare war on Germany. | ||
| That's a European war. | ||
| As much as the British have been trying to drag us into it, and the British were actively trying to drag us into it, and Churchill and these guys admitted it. | ||
| On December 8th, we did not declare war on Nazi Germany. | ||
| Remember that. | ||
| They don't ever mention that in the history books. | ||
| We did not declare war on Nazi Germany. | ||
| Why? | ||
| It was a European war. | ||
| And the American people, particularly the tendencies of the American people to want to take care of things at home, said, okay, fine, the Japanese attacked us. | ||
| We're at a state of war with Japan. | ||
| They had a vote. | ||
| I think only one member of the House did not vote for it. | ||
| But they phrased this, a state of war exists, boom. | ||
| But we did not clear a war on Nazi Germany. | ||
| Hitler made a conscious decision, I think, two or three days later, because of a secret treaty they had with the Japanese and thinking that the Americans wouldn't fight or that we were too weak or too cowardly to actually get engaged in what was a bloodletting on Operation Barbarossa in guess where, the bloodlands where we're talking about today, that the Americans would never do that, he declared war on the United States. | ||
| Ever since the moment he declared war on the United States, everybody in Washington, D.C., the beginning of the Imperial Capital, focused on Germany first. | ||
| The whole strategy shifted, Germany first. | ||
| The Pacific became a secondary thought, the bloody war in the Pacific, right? | ||
| And there was tons of complaints from people. | ||
| Why are we not focused on the Japanese? | ||
| Why are they always late to get reinforcements? | ||
| Why are they always late? | ||
| Particularly since the strategy of the folks post-Civil War was an American strategy based on the Central Pacific and even then the Three Island Chain. | ||
| That's why we became even became thought about becoming an imperial power in the Philippines and other places by going to war with Spain. | ||
| So this is, we're in the same situation. | ||
| Now, and this is where we have to be very careful. | ||
| President Trump, and he snapped at the guy who asked the question we asked earlier, hey, I see you're selling this. | ||
| You go up the escalatory ladder. | ||
| What happens if that doesn't work? | ||
| What's next? | ||
| And he was not happy with that question. | ||
| He snapped at the guy. | ||
| Don't ask that question. | ||
| Understanding, President Trump has many alternatives he's looking at. | ||
| It's not going to lay his card on the table. | ||
| Now, he did come back and address it somewhat later. | ||
| But Ben Harnwell, this is the NATO and the Europeans and Zelensky and the collection of crooks that work for Zielinski want to do nothing more. | ||
| Their number one objective is to hang this on Trump and make this Trump's war, make this America's war. | ||
| Because then once you go up the escalatory ladder on military aid, you continue to open up the spigots for financial aid, which they can skim their 20% off the top. | ||
| And eventually you're going to get, just like in the 12-day war, you're going to get, you know, you're providing defense and you're providing personnel to run the defense operations. | ||
| Next thing you know, you're in offensive war over there. | ||
| Zelensky's number one priority is to make sure that he can put the handle on this of Trump's war. | ||
| And President Trump over and over again said, this is not my war. | ||
| I've tried to settle this. | ||
| We thought we had four or five times deals. | ||
| Putin has not been straightforward. | ||
| Ben, we got a break. | ||
| Mike Benz, more John Solomon, huge breaking news on that. | ||
| The Autopen just brought up there one question. | ||
| Biden gives an on-the-record, which he never did in four years of the presidency. | ||
| New York Times, think about that for a second. | ||
| That's how demented, that's the dementia was all over him. | ||
| Basically says, well, yeah, they use the Autopen, but I knew everybody they were doing, but please don't ask me who they signed the pardons for. | ||
| That means the pardons are no good. | ||
| And it's Katie barred the door now because people are going to be rolling. | ||
| Tons of information there. | ||
| Ben Harnow, we got about two minutes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts before we punch? | |
| Look, the argument, the thesis is that NATO was really keen to do this, right? | ||
| And that's what they spun out in the Oval Office. | ||
| My question, Steve, is that if NATO is so keen to be buying US-produced arms, why does it need to be brokered by Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office? | ||
| Why does Mark Ruther need to come over to DC and have this done from the Oval Office? | ||
| Well, the reason is exactly the thesis that you're lying at. | ||
| They are dragging Donald Trump into this war. | ||
| That is the point. | ||
| That's the whole point about the theatrics today. | ||
| This is NATO, this is the Europeans dragging, like it were on a fishing hook, Donald Trump into this war. | ||
| And he's saying, we both of us independently made this note that he said repeatedly, this is not Trump's war. | ||
| The question is, Steve, is how is that going to land with the base? | ||
| And I can tell you, look, I've got 30 seconds. | ||
| I can tell you, it's not always the base with the base. | ||
| The base 100% against us. | ||
| No, the base, it's beyond that, though. | ||
| It's the base 100% against us. | ||
| There's so many more complicated issues. | ||
| The base is going to have a major role in this. | ||
| I got to bounce real quickly. | ||
| Where do people get you, Ben? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Geta at Harnwell. | |
| Let's not bury the lead. | ||
| What did Rute say? | ||
| His one moment of truth there with all the spin. | ||
| Well, America is the world's police. | ||
| You're the police agent for the world. | ||
| See their mentality? | ||
| No, the answer is that is incorrect. | ||
| We're about America first. | ||
| We're not the cop on the beat for the entire world. | ||
| They still believe that. | ||
| He said it. | ||
| The one truthable moment Rute had in that entire thing was when he said, well, you're the cop. | ||
| You're the police agent for the entire world. | ||
| The whole world. | ||
| Eau Contraire. | ||
| Mr. Dutchman. | ||
| Okay, Charlie Kirk is next. | ||
| We're going to be back here at 5 o'clock. | ||
| I'm sure it's going to be a fire. | ||
| War in the rumors of war today at 5. |
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