July 25, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:41
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| And uh Tim has been with me for a long time and you're in charge of the committee. | ||
| Indeed, one of the reasons why wanted to see it was uh the overruns of the expenses. | ||
| Wanted to figure out why. | ||
| So we're taking a look and uh it looks like it's about three point one billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It went up a little bit or a lot. | |
| So the 2.7 is now 3.1. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not aware of that. | |
| Yeah, it just came out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I haven't heard that from anybody in the Fed. | |
| It just came out. | ||
| Argno said about 3.1 as well. | ||
| 3.1, 3.2. | ||
| This came from us? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I don't know who does that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're including the Martin renovation. | |
| You just added in the third building, is what that is. | ||
| That's a third building. | ||
| It's a building that's being built. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, it was built five years ago. | |
| We finished Martin five years ago. | ||
| It's part of the overall work. | ||
| So we're going to take a look. | ||
| We're going to see what's happening. | ||
| And it's got a long way. | ||
| Do you expect any more additional cost overloads? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't expect them. | |
| We're ready for them. | ||
| But we have a little bit of a reserve that we may use. | ||
| But no, we don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Expect to be finished in 2027. | |
| We're well along, as you can see. | ||
|
unidentified
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What would you do with a project manager who would be over budget? | |
| Generally speaking, what would I do? | ||
| I'd fire him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think this issue, Mr. President, usually call us to do that? | |
| Well, I'm here just really with the chairman. | ||
| He's showing us around, showing us the work. | ||
| And so I don't want to get that. | ||
| I don't want to be personal. | ||
| I just would like to see it get finished. | ||
| And in many ways, it's too bad it started. | ||
| But it did start. | ||
| And it's been under construction for a long time. | ||
| It's going to be a real long time because it looks like it's got a long way to go. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, are there things the chairman can say to you today that would make you back off some of the earlier criticism? | |
| Well, I'd love him to lower interest rates. | ||
| Other than that, what can I tell you? | ||
| The country is doing really well. | ||
| I just briefed the chairman on the deal we've made with Japan. | ||
| Japan is putting up $550 billion in order to lower their tariffs a little bit. | ||
| That way they have a little bit lower tariff. | ||
| And they also opened their country to free trade, which nobody thought was even a possibility. | ||
| And we get a zero tariff in the free trade. | ||
| We don't pay tariffs. | ||
| And they're going to pay 15% on everything they send into our country. | ||
| So it's great. | ||
| But they put up as you could call it seed money. | ||
| Let's call it seed money. | ||
| You could call it anything you want. | ||
| But it's a total of $550 billion. | ||
| So nobody thought any of that was possible. | ||
| And it's wonderful. | ||
| And we're doing pretty well with the European Union, likewise. | ||
| And we have some others. | ||
| They're all really big. | ||
| And our country is going to make a lot of money. | ||
| We would be helped if interest rates would come down, but we're going to see how the board rules on that soon. | ||
| I'd love to see them come down a lot. | ||
| But we have a country that's thriving. | ||
| We had a dead country one year ago. | ||
| Today we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. | ||
| And we'll get this one finished. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, you said possibly documents by Gambler. | |
| Yeah, that's a terrible thing. | ||
| I have great respect for Tulsi and the documents they found on President Obama. | ||
| Frankly, it was an Obama thing, but it was the people that worked under him also working with him. | ||
| And now it's a very, very serious thing. | ||
| Thank you very much, Tulsa. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's your final problem? | |
| Thank you, everybody. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies. | ||
| Because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| You're going to have not got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you're trying to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
| MAGA 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
|
Waru, here's your host, Stephen K. Bass. | |
| Thursday, July, 24 July, in the year of our Lord 2025. | ||
| I'm going to ask the first part of that to be, we're kind of doing this on the fly. | ||
| The president just finished. | ||
| The tour over at Versailles on Connecticut Avenue. | ||
| And for people in the city, in the imperial capital, see what they've done over there to what it's called the Temple under construction. | ||
| It looks like, you know, you're rebuilding Versailles. | ||
| People can't really understand the scale of it. | ||
| There's $2 billion and now another billion over. | ||
| I wanted a lot more of the first part. | ||
| The expansion seemed like it was pretty fast. | ||
| I think it started at about 4 o'clock, 410, and of course ended at about 4.45, 4.15 to recordings from the president. | ||
| You've heard of Alpha and Omega? | ||
| This is Alpha and Obeda. | ||
| This is an Alpha Dog. | ||
| And I don't know what Powell is, but man, he's a beaten man. | ||
| Whoever on his staff told me how to do this, you're supposed to be an independent agency, I guess, because the President says you show up, you show up. | ||
| But you're going to take a look at Powell and see he's not enjoying this. | ||
| This is one of the most brutal photo ops in the history of Washington, D.C. Let's go ahead and play. | ||
| I want to replay the first part of this because it's so good. | ||
| President Trump went over, like he went to the Kennedy Center to inspect the building and see what in the hell is going on here. | ||
| Why is this? | ||
| Now he says $3.1 billion. | ||
| But it was also to kind of see pal and say, hey, and President Trump answered, I'm not going to fire you, but I want you to drop interest rates 300%. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Yeah, 300 basis points. | ||
| Excuse me, 300 basis points. | ||
| Let's go ahead and replay the beginning of that. | ||
| Ending them a lot of very expensive work. | ||
| There's no question about it. | ||
| And Tim has been with me for a long time, and you're in charge of the committee. | ||
| Indeed, one of the reasons why we wanted to see it was the overruns of the expenses wanted to figure out why. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we're taking a look and it looks like it's about 3.1 billion. | ||
| It went up a little bit. | ||
| so the 2.7 is now 3.1 i'm not aware of that yeah it just came out I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed. | ||
| It just came back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Arndell said it about 3.1 as well. | |
| 3.1 3.2. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you including the market renovation? | |
| You just ended in the third building. | ||
| That's the third building. | ||
| It's the building that's being built. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was built five years ago. | |
| We finished marketing five years ago. | ||
| It's part of the look. | ||
| We're going to see what's happening. | ||
| Do you expect any more additional post-options? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't expect them. | |
| We're ready for them. | ||
| We have a little bit of a reserve that we may use, but no, we don't. | ||
| They could be finished in 2027. | ||
| Well along, as you can see. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What would you do with the budget manager with the over budget? | |
| Generally speaking, what would I do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd fire him if he was the president using combos and do that. | |
| Well, I'm here just really with the chairman. | ||
| He's showing us around, showing us the work. | ||
| And so I don't want to get that. | ||
| I don't want to be personal. | ||
| I just would like to see it get finished. | ||
| And in many ways, it's too bad it started. | ||
| But it did start. | ||
| And it's been under construction for a long time. | ||
| It's going to be a real long time because it looks like it's got a long way to go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are there things the chairman can say to you today that would make you back off some of the earlier criticism? | |
| Well, I'd love him to lower interest rates. | ||
| Other than that, what can I tell you? | ||
| The country is doing really well. | ||
| I just briefed the chairman on the deal we've made with Japan. | ||
| Japan is putting up $550 billion in order to lower their tariff. | ||
| And the way he described that as an upfront payment, we'll have to deconstruct that. | ||
| But right there, not Alpha and Omega, right, which is from Holy Scripture, but Alpha and the Beta. | ||
| That was one of the worst photo ops I've ever seen. | ||
| And of course, Powell, no, it's 3.1. | ||
| No, it's 2.7. | ||
| No, it's 3.1. | ||
| Hey, and he gives it. | ||
| Nobody at the Fed's told me that number. | ||
| Not that a number at the Fed would ever be wrong. | ||
| Far be it from any number coming out of the Federal Reserve to be wrong. | ||
| And of course, Trump hands a paper. | ||
| No, it's 3. | ||
| I think it's 3.2. | ||
| Then they start arguing about it. | ||
| Is that a building? | ||
| No, it's a building that was completed five years ago. | ||
| That's not what you want to be doing on global television. | ||
| Secretary Powell, just take it, fold it, move on. | ||
| Don't get into a debate because you're not going to win. | ||
| President Trump's really over there, I think, to talk about interest rates. | ||
| Again, he made a pretty thoughtful description of what he wants to see and how important he thinks it is to lower interest rates. | ||
| 300 basis points. | ||
| Far be from President Trump going to overshoot the target to try to get the deal he wants, right, to drag it his way. | ||
| I don't think we're going to be seeing a 300 basis point rate cut anytime soon, but I think he's putting the guy on notice. | ||
| He wants the term at 25 basis points in September, maybe another 25 basis points in December. | ||
| He wants more, and he wants to be more aggressive. | ||
| And he makes a very compelling argument to get there, of course. | ||
| I think Pultey was with me. | ||
| We're going to have Brother Fishback on here as soon as we get him up. | ||
| He's been a big critic of the Federal Reserve and a big up right now. | ||
| He's been observing all of this. | ||
| And, of course, I think Pultey actually made it over there. | ||
| Brother Fishback, thank you for joining us, particularly today. | ||
| The president's doing a tour of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| First off, can you just walk your audience through your bona fides here? | ||
| We're going to talk a lot about the Fed, a lot about President Trump's economic plan and this kind of historic trip. | ||
| I think it's the only third time in the history of the Republic that a president of the United States has gone to the Fed. | ||
| Once it was FDR, I believe, the Skirk, FDR, to actually inaugurate the building. | ||
| This building, a very famous building, was built during his term. | ||
| And then I think Jerry Ford went over there because a buddy of his was a governor or something. | ||
| But I think this is only the third trip, so pretty important. | ||
| Can you walk the audience through, since this is your first appearance, what your background is and why you have become a Fed observer, sir? | ||
| Well, good afternoon, Steve. | ||
| It's an honor to be here on War Room with you. | ||
| I run an investment firm called Azoria. | ||
| We have an anti-DEI ETF that strips the woke out of the S ⁇ P 500. | ||
| It's called SPXM. | ||
| I've spent the last 10 years prior to starting Azoria working as an interest rate options trader. | ||
| And so my job was literally to follow every word of the Fed, to build out my own economic models, to anticipate what the Fed was going to do next, and then to try to capitalize on those shifts. | ||
| And I got to tell you the truth, Steve, when I look at the Fed today, I barely recognize, I can barely understand what's going into their decisions. | ||
| Let's not forget, this is a Federal Reserve that cut interest rates right before the 2024 election by 50 points, the largest cut in over four years. | ||
| And now will not cut rates, even though inflation is lower today than it was when that pre-election cut happened. | ||
| It's lower today than it has been in four years. | ||
| And under President Trump's leadership, inflation has had five consecutive lower than expected, better than expected inflation prints. | ||
| And so when I look at the housing market, when we've got new home sales, the lowest since 1995, when we've got mortgage originations down 76% compared To President Trump's first term, that is something you lay squarely as the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| And so Jerome Powell has a responsibility here, which is to look at the real economic data for inflation, mortgage origination, home sales, the employment picture, and bring rates down. | ||
| I'll leave it at this point, Steve, which is the Federal Reserve's own models agree with President Trump and disagree with Jerome Powell. | ||
| The New York Fed has what's called a natural rate model, which anticipates, projects where interest rates would be in their natural setting. | ||
| Those rates are more than one full percentage point lower on a natural basis than the artificially high rates today. | ||
| And so President Trump is going to keep delivering, whether it's on the Big Beautiful Bill or new foreign investment from Japan or elsewhere. | ||
| But the truth is that Jerome Powell has a responsibility here to look at the data and to lower rates accordingly. | ||
| James, can you hang on for one second? | ||
| I want to get into some details here. | ||
| The audience wants to know about natural rates. | ||
| They also want to know about what an interest rate optionist trader does and why you know these models backwards and forwards. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
| We're going to start at the Fed with money. | ||
| President went over there today in historic tour to see where, you know, he watches the taxpayers' money like it's his own. | ||
| He wants to know why it's $3.1 billion to build the Versailles on the Connecticut Avenue. | ||
| He's kind of shocked. | ||
| I'm sure he'll be up in True Social tonight, giving more observations. | ||
| But he also had a chance to talk to the media about a lot of things, but principally about his Japanese deal, the economy, why he thinks a 300 basis point cut makes sense. | ||
| We're going to put that to James Fishback. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
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| So go check it out, putting up great news all the time. | ||
| James Fisback, speaking of news, we have breaking news even as we speak, very serendipitous that you're here. | ||
| Walk us through what just broke across the tape, sir. | ||
| Well, we just heard from the federal judge in our lawsuit against Jerome Powell that we filed this morning. | ||
| Just as a reminder, we filed a lawsuit against Jerome Powell for breaking federal law by holding the Federal Reserve's rate-setting meetings behind closed door that contravenes the Government in the Sunshine Act of 1976. | ||
| We asked the federal court very simply to block next week's Fed meeting from happening in secret. | ||
| We just heard from the federal judge. | ||
| She handed down the order, which is that there is going to be an emergency hearing on this on Monday afternoon at 2 p.m. in the D.C. federal courthouse. | ||
| This is Judge Beryl Powell, appointed by President Obama. | ||
| She has immediately ordered the Federal Reserve's attorneys and our attorneys to meet for a hearing on Monday at 2 p.m., right before the Fed is set to meet on Tuesday. | ||
| Our temporary restraining order would block Jerome Powell's Federal Reserve from meeting behind closed doors. | ||
| Steve, you and I have fixed the eye to eye on this. | ||
| We have concerns that what Powell may be doing is politically influenced. | ||
| And the American people, whether they voted for President Trump or voted otherwise, deserve to know what the government is doing in their name with their money. | ||
| And we're going to bring that all to light. | ||
| And so federal hearing in this emergency injunction against Jerome Powell in D.C. Monday at 2 p.m. | ||
| It just came across. | ||
| James, so this is huge. | ||
| That law was passed as a whole thing to have transparency in the government post-Watergate. | ||
| But the Fed's been meeting in private. | ||
| In fact, the Lords of Easy Money, this great book that was written, Chris went back and looked at 10 years because they keep their minutes secret for a decade. | ||
| He had to go back and look at it. | ||
| And so it's an amazing book by going back. | ||
| Have they ever had these Fed meetings? | ||
| Did anybody ever implement the Sunshine rule law? | ||
| And did you think it was a long shot when you first thought of this to go do it that way? | ||
| Just lost in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Let's get him back up in a second. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So they went back to law that was kind of, I think it's one of these post-Watergate reform of government laws and sued for a TRO. | ||
| And of course, Beryl Howe, that battle axe, she said, let's have a hearing on it. | ||
| So they're going to have a hearing on Monday for the closed-door meeting. | ||
| I think all the meetings have been closed door. | ||
| I don't ever remember the meetings being otherwise. | ||
| Remember, you go back to Lords of Easy Money, where I said if you read that book, and there's another book out about during the pandemic, what the Fed did to basically infuse the government, the economy with an additional trillion dollars, not even authorized by President Trump. | ||
| I said, you read these two books and you'll have a revolution in this country. | ||
| It's just absolutely amazing what goes on. | ||
| And what the author did in Lords of Easy Money, he basically goes back and reconstructs from the financial crisis of 2008 and reconstructs all the boards of the governor's meetings and these meetings they're talking about, the Open Market Committee and all that. | ||
| He reconstructs it from the minutes because he could finally get to them in, I guess 2018 and 2019, because that was over a decade. | ||
| They're kept secret up until then. | ||
| President Trump today at the Federal Reserve really to see Powell and say, once again, I want, you know, I want loans, I want interest rates at 300 basis points lower, which is a pretty big shocking, you know, that would be a quite a that would be really a dramatic drop. | ||
| James Fishback right there, who specializes in this and models this, says that if you look at their model the way it should be, the natural interest rates, it should be at least 100 basis points or one point lower, which is President Trump started off with, that he should. | ||
| James, given the Sunshine Laws, they've been around. | ||
| Everything's been in secret, I believe. | ||
| What got you the idea to use that law to actually wedge this thing open, sir? | ||
| Well, Steve, it was really about using the overturn of the Chevron doctrine in the Loper-Bright case that we were able to, of course, win because of President Trump's appointees on the Supreme Court. | ||
| And so what Chevron Doctrine is, the Woolroom audience will know very well, is it gave federal agencies like the Fed deference. | ||
| It allowed them to tell the courts how they wanted to interpret federal law and regulations that apply to them. | ||
| The Supreme Court overturned that. | ||
| And so that is a massive tailwind for our case against Jerome Powell. | ||
| And I mean, this was asking for a TRO is a long shot by any stretch of the imagination, in any sense, Steve. | ||
| You know this. | ||
| But as a conservative in Washington, D.C., forget about it. | ||
| What we just heard from Judge Beryl Howell, appointed by President Obama, is that she is now moving forward with an emergency hearing on our TRO. | ||
| If we are successful at that hearing, Steve, on Monday, this will be the first Fed meeting in nearly 50 years, a half century, that is open to the public. | ||
| The public deserves to know what the Fed is doing during those deliberations. | ||
| Because when I talk to folks, a woman stopped me the other day in the airport, Steve, and she said, President Trump is doing a great job, but Jerome Powell is too late. | ||
| Jerome Powell's job isn't making any sense when he's keeping rates near 20-year highs, despite the fact that inflation is now at a four-year low. | ||
| We're going to get back to your model in natural laws. | ||
| I want to stick with this for a second. | ||
| Tell the audience, what will take place if you're not using deconstruction, the administrative state, the chevron exemption, all that, if you're not able to actually open this up, what normally happens at these Fed meetings? | ||
| And why do you believe it's so important for us to actually see how the sausage is being made? | ||
| It's so important because in that room, there are 19 people who are deciding the cost of how much you pay on your credit card, whether you can afford a mortgage. | ||
| If you can't afford a mortgage, you can't get a home. | ||
| If you can't get a home, you may not be able to start or grow your family. | ||
| You're a small business owner. | ||
| You're a farmer. | ||
| You want to expand your cattle ranch. | ||
| You can't do that if interest rates are near 20-year highs. | ||
| And that's the predicament that we're currently in. | ||
| Let's talk about the way things are right now, Steve, which brought Azoria, the investment firm that I founded and run, that brought Azoria to bring this case against Jerome Powell in federal court today. | ||
| Today's meeting, the meeting that is set to happen next Tuesday and Wednesday at the Federal Reserve, the minutes, the full transcript of that meeting, what was said and by whom, would be delayed, would be withheld by the Federal Reserve until January 2031. | ||
| Imagine if the Federal Trade Commission or the FCC was creating new laws and regulations and was not releasing the deliberations for half a decade. | ||
| The Federal Reserve is arguably the most important economic body in the country. | ||
| They're the least transparent by far and the least accountable by far. | ||
| And so, Steve, even though this lawsuit is entitled Azoria Capital versus Powell, we bring it on behalf of every American who deserves to know what the Federal Reserve has been doing behind closed doors, because none of it makes sense. | ||
| It doesn't make sense when Jerome Powell was cutting by 50 points right before the election, what looks like a political attempt to help Kamala Harris. | ||
| Inflation is lower today, closer to the Fed's target, and he refuses to cut rates at the four meetings that have happened so far this year. | ||
| Likely because Donald J. Trump is the 47th president of the United States. | ||
| Chris Leonard, who wrote the book, Lords of Easy Money, went back. | ||
| The book is such a revelation because you couldn't see the minutes. | ||
| You couldn't see the transcripts until a decade later. | ||
| You're absolutely correct. | ||
| What are you guys going to argue on Monday? | ||
| What is your basic argument to the judge? | ||
| If it hasn't been done in 50 years, doesn't precedent take over, override the Sunshine Laws, sir? | ||
| It's a great question. | ||
| It is a really good question. | ||
| So our immediate argument would be, you've been breaking the law for the last 50 years. | ||
| It doesn't give you an excuse to break the law again. | ||
| The second is that Azoria as an investment firm has unique standing in this case that others may not have. | ||
| And that is that we run an investment firm. | ||
| We have an anti-DEI ETF, Steve. | ||
| It's called SPXM. | ||
| It's available on any brokerage account. | ||
| Because of that ETF and our forthcoming Golden Age ETF, both of which invest in the U.S. Treasury market, we are an active participant in the sort of open market operations and asset purchases that the Fed does. | ||
| So when the Fed sets interest rates and doesn't disclose what sort of policy thinking went into that decision, we are harmed. | ||
| And we would argue we are irreparably harmed by that sort of opacity, by that secrecy. | ||
| And so our argument is that we have unique standing, the Chevron doctrine has been overturned, and that this meeting in particular comes at a time where the public, Republican and Democrat, is rightly concerned that monetary policy under the leadership of Jerome Powell, or lack thereof, is being unduly influenced in a way to undermine the duly elected president of the United States. | ||
| That in turn hurts millions of Americans. | ||
| Mortgage rates, Steve, they're at a 24-year high. | ||
| Credit card rates are at a 25-year high. | ||
| New mortgage origination is down 76%. | ||
| New family home sales are down to the lowest level since 1995. | ||
| All of this lays at the feet of Jerome Powell. | ||
| I think he's a good guy. | ||
| I've met him a couple times when I was a macro trader attending these econometric conferences. | ||
| But I got to tell you the truth: it's not that rates are simply too high, they are artificially too high. | ||
| The natural rate models that we've built at Azuria, that we look at from the New York Federal Reserve, suggest that rates are at least 100 to 175 basis points too high. | ||
| And the President Trump coming out and saying that rates should go 300 lower, that is perhaps a negotiating strategy. | ||
| But we believe rates do need to be a lot lower, a lot faster. | ||
| James, can you hang on for one second? | ||
| I just want to hold you into the next, the audience is loving this. | ||
| I want to make sure we break down and get some analytics here on the rates and the natural rate and all that and what you did as an options trader in rates. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
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| We're going to go to Texas Monday. | ||
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| Short break. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Matt. | |
| So, James, hit rewind for a second. | ||
| President Trump has been hammering this, and yes, I do believe the 300 basis points. | ||
| He believes that, but I think he also knows, knowing his negotiating style, he's trying to drive Powell to a point. | ||
| Walk us through this concept. | ||
| Okay, hang on for a second. | ||
| Yeah, let's go right to Russ Vote at the sticks. | ||
| We'll come back to Jimmy's. | ||
| Interest rates need to come down. | ||
| The country is exploding, and there's this one part that could allow it to go even higher to have relief for families that want to get new mortgages. | ||
| Very, very important. | ||
| We're going to keep asking the questions. | ||
| A lot of still things that we could have done better, a lot cheaper. | ||
| We kind of got, you know, we've seen the paper now. | ||
| You kind of get to see the tunnels, the atriums that didn't exist before, and we're going to continue to ask those kind of questions. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Brus, you guys have avoided linking the idea of lowering interest rates to the president's scrutiny of this project. | |
| But the president's talking about them both at the same time. | ||
| You're talking about them both at the same time. | ||
| How much does the administration's concern about this project have to do with frustration that Jay Powell won't do what the president says he does? | ||
| I think the president's a builder. | ||
| I mean, we've learned, the three of us have learned more in this afternoon seeing him on a job site going around and talking about how he would have done things differently, the expensiveness of something, and you just can't take that away from someone. | ||
| Bill's the same way. | ||
| And so we want this thing to get done cheaply. | ||
| And we want to make sure the taxpayers have as much information about what the state of the facts are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is the president saying he'll back off? | |
| From what you were told and what you saw today on the ground at the Federal Reserve, do you believe that there is fraud happening there like the president's elected? | ||
| We're taking a look. | ||
| Look, Senator Scott's going to continue to have a major document request that either went up tonight or earlier this week or last night and earlier this week. | ||
| We still have questions that we want answered. | ||
| We want the facts, but we're taking a look at it and that will continue. | ||
| But I think what was helpful about today is that we got to see on the ground, when you see something on paper, what's that referring to, and the extensiveness of what they really embarked on. | ||
| Really digging out an entire new basement, a tunnel. | ||
| We don't have a tunnel here between our buildings. | ||
| They have atriums that never existed before. | ||
| Just the extent to which they put up wood on all of the panels, the extent to which air condition was flowing throughout the job. | ||
| There's a lot of things about this that I think would raise questions, and we're going to keep working at it and do this in a very deliberative approach. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the president said that he would fire a project manager who went over budget like this. | |
| Do you believe this is cause for Jerome Powell's removal? | ||
| You guys have always tried to make it this metaphysical conversation about the Fed, and it's not. | ||
| The President has policy views. | ||
| He wants lower interest rates. | ||
| You're asking him about tariffs. | ||
| You're asking him all sorts of things. | ||
| He gets to talk about lower interest rates. | ||
| the same time he gets to talk about his opinions about how he would do a building cheaper. | ||
| The headquarters is three buildings. | ||
| The two that are still in progress are the Eccles and the one that's next door to it with the tunnel, right? | ||
| That is a $3 billion end counting project that started at 1.8. | ||
| It is massively overrun. | ||
| It's massively overrun if you take just the two buildings, nearly a billion dollars of cost overrun. | ||
| So again, we've got a lot of questions. | ||
| Those questions were not satisfied, but we certainly have a better sense of what's going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why did a president today decide to do this almost historic tour, given that's how rare it is for a president? | |
| And also, did this board today do anything to change dynamic or improve the dynamic between the federal terrorist reserve chair Jerome Howe when a president comes in? | ||
| The president is a world-class builder. | ||
| And when he learns that his team is going to go and do a tour of the Federal Reserve that's literally like three blocks down, he's going to want to be a part of it. | ||
| And we were thrilled that he wanted to come along. | ||
| How was Jerome Howe's demeanor? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you find him to be open and making inquiries? | |
| Did you find him to be cordial? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How would you describe it? | |
| I mean, much of it was on television. | ||
| I think they had good conversations, and some of it we weren't privy to, and we're able to really go through the tour and get a sense of what each other were looking at. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All you're looking on right now is about the price tag of these renovations. | |
| Do you know for certain right now how much this has cost to do these renovations? | ||
| No, I don't know for certain. | ||
| I'm going off of third-party information that's been released, and that information search Is going to continue. | ||
| We still want to get to the bottom of the plans that were submitted and how they have changed. | ||
| Those never came back into the National Capital Planning Commission. | ||
| I don't even think they know the costs. | ||
| I don't even think they know the cost. | ||
| The 3.1 billion is important. | ||
| There's a cost overrun. | ||
| You can look, these are the Fed's own internal documents that were FOIA and are published online. | ||
| It went from 1.8, 1.9 to 2.5, and now to 3.1 for the capital expenditures within their own budget for the total renovation and build of the complex. | ||
| So the chair is really splitting hairs there when he's saying, well, that's this building. | ||
| Okay, if you take that building out of it, it's still an inflation from $1.4 billion to $2.5 billion. | ||
| There's no way around it. | ||
| The cost overrun is massive. | ||
| That's our own documentary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If the president does find fraud through this investigation, does that mean the president then would fire Chair Powell? | |
| We are where we are, which is we want lower interest rates. | ||
| The president, that is his policy view. | ||
| He thinks it's vital to the country economically. | ||
| And we are also on a host of issues, this one being one that is front and center today, trying to do things cheaper on behalf of the American taxpayer. | ||
| And there's a lot of ways you could have done this differently. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If the Ped cuts rates, is the president going to drop this inquiry? | |
| If the Penn cuts rates, will he drop the inquiry? | ||
| He's approaching this as a builder. | ||
| We want to get this done. | ||
| So we want a project to get done unrelated to interest rates. | ||
| That's what's important. | ||
| You know, it's on the national mall. | ||
| It needs to get done as soon as possible. | ||
| And we can't have the situation where this is hanging over the country's head. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Press: Did you realize that the President would have the power to fire a venture if he chose to? | |
| I think the president every day almost at this point answers that he's not really thinking about that right now. | ||
| I mean, how many press conferences this week has that question been posed to the president? | ||
| No, I think he's a builder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He cares about the cost. | |
| The costs have gotten out of control. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And then separately, you know, we run, the president runs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. | |
| In his first term, people were able to buy a mortgage for 3%. | ||
| These days, after Biden's inflation and what happened with rates, now you're looking at 7% mortgages. | ||
| So this is of great concern to the president, but I view them very differently as two different things. | ||
| You can't help be a builder and be the president of the United States and see these cost overruns and not ask a bunch of questions. | ||
| Is the president trying to pressure Chair Powell to lower interest rates? | ||
| Is that what this is about? | ||
| I mean, he stood right next to him and said, I think rates should be lower. | ||
| At the same moment, you guys are there investigating the Fed. | ||
| Is this a pressure campaign? | ||
| Again, you can answer it the same way many different times. | ||
| The president has a policy view about lower interest rates that, as Bill said, is vitally important to the country economically and for the pocketbooks of the American people. | ||
| And he is a builder that looks at largesse and just automatically starts to think about how what he would do in that situation. | ||
| I think the Fed learned a lot today based on those conversations. | ||
| We certainly learned a lot, and it's going to inform the questions that we're going to continue to ask to get to the bottom of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What did you see today that surprised you? | |
| What did you see today that surprised you? | ||
| I think the extent to which the degree to which they had to build down into the basement and really essentially jack the entire building up to do some of these things. | ||
| I mean, remember, this was a building that was renovated between 1999 and over a three or four year period. | ||
| So the notion that it's never seen any kind of renovation since the 1930s, there's more to that story. | ||
| And so that, and that's still, they're still at the very beginnings of that renovation. | ||
| So this is a long way to go. | ||
| But that's what I was talking about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much about Thank you. | |
| Given the concern on the cost here, and that is exactly what y'all have been talking about, what the president's been talking about, Who is responsible for giving the president accurate information about what the cost is? | ||
| Because Veterans Powell was correcting them online for the first time. | ||
| No, he wasn't. | ||
| What the president pulled out of his pocket. | ||
| No, the president pulled out of his pocket a page from the FOIA request of the Fed's own internal documents that is available on their website. | ||
| So when do you think there's a third million years? | ||
| No. | ||
| What the president is saying is the entire construction project that's going on, which is a build and renovation project over the last number of years, is currently at $3.1 billion. | ||
| And what the Fed chair was saying was, no, no, you have to take one of the buildings out of it. | ||
| Well, no, it's all one project on the whole complex. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If the building was already done and it's not part of what your issues are right now. | |
| I don't know what you're saying. | ||
| If you go back and look, and the president's looked at the forums, they're right there. | ||
| You can see every single year, they put out the FOIAs for every single year, and every single year the numbers have gone up for this project. | ||
| What number is that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you saying that the number they held wrong and the one the president had is accurate in your assessment? | |
| I think what the Fed chair is doing is splitting hairs in that moment to try to drive down the top-line costs for what we're talking about. | ||
| Oh, yes, we believe our numbers are accurate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| They're their numbers. | ||
| Again, the president was citing their numbers from their forms that they have published. | ||
| We did not FOIA it. | ||
| It's available right now on the Fed's website. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So James. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead, right here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You want to see this project sped up and go faster. | |
| What are the specific actions you intend to take next? | ||
| Does that mean you're not going to halt the project? | ||
| Who will have the ultimate decision over the next steps? | ||
| The president said that, you know, we are where we are. | ||
| The project has to be done now. | ||
| It'd be nice if they don't have more cost overruns. | ||
| But, I mean, Bill's got a long way to go. | ||
| And at this point, it's just kind of got to get done. | ||
| Building's got a long way to go. | ||
| It's got a long way to go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're saying that concerns about interest rates and the cost of this renovation are two separate things. | |
| But are you concerned about the message it sends to markets to have the president visiting the bed something that hasn't happened in 20 years and publicly saying on television, lower interest rates, that is a road to the independence? | ||
| No, I think the market should like it. | ||
| You have a president who's engaged. | ||
| He's a builder, and he also understands interest rates. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Remember, building and construction is also very much tied to interest rates. | |
| This is a president who understands interest rates better than any president before. | ||
| He's crushed inflation. | ||
| In his first term, we had 3% mortgages. | ||
| Now we have 7% mortgages. | ||
| Costs have doubled. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People can't afford mortgages because of the last four years under Biden. | |
| And so we need to get these rates down. | ||
| We can get rates down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And that would have a booming effect on the housing market and the mortgage market. | |
| And as for the market reaction, I mean, this is not a new concept. | ||
| This is a very public discussion. | ||
| The market continues to go up. | ||
| The revenue of the country continues to go up. | ||
| There was a budget surplus last month of $28 billion. | ||
| Just yesterday or two days ago, the president announced a huge trade deal with Japan. | ||
| I mean, let's stop speaking in hypotheticals. | ||
| Let's just look at what's happening. | ||
| This conversation is being had in public. | ||
| The market is reacting every day. | ||
| The market is going up. | ||
| The job numbers are improving. | ||
| Every economic indicator is going in the right direction. | ||
| And if we can just look back to last year, go back to last summer, every Democrat that's now silent was calling for the interest rates to be lowered. | ||
| Every single one of them. | ||
| Now they're completely silent now that President Trump is in office. | ||
| But one year ago, they said the rates are too high and they were calling for it all the way leading up until the election. | ||
| The economy is markedly better now than it was then. | ||
| So our question would be, where are the Democrats on this? | ||
| Mortgage rates are too high. | ||
| Credit card interest rates are too high. | ||
| All loan rates are too high. | ||
| They felt that way a year ago. | ||
| Everything is better now. | ||
| Why don't they feel that way today? | ||
| It doesn't make any sense. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Democrats own the high rates and they own the mortgage rates. | |
| And them not coming out and saying we need lower mortgage rates. | ||
| Bill Paul says otherwise. | ||
| From the Trump administration, you got James Blair's the head of the political group inside the White House, the West Wing. | ||
| He's hammering the media. | ||
| And of course, the great Russ Vogt, making a very compelling argument about, and Pal, yo, dude, you're the head of the Federal Reserve. | ||
| You've got to have the basic understanding of the math. | ||
| Pretty good screw-up or misdirection play if the guys are right. | ||
| And I think as I've checked it, they're right. | ||
| Short commercial break, back in the warm in a moment. | ||
| ...and the organs that they're in right now are wanting to have their first home. | ||
| Appreciate their leader. | ||
| They are. | ||
| There's a very ambiguous argument. | ||
| Well, we're not really sure with tariffs. | ||
| Well, I don't know how you're not sure with tariffs. | ||
| The president talks about it every single day. | ||
| The plan is very transparent. | ||
| And what the president predicted would happen with tariffs is happening. | ||
| Money's coming into the country. | ||
| Prices are not going up. | ||
| Inflation is not going up. | ||
| Again, we ran a surplus last month. | ||
| It's just a very arbitrary argument, I think, in our view, that they've been making to keep rates where they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Last question. | |
| You've been focused on this particular project in the Federal Reserve, but it costs more in the United States to build infrastructure more than any other comparable nation in the Are you looking into a system-wide problem or is it just one project? | ||
| We always can. | ||
| We're very interested in infrastructure. | ||
| The president's always been infrastructure president. | ||
| Those policy processes like NEPA reform are always a part of our deregulatory agenda and priorities. | ||
| There is something unique about this project and some of the decisions that were made that have caused a kind of a different level, a heightened level of concern that we're going to keep asking questions about. | ||
| And I don't expect that to continue. | ||
| But thanks back to you. | ||
| On that issue? | ||
| On what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On changing the way that the federal government spends money to build things? | |
| We're always working in conjunction with Congress. | ||
| They just passed one big, beautiful bill, all sorts of things that allow us to have cheaper energy, a better tax regime. | ||
| Our view right now with this project is that there are things that can certainly be done better, and we still want to get to the bottom of unanswered questions that we have. | ||
| Thank you guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| James, Bill Pulte, James Blair, the political director of Pulte, and of course the Grace Russ vote. | ||
| The reason we played that in its entirety was to see a confrontational press and what amazing staff they have over there that will not back down. | ||
| Those three guys right there are just, hey, here are the facts. | ||
| No brag, just fact. | ||
| We've got James Fish back up for this block. | ||
| James, you heard the back and forth. | ||
| Walk through the mathematical argument why you and the President of the United States are correct and Jerome Powell is wrong, sir. | ||
| The honor to Steve. | ||
| The mathematical argument is actually one that's not necessarily mathematical in nature. | ||
| I want to bring up Jerome Powell's own speech from Jackson Hole at the annual policy conference. | ||
| It was entitled Natural Amongst the Stars from August of 2019. | ||
| This is the Jerome Powell that President Trump appointed, the one that I respected. | ||
| And what he said was, the natural rate is not a precise mathematical formula, but you judge the natural rate by how the economy is responding to interest rates. | ||
| So for example, if mortgages are higher than normal, if you're seeing larger than normal home activity and origination activity, that would suggest that the interest rate is below that level. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's just... | |
| Interesting only home sales list in 30 years, that would suggest that rates are too high versus natural. | ||
| If you are seeing mortgage originations down 76% in the past four years, that would suggest that interest rates are above the natural level. | ||
| They're artificially high. | ||
| And so what we do at Azori is we've built out this econometric model to better understand the economic outcomes. | ||
| If they are below the baseline, we then say that the natural rate is far lower than the artificial rates that are currently being set by the Federal Reserve. | ||
| I want to make it very clear. | ||
| Jerome Powell is the Anthony Fauci of economics. | ||
| He is wrong, he is smug, and he is completely non-transparent and unaccountable. | ||
| That's why my investment firm, Azoria, brought this federal case against Jerome Powell this morning in D.C. federal court. | ||
| And that's why we just learned 30 minutes ago that a judge appointed by, of all people, President Barack Obama, has ordered an emergency hearing on our TRO, on our temporary restraining order seat. | ||
| That order, if we are successful, we'll know on Monday afternoon, would block Jerome Powell from holding next week's Fed meeting behind closed doors. | ||
| Americans from all walks of life deserve to know how and why the Fed is choosing to keep interest rates near 20-year highs, even though President Trump is delivering the lowest inflation in four years. | ||
| James, on social media, where do people go to find out more about your investment fund and more about this case? | ||
| Yes, investazoria.com is the place to go. | ||
| Our investment fund, Steve, is an anti-DEI ETF. | ||
| It buys the same stocks as the S ⁇ P 500 funds that we all know and love, except it removes the 38 stocks, Nike, Starbucks, Airbnb, Intel, that have doubled down on disastrous DEI quotas that our research at Azoria shows drives massive stock underperformance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So the math is simple. | |
| When you have a portfolio and you kick out the stocks that underperform, you are poised to outperform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What we are seeing is folks sell their S ⁇ P 500 ETFs and buy SPXM instead. | |
| It is a better way to belong President Trump's golden age stock market without having any exposure to the DEI laggers and losers that hold back our portfolios. | ||
| James, thank you very much. | ||
| Great maiden voyage here in the war room. | ||
| The timing was exquisite. | ||
| Thank you so much, sir. | ||
| Look forward to having you back on. | ||
| My pleasure, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
God bless. | |
| James Fishback, bringing the heat as only he can. | ||
| President Trump, historic today, only the third time in the history of the Republic. | ||
| I think you know why. | ||
| Mike Lindell, you're loose. | ||
| I keep hearing reports that you're loose in D.C. Before we got, we don't have Lindell. | ||
| Oh, I had him, dropped him. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| Next hour, next hour, we're going to have, we've got Todd Blanche is on his way back from the prison down in Talanasty, where he met, I think they actually went over to the U.S. Attorney's Office. | ||
| I'm not sure they met in the prison itself. | ||
| We'll do a report on that. | ||
| Also, Tulsi Gabbard, understand that they are looking for right now, they are looking towards this task force to start putting up a couple of U.S. attorneys. | ||
| People need to be indicted. | ||
| People need to be perp walked. | ||
| People need to be prosecuted. | ||
| What's happening? | ||
| We're going to get into all that in the next hour. | ||
| Also, we've tracked down Mike Lindell. | ||
| Mike Lindell is back in Washington, D.C., and we've been hearing great reports all day. | ||
| Make sure you go check out the end of the dollar empire, birchgold.com slash Bannon. | ||
| Seven free installments. | ||
| We're working on the eighth post-Rio. | ||
| Look at the analysis between fiat currency and gold, right? | ||
| You also take out your phone and text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N at 989898, to get the ultimate guide, which happens to be free for investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. | ||
| I've got something up on Getter. | ||
| Maybe I'll pull that for the next hours. | ||
| The Chinese Communist Party getting out of bonds, getting out of bonds and getting into gold. | ||
| Kind of record rates. | ||
| Part of their de-dollarization movement. | ||
| Okay, short commercial break. | ||
| The six o'clock hour is going to be on fire. |
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