Aug. 14, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:25
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Headline number is whoppingly big. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| Up nine-tenths of a percent. | ||
| Up nine-tenths. | ||
| And if you strip out food and energy, guess what? | ||
| It's still up nine-tenths. | ||
| Boy, that equals June of 22 year to March of 22 on the headline to find a bigger number. | ||
| On the core number, that would come to March of 22 since we've had a number of that magnitude when it was 1.2%. | ||
| These are kind of COVID-distorted numbers. | ||
| Now, let's look at ex-food, energy, and trade. | ||
| Triple the expectations. | ||
| All three of those were expected to be up two-tenths. | ||
| This is up six-tenths. | ||
| Six-tenths would be the highest level since March of 22 when it was nine tenths. | ||
| Now, let's go year over year. | ||
| These are warm too. | ||
| 3.7. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| I'm getting ahead of myself. | ||
| Final demand year over year is 3.3. | ||
| We're expecting 2.5. | ||
| Now, 3.3, that would be the highest since February. | ||
| The high watermark was January this year at 3.8. | ||
| Now, 2.8 is X food, energy, and trade. | ||
| That is definitely higher than 2.5 expected. | ||
| 2.8 would be the highest since March. | ||
| And right in the middle there, we have X just food and energy. | ||
| That number coming in at 3.7. | ||
| I kept it for last because that really is a very, very large number. | ||
| Here's a bit of good news: 224,000. | ||
| That's down 3,000 from a slightly revised 227. | ||
| And we're the 12th consecutive week above 1.9 million and continuing claims, 1,953,000. | ||
| Once again, it all gets stacked up pretty tight. | ||
| And both of them are every month are pretty much at all time highs. | ||
| So you're right. | ||
| We may go sideways some months. | ||
| We may even have small downturns. | ||
| But for the most part, what everybody watching hates about pricing is the fact that it compounds like compounded interest. | ||
| And even when it shuts itself down, yes, going down is a whole new ballgame that we never talk about that the Fed isn't even concerned about. | ||
| The Fed doesn't care if prices really go down. | ||
| They just want them to stop going up. | ||
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
| Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. | ||
| Here's 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 try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big line? | ||
| 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
|
War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | ||
| War Room. | ||
| It's Thursday, 14 August in the year of our Lord 2025. | ||
| We had today on the inflation numbers, what we would call, I don't know, maybe not a bad print, but definitely not a good one. | ||
| Joe Lavarnier from Treasury is a scheduled. | ||
| They're figuring out some things over there. | ||
| He's going to come on and talk to us. | ||
| And I think the issue there is not tariffs. | ||
| I think you've seen the tariff impact earlier. | ||
| But I believe it is, part of it is tied to spending. | ||
| And we're going to have Wade Miller on from CRA. | ||
| You know, where are the rescissions packages? | ||
| Where are the pocket rescissions? | ||
| Where's the impoundments? | ||
| We have to get this. | ||
| You know, Kobayasi put up this 12 tweet thread yesterday. | ||
| He put up a 12 tweet thread that walked through how tariffs and particularly money coming into the Treasury, I think they figured it's going to be $350 billion this year. | ||
| But he ended it by saying, hey, this situation with spending is still out of control and has to be addressed. | ||
| It has to be addressed right now with rescissions, pocket rescissions, and or impoundments. | ||
| We're going to get to all that. | ||
| Also, this may be one of the most important weekends in President Trump's history in the presidency, both his first and second term. | ||
| It's about institutions. | ||
| He'll be heading out to Alaska tomorrow to meet with Putin. | ||
| This is already looking like it's going to be an economic discussion, right? | ||
| It looks like the beginning of a rapprochement and that Ukraine and the ceasefire or ending the war there is part of that, as we've said, but not all of it. | ||
| Also, you have the grand juries, you have us attacking and going after the deep state and trying to take it apart. | ||
| Scott Besson, Secretary of Treasury, first time, he's been pretty adamant. | ||
| I mean, he's been very reserved about this, calling for a 150 basis point cut to the Federal Reserve, saying that they just structurally have the interest rates calculated incorrectly. | ||
| E.J. and Tony, we're going to talk more about EJ later. | ||
| They came up with a photo of E.J. in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6th, and NBC went absolutely nuts on this. | ||
| I think it makes E.J. actually more based. | ||
| I didn't know that about E.J. makes us even want to be more. | ||
| There we are right there, E.J. We're going to get to all this and the seizing of the institutions, both in Washington, D.C. with the deployment of troops and also culturally from the Kennedy Center to the Smithsonian Institute. | ||
| Ambassador Grinnell will be here, Roger Kimball. | ||
| So we're absolutely packed this morning. | ||
| I want to start with Joe Lavarnier over at Treasury. | ||
| So, Joe, you would call this in your Wall Street days maybe not a great print. | ||
| Walk me through the numbers here because affordability, you know, prices are going to be everything in affordability. | ||
| And, you know, we haven't dealt with spending. | ||
| We're going to have Wade Miller on about this. | ||
| Walk me through Treasury's perspective on today's numbers, sir. | ||
| So the numbers came out higher than street expectations, Steve. | ||
| Of course, that was after numerous months where the street was surprised to the downside. | ||
| The key point is that most of the effect was in the services side. | ||
| Services were up over 1%. | ||
| Core goods prices were up only four-tenths of a percent. | ||
| And most important of all, Steve, is we've got data also through July. | ||
| You are seeing no effect whatsoever of the tariffs on consumer prices. | ||
| So when you look at tariffs, all the money started to come in in April. | ||
| We're running at nearly $100 billion in tariff revenue since April. | ||
| And over that time, all consumer goods prices, they're not even up 1% at annualized rate. | ||
| Apparel prices are basically flat. | ||
| Auto prices since then, since the tariff revenue picked up, are down over 2% annualized. | ||
| So while today's PPI surprised people to the upside, consumers, households, they are not seeing these higher prices. | ||
| Doesn't this portend, though, that this could roll through and the actual numbers to consumers we could see in a couple of months? | ||
| Are you guys concerned about that? | ||
| Steve, it could happen. | ||
| But again, we're taking in now $30 billion in revenue a month. | ||
| Why wouldn't it show up already in consumer prices? | ||
| Remember, the street, the overwhelming consensus was we were going to see it in consumer prices in March. | ||
| It didn't happen in March, June, July. | ||
| So, I mean, could it happen? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But it seems at this point, it's highly unlikely, given the fact we've been taking in record tariff revenues. | ||
| Demand is improving. | ||
| We look at weekly change store sales. | ||
| They're really robust. | ||
| There's just no evidence at this point that it's going to be passed along. | ||
| I mean, President Trump has been exactly correct on this. | ||
| For this conversation, assume you're pretty good on the analytics. | ||
| It's not tariffs, and that's not rolling through. | ||
| The numbers themselves, is this because of which our theory the case is, is because we still have a Keynesian stimulus with this massive, the massive deficits. | ||
| And I keep warning people, I know what the games are being played on Capitol Hill, and this audience knows the games. | ||
| The Senate's going to come back. | ||
| You're not going to have the individual appropriations bills done. | ||
| And they're going to put an omnibus slide in the third week of September and say, gosh, we don't want to shut down President Trump's government. | ||
| So we've got to do an omnibus. | ||
| And that omnibus is going to have a two, two and a half trillion deficit for fiscal year 26 coming off of, I don't know, a $2 trillion deficit we're going to have now. | ||
| Don't we have to, at some point, grapple with the spending and particularly the deficit spending if we want to get rid of this inflation, sir? | ||
| We certainly need to deal with the deficit for a whole host of reasons. | ||
| And the point, Steve, you're raising is key because President Trump now knows this. | ||
| He's got the experience. | ||
| He's got the vigilance on this, as does Secretary Besson. | ||
| The good news on the deficit is that if you look at the spending numbers, they really started to accelerate last summer going into the fall. | ||
| The cynic would say that's because someone wanted to lift the spending numbers to increase the chance they would win in the election. | ||
| When President Trump took office, so if we look at the deficit numbers, which they were running way ahead of 24, the numbers now are starting to shrink. | ||
| In other words, the administration, this administration has been slowing the pace of spending. | ||
| We're almost neck and neck with where we were last year at this time in the fiscal year-to-date budget deficit. | ||
| We should get very good tariff revenues in August and September, which makes me upbeat. | ||
| I'm hopeful, Steve, what you say on this omnibus bill doesn't come to pass. | ||
| And as I said, I think President Trump is now much wiser to the ways of Washington and hopefully he'll push back against it. | ||
| Secretary Besson's objective, I think we're at 7% deficits to GDP, right? | ||
| And that's unsustainable. | ||
| You saw that in France. | ||
| You know, every country in Europe that's got this problem has had either a change of their parliament or a change of government. | ||
| It's just not sustainable in today's capital markets. | ||
| Secretary Besson said, hey, over time, what I want to do is bend the arc and get to 3%, 3.5%. | ||
| Do you think currently where we stand in spending in fiscal year 25, which is still happening, right? | ||
| And I realize there's been a couple of surprises there, although the tariff revenue's coming in in record numbers. | ||
| There's still some surprises on size of monthly deficits. | ||
| Do you believe at Treasury that you guys are on the arc or on the path to bend the arc of this to get down to 3%, 3.5% deficit to GDP, sir? | ||
| Absolutely, Steve. | ||
| In the One Big Beautiful bill, spending relative to baseline was cut $1.5 trillion. | ||
| That's a start, and we're hopeful we could continue to make further progress. | ||
| Moreover, if we grow at 3%, which is consistent with President Trump's first term, we are going to raise roughly $4 trillion and more revenue just on the growth relative to what CBO is predicting. | ||
| You mentioned the tariffs. | ||
| That could be upwards of another $3 trillion. | ||
| So the growth and the tariffs together could do a lot. | ||
| And I'm hopeful, I'm an optimist, Steve, that we'll do more on the spending side. | ||
| But right now, we've made great progress. | ||
| We're optimists. | ||
| As President Trump and Secretary Besson have been alluding to, we're at the start of a golden age. | ||
| There's a lot to be thankful for. | ||
| But as you said earlier, we've got to make sure that the spending doesn't somehow sneak in there and get ahead of us because we've made some great progress. | ||
| No, I think you got growth. | ||
| You got so many things clicking. | ||
| It's been pretty obvious if you follow, we follow pretty closely Secretary Besson, on all of his hits over the last, I don't know, a couple of days, I would say up to the last week, affordability is the mantra. | ||
| It keeps coming back to that. | ||
| Keeps coming back to Main Street and affordability. | ||
| And if you see these numbers today, what will you and the team that advises Secretary Besson be talking about vis-a-vis affordability? | ||
| Well, you know what's interesting, Steve, this is a bit of a number being a numbers geek. | ||
| One of the big drivers on the good side was capital equipment. | ||
| Prices of capital equipment went up. | ||
| And that likely reflects this massive capex comeback we're having that was engineered by excitement around the One Big Beautiful bill. | ||
| As that now works its way through the system and companies invest more, countries bring capital in, that is going to increase the economy's supply side potential. | ||
| Just like in the first Trump administration, that will lower prices. | ||
| It will increase living standards. | ||
| So affordability will continue to get better over time. | ||
| As interest rates come down, housing affordability, because affordability to buy a house is very low because rates are too high, that will also improve. | ||
| So again, the forward, the outlook is excellent, especially as President Trump's policies are taking hold. | ||
| To get to that 3.5% to 4% growth. | ||
| Joe Lavornier, where do people go on your social media to find all your analytics, sir? | ||
| At LaVornomics, Steve. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Appreciate you coming out here this morning, sir. | ||
| Thank you, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Treasury is aggressive. | |
| I'd like to get HHS like that. | ||
| I think inside the government we need to be boom. | ||
| Let's be in sales mode. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You got a lot to sell. | ||
| Get out there and talk about it. | ||
| Put forth your best arguments. | ||
| A massive 48 to 72 hours. | ||
| We'll be covering all live here in the war room this afternoon, tomorrow, Saturday. | ||
| Not just the Russian Rapprochement. | ||
| It's so much seizing the institutions blowback. | ||
| Gavin Newsome, I think it's 11.30 Pacific Daylight Time. | ||
| He's coming out, throwing down hard. | ||
| He's running for president on this. | ||
| He's saying that he is going to propose a map today in California that he will get constitutionally changed. | ||
| They can do it. | ||
| That will not only thwart the efforts we're doing in Texas and in Florida, but that will lead to the impeachment of President Trump. | ||
| So it's game on. | ||
| Of course, the feckless, textless leadership of Abbott, quite embarrassing. | ||
| They're ending one session a day, going to start another. | ||
| We're going to get into all of it. | ||
| It sees the Institutions Day in the war room. | ||
|
unidentified
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Kill America's Voice family. | |
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It's where I put up exclusively all of my content 24 hours a day. | |
| You want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? | ||
| Go to Getter. | ||
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That's right. | |
| You can follow all of your favorites. | ||
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Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack the Soviet, and so many more. | |
| Download the Getter app now, sign up for free, and be part of the new pick. | ||
| Bigger than just what is happening in D.C. with the police force, the National Guard being deployed on the streets. | ||
| They're expanding that tonight, as what we've been told by the White House. | ||
| He was at the Kennedy Center today. | ||
| You know, the other day he was calling it the Trump slash Kennedy Center, saying, whoops. | ||
| I mean, the Kennedy Center. | ||
| Obviously, he's handpicking these nominees and these honorees that are going to get honored later on this year. | ||
| I wonder what you make of that, plus the Smithsonian, just this wide lens of what exactly he has been undertaking in the last few weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
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Look, the narrow lens in terms of the Kennedy Center honors and specifically, say, Gloria Gaynor, who's obviously a very talented musician, but it feels like to some extent an extended Trump rally playlist. | |
| The broader sense, to your question about culture, he is trying not just to leave an imprint on the type of culture that exists in Washington, D.C. and in the rest of the country, but he is trying to control what that could be. | ||
| Now, what his supporters will say is that when it comes to the Smithsonian, it's just a review. | ||
| They haven't done anything yet, but they actually have done a lot of things across the board in other ways that suggest exactly where their head is. | ||
| And so, yes, this is a, they have long, the Trump administration and Republicans have long complained about cancel culture, quote unquote, but they are now imposing a different kind of cultural control. | ||
| Seriousness, we can joke about this and say, oh, this is just the arts. | ||
| Okay, but then take it to the Smithsonian. | ||
| Take it to, we are watching this administration change history, right? | ||
| Change how the public receives history and our most important music. | ||
| I have a lot of worries. | ||
| And obviously there are parallels to Stalin here. | ||
| And so there are concerning things. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I think that the Smithsonian staff is pretty steeped in history. | ||
| They're pretty serious people, pretty woke. | ||
| And God willing, if we ever get out of this nightmare that we're living, I don't think history is going to be erased forever. | ||
| We have an internet, you know, we have books. | ||
| I don't think Donald Trump is that powerful. | ||
| The temptation is bad. | ||
| Like the fact that he wants to do it is bad. | ||
| I don't like it, but I just have, I have more pressing concerns. | ||
| Happy Debbie Downer again. | ||
|
unidentified
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Cheers. | |
| You have 20 seconds. | ||
| The letter that was sent was by the domestic policy advisor. | ||
|
unidentified
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Domestic policy advisor is involved in education, healthcare, every single facet of the American public. | |
| If that person is involved in revising Smithsonian history, we're in some deep doo-doo. | ||
| I'm just really dismayed by how the media apparatus being rose to the collective occasion here on this one. | ||
| We got, this is, it's crazy, but it's intentional. | ||
| And they're doing it because you take a hold of the culture because then you can control what is popular, what is real, what is inspirational or not. | ||
| Donald Trump is coming right out of the Orban playbook, baby. | ||
| This is Stalin. | ||
| This is Stalin. | ||
| Or tongues. | ||
| All your favorite dictators. | ||
| This is what they like to do. | ||
| Ambassador Rick Renel joins us now, the executive director over at the Kennedy Center. | ||
| Ambassador Grinnell got a personal shout out from the President of the United States yesterday and after the announcements. | ||
| Ambassador, can you tell us what's going on at the Kennedy Center? | ||
| We could have played hours of meltdown last night on MSNBC and CNN about the event yesterday. | ||
| Can you put this in perspective for us, sir? | ||
| Well, I kind of love the fact that the New York Times elitist, Maggie Haberman, doesn't like Gloria Gaynor, the black woman who is a celebrated hero to not only the disco movement, but to music. | ||
| And the fact that she, Maggie Haberman, decides to just go after Gloria Gaynor, I think says a whole lot about who the elites at the New York Times are targeting. | ||
| They don't like people to speak out of turn. | ||
| They certainly attack a whole bunch of female Republicans or pro-life Republicans or gay Republicans or people of color Republicans. | ||
| They want this whole situation to be controlled. | ||
| And so when they're losing control, they somehow say, oh, the other side is taking control. | ||
| But see, let's just be really clear. | ||
| We have a list of Kennedy Center honorees who the public has been asking for. | ||
| If you looked at the Kennedy Center website and the comment section, these are individuals that have been, the public has been asking to win the awards for years. | ||
| Now, they've been dismissed. | ||
| They haven't been given the chance. | ||
| But we need to take back places like the Kennedy Center from the woke left who took it and strangled it. | ||
| And what we're trying to do is bring it back to life, financially bring it back to life, have common sense programming that appeals to everyone. | ||
| Remember, this is a fact, and I would remind Maggie Haberman about this. | ||
| We have never canceled a single thing at the Kennedy Center. | ||
| The people who left are the ones who ran out of the room because they couldn't perform for conservatives. | ||
| We are proud of the fact that we haven't canceled anyone. | ||
| We've made one simple change to the programming, which is if you can't sell enough seats for your program to pay the bills, then you need to find a sponsor so that we don't go in debt with all of the programming. | ||
| Now, I actually do love niche programming in the arts. | ||
| I'm willing to do it when I have some money, but we have just been in a situation, financial situation, that we're trying to dig ourselves out of here at the Kennedy Center. | ||
| And we're doing a good job. | ||
| We have balanced the budget for this year and for next year. | ||
| We've made some very hard cuts, and we've made demands that the programming needs to be revenue neutral. | ||
| I don't think that that's partisan. | ||
| I think transparency is not partisan. | ||
| What we're trying to do is spend the money wisely and appeal to everyone. | ||
| Again, we're not the crowd that's booing people when they show up at a program at the Kennedy Center because we don't agree with someone's politics. | ||
| It's the woke left that ran out of the room with Hamilton. | ||
| It's the woke left that boos people when they enter the room because they don't like their beliefs and the issues that they stand for. | ||
| And so I just want everyone to be welcome. | ||
| I don't care who you voted for. | ||
| You need to come to the Kennedy Center, buy a ticket, enjoy being entertained by Broadway shows like Les Miz, which had a outstanding run, more than 30% above projections. | ||
| We made money on Les Miz. | ||
| We didn't lose money. | ||
| You know, when I went over for the Amadeus, which was spectacular with the Coral Society, the National Symphony, the film Pact House, I was impressed by the staff that came up to me and were so thankful the president actually come with you and done a complete tour, not just the operations, but the building itself and made recommendations. | ||
| I think a lot of us knew that President Trump being a builder and his focus on rejuvenating the beauty, as he said yesterday, the great bones of the Kennedy Center, knew, Ambassador, that you had him very involved in that. | ||
| I think what surprised a lot of us pleasantly was how involved on the content side. | ||
| Correct me if I'm wrong, is the president, is he going to actually host the Kennedy Center Awards? | ||
| And was he actively involved in the selection here? | ||
| Because I think yesterday seemed so personal from him. | ||
| It took a lot of us pleasantly by surprise. | ||
| Look, we've had multiple committees of people who have been nominating different people to win the awards, right? | ||
| We probably had 300 different people that we considered, people that were not on the list before. | ||
| One of the rules that we have is if you won it once, you don't get to win it twice. | ||
| And so these would all be brand new people from a whole bunch of different genres. | ||
| And then the system that we have in place here at the Kennedy Center began to narrow it down. | ||
| And then the board got involved. | ||
| So we've had multiple committees, the board of which President Trump is the chairman, and he's had an opinion on all of this as well. | ||
| And so it's been an incredibly collaborative process. | ||
| And what we decided is to really make this the best honors that it could be, let's have the president of the United States come out, welcome people. | ||
| Let's have the president of the United States talk about each of these five people. | ||
| I can't think of a better honor for the five honorees than to have the president of the United States, no matter who it is, talk about their life career, talk about all of the great things that they've done. | ||
| This is the most honored moment I could think of is to have the president fully involved. | ||
| Luckily, we have a president right now who can come out and do live television, who can do audience content. | ||
| And we haven't had a president in the past that's been able to do that. | ||
| So I think that this is a fantastic moment for the Kennedy Center, a fantastic moment for the five honorees to have the president of the United States give us the time and attention to honor these individuals. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm really excited about it. | |
| Ambassador, what's your social media handle? | ||
| You're wearing about 10 caps right now, doing great work around the world, whether in Eurasia and Latin America and in our own beloved nation's capital for the President of the United States. | ||
| Where do people go to keep up with you? | ||
| Thanks, Steve. | ||
| I'm on Twitter at Richard Grinnell. | ||
| I'm on Truth at Grinnell. | ||
| I'm on Instagram at Richard Grinnell. | ||
| And give a follow. | ||
| From Los Angeles to Venezuela to the Eurasian landmass, the Balkans, in Washington, D.C., the Kennedy Center. | ||
| Ambassador Rick Grinnell. | ||
| Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us this morning in the war room. | ||
| Thanks, my friend. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| This is called Seizing the Institution. | ||
| President Trump, you see, very involved with the board. | ||
| 300. | ||
| So let's put the rest, this false smear by the left. | ||
| 300 people considered. | ||
| I know that there were hundreds considered. | ||
| I might actually have thrown in a couple of names myself as recommendations. | ||
| An incredibly complicated process, collaborative, all the way to the board, different subcommittees, and selected. | ||
| And I got to tell you, I think he hit it dead spot on. | ||
| This is going to be the biggest award ceremony of the season, finally, to put the Kennedy Center Awards, the nominees, and have the President of the United States intimately involved. | ||
| Seize the institutions from Washington, D.C., next. | ||
| The repository of our history, the Smithsonian Institute, with Roger Kimball. | ||
|
unidentified
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Joke about This and say, oh, this is just the arts. | |
| Okay, but then take it to the Smithsonian. | ||
| Take it to, we are watching this administration change history, right? | ||
| Change how the public receives history in our most important. | ||
| I have a lot of worries. | ||
| And obviously, there are parallels to Stalin here. | ||
| And so there are concerning things. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| I think that the Smithsonian staff is pretty steeped in history. | ||
| They're pretty serious people, pretty woke. | ||
| And God willing, if we ever get out of this nightmare that we're living, I don't think history is going to be erased forever. | ||
| We have an internet now. | ||
| We have books. | ||
| I don't think Donald Trump is that powerful. | ||
| The temptation is bad. | ||
| Like the fact that he wants to do it is bad. | ||
| I don't like it. | ||
| But I just have more pressing concerns. | ||
| Maybe Debbie Downer again. | ||
| The letter that was sent was by the domestic policy advisor. | ||
|
unidentified
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Domestic policy advisor is involved in education, healthcare, every single facet of the American public. | |
| If that person is involved in revising Smithsonian history, we're in some deep duty. | ||
| Yeah, Stephen, he'd be talking about Stephen Miller and Vince Haley, the head of the Domestic Policy Council and the Deputy Chief of Staff and Vince Haley. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And Vince, Vince, great job, Eddie Boy. | ||
| But that guy right there got it and how serious this is. | ||
| So, Roger Kimball, is this Stalin? | ||
| Or are we rewriting history here? | ||
| Tim Miller, formerly Bush's spokesman. | ||
| And I knew Tim back when he was a cub. | ||
| He was head of the RNC's comms department. | ||
| People ought to embrace that. | ||
| Tim sitting there saying the Smithsonian are serious people. | ||
| They've been putting out serious history. | ||
| Roger Kimball, what say you, sir? | ||
| Well, I thought that was the funniest thing I've heard in quite a while. | ||
| And I like the conjunction of he described the staff of the Smithsonian as woke, which is probably true. | ||
| And then in the same breath, said that they were serious people. | ||
| Those two things do not go together. | ||
| If you are woke, by definition, you are not serious. | ||
| And what is, I am just amazed at what President Trump is doing. | ||
| From the moment he took office, one of his first acts, of course, was to eradicate the racist practice of DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion in universities and throughout the federal government. | ||
| Bravo. | ||
| But issuing an executive order is one thing. | ||
| Actually making it come true is something else. | ||
| Again, this last March, he issued another executive order about bringing truth and sanity back to our cultural institutions. | ||
| And he mentions by name the Smithsonian. | ||
| But it was only with the letter of just a couple of days ago sent by the head of the domestic policy project and Russell Whoight, head of office budget, and one other person that said, we know, this is to the director of the Smithsonian, we're going to conduct an internal review. | ||
| And it was very specific. | ||
| We're going to look at your exhibitions. | ||
| We're going to look at your curatorial practices. | ||
| We're going to look at your criteria for selection. | ||
| And we're going to look at the wall labels, all the texts, the accompanying social media, everything that you do in order to be sure that the Smithsonian, | ||
| all these hundred or so museums and related activities to make sure that they are aligning with the president's vision of making America great again, of telling the truth about America. | ||
| Because as one commentator said, much of what the Smithsonian does is true enough to mislead and obscure enough to indoctrinate. | ||
| And what you see is a clever, systematic process Of trying to tell the story of America as if it were primarily a story of oppression, which is a distorted view of America. | ||
| The story of America is not the story of oppression, of environmental disaster, of tyrannical deployment of power. | ||
| The story of America is the story of liberation from the very beginning. | ||
| And to obscure that story is to do a huge disservice to the people of this country. | ||
| And make no mistake, Steve, the Smithsonian Institution is an incredibly potent institution. | ||
| It's represented, has activities and satellites in almost every state. | ||
| It is perhaps the largest mirror that people will look into and hope to see the image of what America is like. | ||
| And unfortunately, over the last several decades, that image has been a distorted one. | ||
| And I'm glad that the president is moving very rapidly to write that image, because the only way that his common sense agenda that he talked about in his inaugural address, the only way that that is going to come to fruition is if he can occupy the institutional heights of the country. | ||
| That means the universities. | ||
| It means cultural institutions like the Kennedy Senator that you were just talking about. | ||
| And it means institutions like the Smithsonian Institution. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, you know, I wrote this. | |
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| No, but hang on a second. | ||
| Hang on a second. | ||
| I got you on here for a reason. | ||
| This is seize the institutions. | ||
| The Smithsonian Institute is one of the most powerful institutions in this country. | ||
| A young man 25 years ago wrote one of the most powerful books I've read about modern America. | ||
| That guy was Roger Kimball. | ||
| This was deemed by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the books of the year, I think of the year 2000. | ||
| It's called The Long March. | ||
| It's how the cultural revolution of the 1960s changed America. | ||
| It is about the long march to the institutions. | ||
| Why do we have the Zoran Mandami leading in New York City? | ||
| It's because of the long march through the institutions and public schools. | ||
| We have to, the Trump revolution will mean nothing if we don't deconstruct the administrative state and destroy the deep state in the process and seize the cultural institutions in this country and get them back to American greatness, make those institutions great again. | ||
| That's what this is about, Roger Kimball. | ||
| You laid out the blueprint 25 years ago of how the left had done it. | ||
| Tell us how they did it and how Trump is reversing this by seizing these institutions. | ||
| And from Maggie Haberman to MSNBC, they are beyond throwing the toys out of the pram. | ||
| They're infuriated that the populist movement has seized control here, sir. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, the little clip you showed at the beginning of the person who described what's going on at the Smithsonian as Stalinist, I think that tells you a lot of what you need to know. | ||
| They are right to be worried. | ||
| They were right to be panicked by the prospect of the return of Donald Trump because they knew that his populist counter revolution would change everything. | ||
| It would change not just the political texture of Washington, D.C., it would also change the institutional footprint and the institutional identity of this country. | ||
| And it's this that Trump is doing right now with places like the Kennedy Senator and the Smithsonian that distinguishes him from other great presidents, even Ronald Reagan. | ||
| Reagan, for all of his greatness, and I'm a fan of Ronald Reagan. | ||
| He ended the Cold War and so on, unleashed the greatest accumulation of wealth in history. | ||
| He did a lot of good things. | ||
| But the important thing that he didn't do that Donald Trump is doing is he made narrow a dent in the institutional life of the country, those institutions that are occupied by the self-appointed elite, | ||
| because it is those institutions, the universities and places like the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center, those institutions that transmit the identity of the culture. | ||
| And if you have those institutions captive by the left, by people who hate America, who hate normality, who hate the good, the true, and the beautiful, and who seek to transform the identity of the country into something that celebrates, | ||
| for example, George Floyd, an exhibition at a film at the Smithsonian, it says, George Floyd is comparable. | ||
| His death was comparable to the death of Jesus Christ. | ||
| Now, what does that mean? | ||
| At the Smithsonian, when they celebrate women, they're careful also to celebrate so-called trans women. | ||
| That is to say, men pretending to be women. | ||
| This is not what most Americans want. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's Trump's genius to be able to change those institutions. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We won't change the institutions. | ||
| The engine room of the worm is on fire right now because I'm making a point. | ||
| Trump and Grinnell went over to Kennedy Center and they blew out the board, put new board members in, many people we know, some just amazing people culturally, made Trump the head of it. | ||
| Next thing you know, you got a complete change in programming yet, but they're making money. | ||
| Everything's going to sit on its own bottom. | ||
| You've got to sell tickets or just everything, right? | ||
| They're doing it from top to bottom. | ||
| You saw the Kenny Awards. | ||
| Here, you've got Vince Haley, who's a great guy. | ||
| We love Vince. | ||
| And Miller, fantastic. | ||
| And they're sending a letter saying, we're going to review this, going to review this, going to review this. | ||
| You have a, as we're reminded, you have a board of regents that are many members of Congress. | ||
| Why are we not blowing these guys? | ||
| These guys have been sitting around. | ||
| The board of the Smithsonian is just as lax as the board over at the Kennedy Center. | ||
| Why are we not blowing these guys out and replacing them with the Roger Kimballs of the world, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, it's early days, Steve. | ||
| That letter went out, I think, on Monday, maybe Tuesday. | ||
| Today is Thursday. | ||
| Let's see what happens. | ||
| I looked at that, the list of the board of regents, and I think it's due for an upgrade. | ||
| I would agree with that. | ||
| Kimball, would you, if so, if the president came to you with some ideas or Grinnell came to you and said, hey, we want some ideas about this board, would you serve on the board of the Smithsonian Institute and help the president redirect this institution, sir? | ||
| Probably the answer would be yes. | ||
| I would need to find out what was involved, but yeah, probably I would. | ||
| What would be involved is getting some scalps. | ||
| It's going to be messy work. | ||
| These institutions are, they're locked in. | ||
| They're locked in. | ||
| They think we're blown through town. | ||
| That's why the Kennedy Center, you have to seize the institutions like the left is. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| The left seize the schools. | ||
| They seize the universities, the cloud, pivot. | ||
| These people understand like in the Bolshevik Revolution, the Marxist Revolution, you seize the institution. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| If there's got to be a little, if it's got to be messy, it's got to be messy. | ||
| But on the other side, you have control of it. | ||
| Hang on for a second. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| Same thing with the universities. | ||
| We've only got when you take these, by the way, you take these institutions. | ||
| This is what's happening in Washington, D.C. Let's deploy a couple of thousand combat troops. | ||
| Let's deploy a couple thousand National Guard. | ||
| You saw them last night on the streets of D.C. The country's out of control. | ||
| The institutions are still controlled by the left, still controlled by the ruling class. | ||
| When you say seize them, let's seize them, blow out what the problem is and purge and rejuvenate next in the war room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's making more radical changes to the country and to the White House that'll live well beyond his presidency. | |
| And I think part of it is because he now knows how government works. | ||
| I think one of the things that really is the key difference between the first term and the second term is that he had a whole host of characters in the government that were trying to stymie his efforts to radically change the country. | ||
| He's now surrounded by people that are fully supportive of his agenda and helping him do it. | ||
| He's way more effective at accomplishing his agenda with having that time out of office because those a lot of his aides, Russ Voe, those sorts of officials spent their time out of government planning for this term. | ||
| And so what they've done is an onslaught of executive orders in the first six months that accomplished a lot of their goals very quickly because he knew what they wanted to do. | ||
| The difference in the first and the second is that we took those four years and people went to work, particularly on seizing the institutions. | ||
| He's got deals. | ||
| He's breaking the universities, the arrogance of the universities. | ||
| He's breaking the media. | ||
| He's now taking on the culture institutions, but all three of those, the universities, the media, and the culture institutions, they think they're going to wait us out. | ||
| This is why everything's urgent. | ||
| We should have recess appointments. | ||
| We have to have a sense of urgency on this. | ||
| The MAGA Gromsey. | ||
| Roger Kimball joins us. | ||
| Roger, your thoughts. | ||
| Well, I think you're absolutely right, Steve. | ||
| It was an act of providence that Donald Trump was not seated after he won the 2020 election because that gave him time to reflect on what went wrong and it gave his team time to understand what had to be done if he was really going to be able to make America great again. | ||
| And it's not just the executive orders are great. | ||
| They articulate a vision, but that is step one. | ||
| As I was saying before the break, what he has done, what Donald Trump has done that no other recent president, maybe any president ever has done, is he has understood that the institutions that define America have been captured by the left. | ||
| They need to be decapitated. | ||
| He's beginning that work at places like Columbia and Harvard and the University of California. | ||
| But all of the people who occupy those institutions and the ambient spirit of those institutions, they feel that they can just hold on for another three and a half years. | ||
| They can wait it out. | ||
| Maybe they'll get a lucky break in the 2026 midterm election. | ||
| I don't think so, but maybe. | ||
| What Trump is doing is he is beginning very methodically and very radically to go into these institutions like the Harvards and the Columbias and the Yales and the University of Californias. | ||
| And he is turning them upside down, really. | ||
| He is going to, there will be a lot of new people there. | ||
| That is, that's, it's a famous phrase: personnel is policy. | ||
| Personnel is policy. | ||
| And Donald Trump understands that at the Smithsonian Institution, this internal review, it's very thorough. | ||
| And it's not just going to affect the public-facing exhibitions at the Smithsonian. | ||
| It's going to change the whole spirit of the institution. | ||
| I believe we're just on the very threshold of a radical rethinking of what these cultural institutions, that we're, after all, these institutions are entrusted with preserving and transmitting the highest values of our culture. | ||
| That's why we give them the prestige, the tax-exempt status, all of the social largesse that they enjoy. | ||
| That's why. | ||
| But what happens if over a period of time they have actually been perverted? | ||
| What happens if instead of trying To preserve and transmit the highest values of our culture, they are actually working to subvert it. | ||
| And I would, it's not a novel observation to say that that's what primarily what many of most of our universities and colleges, and indeed the entire school system, is doing. | ||
| They are carrying out a radical left-wing agenda. | ||
| And Donald Trump sees it. | ||
| The American people see it. | ||
| And I believe that he is just at the beginning of turning it around. | ||
| It will only happen if he can remake these institutions. | ||
| It's not just a matter of finding Columbia or Harvard or the University of California. | ||
| There has to be real radical change. | ||
| And that means a change of personnel and a change of the spirit. | ||
| So to get them back to what they are supposed to be doing. | ||
| Roger Kimball. | ||
| People are going to, this is going to be manifested, folks, in November in New York City. | ||
| Write that down. | ||
| Take your number two personal and write that down. | ||
| The cultural rot and subversion of this nation with this now red-green alliance, neo-Marxism, radical jihad that are going to manifest itself in the smiley, in the smiley Zorhan in New York City. | ||
| Roger, your social media, where do people go to all your sites, your book publishing, social media, all of it, your journals, where do they go? | ||
| Yeah, so I'm the editor of the New Criterion. | ||
| That's newcriterion.com. | ||
| I'm the publisher of Encounter Books. | ||
| That's encounterbooks.com. | ||
| And my ex-handle is Roger Kimball. | ||
| So it's all pretty straightforward. | ||
| Pretty simple. | ||
| Roger, thank you. | ||
| Very calm, bow tie-wearing, very calm, revolutionary, a radical. | ||
| The long march through the institutions. | ||
| Roger, thank you so much. | ||
| Great the chat, Steve. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Gromsey, right there, Maga Gromsey. | ||
| Andrew Breitbart understood this. | ||
| He understood it better than anybody and before anybody. | ||
| Vince Haley understands it. | ||
| Stephen Miller understands it. | ||
| Now we got to get down. | ||
| We got to get into these institutions, start taking, got to work with the engineering and the architecture, the plumbing, all of it. | ||
| Seize the high ground, seize the institutions. | ||
| That's what's got them worried. | ||
| The templates being laid out in Washington, D.C., the Imperial Capital right now. | ||
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