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Aug. 20, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:54
Episode 4719: Reforming The Fed; Powell's Job In Jeopardy
Participants
Main voices
d
david malpass
07:07
s
steve bannon
20:43
Appearances
j
jim vandehei
04:18
j
joe scarborough
01:50
m
molly jong-fast
01:05
s
steve cortes
04:36
t
tim miller
01:32
Clips
a
ali velshi
00:40
b
brendan ballou
00:54
e
eugene daniels
00:32
j
jake tapper
00:10
j
jonathan ferro
00:48
n
nicolle wallace
00:18
w
william taylor
00:47
w
willie geist
00:12
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Speaker Time Text
willie geist
from it.
It's titled The Rising Democratic MAGA Movement.
You write Democrats needing, quote, their own version of a populist anti-establishment MAGA like makeover.
So what does that look like, Jim?
jim vandehei
Yeah, it looks like what you're just talking about with Gavin Newsom, right?
Trying to adopt a lot of the techniques that you saw from Trump that you've seen from MAGA.
Get on social media, be a warrior, curse a lot, try to have a lot of edge, insert yourself into the news cycle.
I think the bigger part though is what you've seen happening in New York, what you've seen happening in Minneapolis, the popularity of Bernie Sanders, the number of people turning out for AOC events, that right now the momentum in the party.
I think the momentum in the party is very much for the very progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is not that much of a shock, but I think is probably problematic in the off year elections for Democrats.
It's just not where the vast majority of the country seems to be.
I think it's one of the reasons that the Democratic brand overall is low.
And so I think that's an important thing to watch.
And in terms of your conversation about the backlash to the bill, to me, this is going to be a really, really important conversation three months from now.
In three months, we're going to know what's happening with redistricting.
can pick up anywhere from five to ten seats.
That is meaningful.
That is deeply, deeply meaningful.
It's harder in these Democratic states to do.
It's easier in Texas and Republican states to do.
The other is watch the next month.
If inflation does what I think inflation is going to do, it is going to be deeply, deeply problematic for the Republican Party.
If you look at what's happening with the stock prices of Chipotle or Sweet Green or any of these restaurants where people take their money when they have a little bit extra and go and spend it, they're all tanking.
If you look at what you're hearing from Home Depot, your Walmart's and others, they're basically saying, listen, we've absorbed as much of a loss as we can from the tariffs.
Come August, we have to start passing that on to consumers.
If that happens, if that happens in home goods, if that happens in groceries, if that happens in autos, which I think could be the next piece to fall, that is going to make all of this talk about the bill that much more problematic because you're going to say, wait a second, what Joe was saying was right.
They legitimately did get a massive tax cut, especially if you're super wealthy or you're running a big company.
And a lot of people who were on Medicaid were requiring these government programs.
Yes, there's some fraud, but yes, there's a lot of people who are authentically not going to get benefits tomorrow that are getting them today, that's when this becomes much, much more than a sideshow at one specific event.
It becomes a deep, deep systematic problem for the Republican Party.
nicolle wallace
I think for a lot of democracy watchers, this is the nightmare scenario attacking our elections rigging our elections.
It's not just the gerrymandering, it's the attacks on the actual way people vote.
What are your thoughts on how vigorously or not vigorously it's being protected?
tim miller
Well, I think it needs to be protected much more vigorously and I think we need to learn from 2020.
Look, none of us can get inside Donald Trump's brain, thank God.
I'm open to the theory that maybe just Vladimir Putin has some magic spell over him and anything Vladimir Putin says, he reiterates.
I think that could be one theory.
But I think that there's another likely reason why he's targeting mail and voting or other types of voting right now, and it's something that we've all lived through.
It's something that Stephen lived through most acutely in 2020, which is laying the groundwork for contesting the election if it goes away.
He doesn't like it.
And I think that this is as simple as that.
We're re-examining Stop the Steal 2.0.
He's just a lot of us didn't take it that seriously in 2019.
But he's throwing this chum into the water now.
He's laying the groundwork.
And so if, hypothetically, I don't know, the Democrats win the House by three or four votes next time in a tight election, and there are some tight races in states with male and voting, like Arizona or Colorado or California or Nevada, that he will do what he did in 2020 and try to contest the election and prevent those elections from being certified.
I think it's pretty clear that that is what, you know, is at least an option that they're keeping open.
And I think actual protection of the elections is very important too.
But I think that post election 2026 time is what we're already seeing kind of a Groundhog Day preview of.
ali velshi
Got a lot of things.
Being a NATO member involves a lot of things, but the best thing you get in exchange for being a part of NATO is Article V, the security guarantee that if anyone attacks you, it's like attacking all the other NATO members, and you get to benefit from that.
NATO has actually Ukraine has actually done a lot of NATO-ish stuff, right?
Since 1994, their army has operates more like NATO army's military operates.
They've got that interoperability.
So tell me about what NATO without being in NATO would look like for Ukraine.
The security guarantee that everybody's talking about that doesn't necessarily at the moment involve NATO membership.
What does that even look like?
william taylor
Well, some so a step down from NATO membership, which, as you point out, Ali, is the gold standard.
It's also the cheapest and the most effective security guarantee that there is.
But if that's not on the table for now, don't give up on it, but it's not on the table for now, then this Coalition of the Willing, putting troops on the ground with an Article 5 like commitment.
That is, this Coalition of the Willing, which is led by the French and the British, but it's got like thirty members, thirty nations that are there, including now the Americans would say that NATO like it says, if you're attacked, we're with you.
We're supporting you.
It doesn't say exactly how we're with you.
And each of those thirty nations will do it a little different as it is in NATO, as in the actual article.
ali velshi
Right.
jim vandehei
About this idea of how easy it would be to attack the fact that rich are getting richer.
This isn't actually a political argument.
It is an empirical argument.
There's no doubt that the rich are getting a lot richer, that the poor are not getting that much richer, if getting richer at all, that that tax bill undoubtedly favors the most wealthy.
Then you look at your stock market and you say, what's happening?
Well, most of the growth in portfolios is coming from your biggest tech companies, the top seven, the Fang companies.
Well, who are those?
Those are your Zuckerbergs of the world, right?
Those are these big, big companies that are already doing well, that are getting massive assistance from the federal government, and the only people who can really invest in a lot of these companies are people who themselves are already rich, right?
If you look at people who have money in 401k or in the stock market tend to start with a lot of money to begin with.
So the rich are going to keep getting richer.
This is a fantastic environment if you have money.
There's no doubt about it.
And I think that is, then it always sits on top.
of politics, right?
People are always feeling like, is the system rigged?
Is the system fair?
And if someone's paying a lot more for a car, a lot more for oranges, a lot more for eggs, a lot more for stuff at the next trip to Home Depot, yes, bitterness rises.
And it's why, interestingly, Eugene talks about there are no labels.
If you really get the Steve Bannons of the world on true serum, they agree a lot with what Bernie Sanders has said about the dangers of AI, about the rich getting richer, about some of the dangers in that bill going after Medicaid.
They're not loud about it right now, but make no mistake, when Trump is gone, there's a de bigger disconnect there than people, than people realize because the Bannons are the world in which they are tied more closely to the working class because they understand that's why Trump exists today.
It may not be Trump's worldview per se, but it certainly is theirs.
eugene daniels
The headlines, Trump's selective stance on justice, redemption for some, scorn for others.
Mr Trump himself, a felon, they like to point that out, has shown particular, particular leniency to criminals he seems to identify with.
People who are white or wealthy or who he believes have been unfairly persecuted or who rallied in his name on January 6.
Also in the article, this quote from him, they would never be an asset to society, he said.
I don't care.
I know we all want to say, Oh, they're going to be rehabited.
They're not going to be rehabited.
That was when he was holding up five mugshots of PR people of color.
What's the difference there?
What do you read from that?
brendan ballou
This is a president who got his political start by trying to undermine the legitimacy of the first black president.
The racism of this man and this candidate is baked in everything that he does.
One of the things that's saddest for me, hearing that quote and comparing it to what happened on January 6 and the subsequent pardons, is with January 6 you had an overwhelmingly white riot against a perhaps majority or near majority minority police force.
I talked to a lot of officers, and one of them said something that has stuck with me for several years now.
He said, look, I have worked a lot of riots in my career, but this is the first riot I worked where the rioters thought that they were right.
They thought that they were the ones that were in charge.
And what scares me is when you see the president using such racist or racialized language like this, it risks legitimizing what those rioters believed and proves them correct.
molly jong-fast
Yeah, and I think the question is what happens with the rest of America, right?
Who stands up for American democracy when it doesn't go the way they want?
And we haven't seen a lot of bravery from pretty much anyone, right?
From billionaires to Republican politicians to the Supreme Court, everyone has basically rubber stamped anything Donald Trump wants to do.
So there's going to be a moment where we're going to need for democracy to keep going, people are going to have to stand up and that's going to mean people who are Republicans, members of the Supreme Court.
They're going to have to say, like, this election was free and fair and certified.
And you'll remember this Supreme Court did in fact that in 2020.
They didn't take up that, you know, Trump's many, many cases.
So I think there's a real question about whether that moment will happen again and that is perhaps the most if you're going to be concerned about anything that would strike me as the most disconcerting.
steve bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people.
You're not going to get 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.
jake tapper
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.
steve bannon
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.
One, two, three, two, one.
steve bannon
It's Wednesday, 20 August in the year of our Lord 2025.
From out the world, throughout the world, just more news, more things happening.
And so let's get to the signal, not the noise.
Number one, for 2026, Gavin Newsom's getting traction among Democrats.
Why?
He's trying to mimic Trump.
He's trying to be fight club.
Of course it's a parody.
Of course it's a vaudeville act.
I mean, it's Gavin Newsom after all, right?
But he's, you know, sitting there.
He's being a tough guy.
He's tweeting out.
And so the Democrats love it.
One of the reasons they love it, they don't have any fighters over there.
They're all gutless.
They have no policies.
Now that nobody's, their shows are all collapsing.
Their networks are collapsing.
Nobody's reading their newspapers.
They can't control it.
anymore they can't control lots they can't control it now are we winning on every front no but we're making progress on so many fronts the um and remember for 2026 the mid uh decade census that has to be right this time no illegal aliens you got to get the algorithms right in the collection all of the mistakes that we had also the redistricting And down in Texas,
some people are, some conservatives are sitting there and wetting themselves going, oh my gosh, well, you know, there are rules and regulations about the Democrats.
There's no rules and regulations.
You put them on notice.
You put the Republicans on us.
That's how we got this far.
Don't come back with Roberts' rules of order right now.
And particularly people saying, well, you got a 10 district map show.
Yep, well, good, fine.
Your governor's talked about it.
Why don't you lighten up your governor?
You know, where are the conservatives right now?
Besides the war and some others, get up on the ramparts.
We have to go maximalist on this.
It wasn't Steve Bannon that said 10.
We're the ones who started the fight for five.
But then, of course, the feckless Republicans let them all leave and wasted week after week.
week after week after week so you should get one for every week you wasted that's at least seven but the governor said you got ten if you got ten go for ten look what new look what newsom's doing in california the last is the mail and ballots and senator mike lead the best constitutional we've got is going to come in on mail and ballots And yes, in the left sitting there going, well, gosh, if they take away mail and ballots, people are going to have to show up.
They're going to have ICE agents around.
People are going to be so afraid, intimidated.
They're going to be afraid they're going to be arrested.
But hey, if you're an illegal alien, you shouldn't be going to the polls anyway.
And if you go to try to vote, then you've got a couple of felonies.
Other explosive news, it looks like...
We'll get to all that.
We got so much going on.
Also, remember we mentioned here, remember we mentioned security guarantees on War Room?
And I told all these guys are big talk.
Kurt Starmer goes back.
You just heard that was the ambassador, I think, to Ukraine at the time that was a witness for the Trump impeachment.
That's gum bags.
And they're going, oh, yeah, France and England are in and they're going to be at the front line.
It's Article 5.
The British have told us, no mass.
No mass.
No troops.s.
Can't do it.
Maybe they're going to guard a port.
Maybe they're going to look at the air.
They're going to do some air.
But they ain't, they are not in.
Short break.
unidentified
We'll explain it all to you next in the war room.
America's Voice family.
steve cortes
Are you on Getter yet?
unidentified
No?
What are you waiting for?
steve cortes
It's free.
unidentified
It's uncensored.
And it's where all the biggest voices in conservative media are speaking out.
steve bannon
Download the Getter app right now.
It's totally free.
unidentified
It's where I put up exclusively all of my content 24 hours a day.
steve bannon
You want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking?
Go to Getter.
unidentified
That's right.
joe scarborough
You can follow all of your favorites.
unidentified
Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Besovic.
Download the Get her app now.
Register for free and be part of the movement.
joe scarborough
Well, I mean, Steve Bannon will tell you just that.
He is a fan of Lisa Cannes.
He believes like me that monopolies should be broken up.
I mean, he believes like me that billionaires should not be getting tax cuts right now while working class Americans are struggling more and more every day.
And you know, the thing is, too, I mean, it is empirical.
I mean, we're not talking about opinions here.
We're talking about facts.
The richest billionaires on the planet.
are getting a lot richer because of this bill.
And working Americans are falling further and further behind.
It's not even a close call.
Also, again, America's national debt will go up twenty trillion dollars over the next decade.
twenty trillion dollars.
The total national debt for the first two hundred twenty years of this republic's existence, four trillion dollars.
So over two hundred twenty years, the United States government accumulated four trillion dollars.
of debt.
This Congress, with a bill they just passed, will allow the federal debt to go up five times that much in the next decade.
Why did they do it?
Because they wanted to give billionaires, they wanted to give multinational corporations, they wanted to give the richest of the rich, they wanted to give monopolists tax cuts.
unidentified
Huh?
If...
joe scarborough
I'd just say, if you're a Democrat and you're running next year year and you can't win in a swing district?
Go into something else.
Like take up watercolor painting or something like that.
steve bannon
So it's going to be game on.
Folks, we're going to have a chance to refute all that with facts if it's refutable.
I say it is, but you're going to have to really get to the math because guess what?
It's the 20th of August.
And as we've told you on the show over and over again, and you know, at midnight on the 30th of September, fiscal year runs out.
Got to start over.
President Trump does not want to shut down his government because he's in charge.
And quite frankly, we control every aspect of it, right?
The Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, the executive branch.
Well, we're trying to.
Of course, the deep state hasn't been turfed out, although Tulsi Gabbard has a start with 37 principally Grundoons.
There's some non-Grundoons having their security clearances taken away.
I'd like to see some bigger names on there.
I'm sure they're working on them.
It's a process.
got to get to this math, though.
It's not me.
For instance, we sell the big.
beautiful bill here and the supply side tax cut of it in a more sophisticated way, not just the Fox News talking points, in a more sophisticated way with bright people than anybody.
I noticed...
Uh...
I noticed a paucity of town halls.
And I realize that there are, you know, Democrats, some of these groups, thugs are showing up and trying to shout people down.
So it's not the easiest.
But I haven't seen a massive effort to sell the big, beautiful bill and actually what it stands for.
So we got to get to that.
Part of what's happening right now also with everything going on, you have Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton and the Mitch McConnell faction are pushing through, trying to push through a $58 billion bailout for Ukraine.
Let me be blunt.
Zelensky's plan came over here.
It's $300 billion.
They're going to do $100 billion purchase of our weapons.
That's a big thing in his thing he gave the Financial Times.
He leaked the Financial Times.
So that's a country that has no money.
All that money comes from you because Europeans are not stepping up.
They're not going to step up because why?
Their voters are turfing them out.
The voters are going to say, well, hang on, you're taking back my pension.
You're taking back my August break.
You're taking back my health care, my universal health care to pay for Ukraine.
No, you can't have that.
I told you it was all a farce.
We had the ambassador.
Oh, yes.
The two that are really going to be here for Article 5 are going to be the French and the British.
The British are already out.
They're already out.
Remember, you make this commitment.
You're there for years and years and years and years and years and decades and decades.
and decades and decades and decades, we're still in Germany.
At the end of the Second World War, we're still in Japan.
At the end of the Second World War, we're still in South Korea on the armistice or truce, not a peace deal, just a ceasefire in Korea.
Still there.
Still there.
So you're going to be in Ukraine for decades.
You're going to be in Ukraine when the kids, I was crawling around the carpet, little rug rats, will be 40 years old.
Yep.
So you got to go in tight right now.
If all that cursed arm over here to article..
5 and all the deep thoughts on, you know, all the David Ignatius and Richard Haas and Admiral Stavridis, deep thoughts.
It was deep thoughts over the weekend, deep thoughts on Monday, deep thoughts ripping on President Trump.
There's no, there's no, Starmer gets over, the first thing he does is the British military comes out and says, you know, we I think we can help run a port, the world knows we can help run a port.
We can't, we can't keep the Suez Canal open from the Houthis, from guys fighting from the fifth century, except they got a couple of drones.
We got to have the couple of American carrier battle groups, I don't know, to, you know, five million bucks a day.
day we got to put two carry battle groups up there to keep the suez open and we can give you a frigate but we can we can go maybe off of odessa right we can go off odessa we steam off odessa or we'll sit back you know in hungary on the border or moldavia with some air search and we'll help they're not going to be there told you it was a joke they're not going to be there they want the americans in they want to tie us up They're not prepared to do anything.
It's all happy talk.
And the Brits are the best you got.
Those are the guys who really have fought with us.
Germans already said can't do it.
No troops can't do it.
The Polish guys wouldn't even come.
Pesobik told you that.
They knew it was a farce.
they said, hey, how about this?
We're not going to show up.
Because they realized these guys are going to try to entangle President Trump in something.
So the opportunity cost of Ukraine, let's set it over there and let Marco work on it for a while or somebody work on it.
And let's get back to the important stuff, which is getting affordability down.
getting inflation down, getting the economy rip roaring because that will crush them in 26.
I don't care what Gavin Newsom and these guys are skipping around.
And mom, Donnie.
But we got to get in the 55 billion is an insult to the American people.
We don't have the luxury of going around the world anymore and looking for places to stick our nose in.
That's a European problem.
They want to be a EU nation.
They want to be a European nation.
They're in Eurasia right now.
God bless you.
Go ahead and do it.
Go ahead, but not with American money, not with American troops, not with American arms.
So you have Zelensky with $100 billion that he doesn't have.
Remember, he's broke.
They have no money.
We pay for the military, but also you also pay for their government every month.
You're paying for it, baby.
Their pension funds, they got nice pension funds.
The nurses, teachers got pension funds.
How's your pension fund working out is it working out okay for you that's good you got that one they're trying to they're trying to you know these guys are coming after social security all the time the billionaires the oligarchs on your tiny little social security how's that because you're underwriting ukraine so they got another 55 billion it's going to be more because they're addicted to american money so they they got 100 billion dollars of money they don't have coming to us on arms we don't have because we've stripped The Pacific,
we've stripped everything from the Persian, the first, you know, the total obliteration of the nuclear program of the Persians and what we've given, what we fed into Ukraine, we don't have the weapons right now.
So it's $100 billion a guy that has no money for a country that doesn't have the weapons right now.
That would be us with a bunch of allies around who won't put up any manpower.
And the Ukrainians won't put up any manpower because they're out of manpower.
The parents are saying, you're not taking any more of my kids.
And they're actually allowing 60-year-olds.
So they're going to have, you know, the cutting edge 60-year-olds at the front lines.
And folks, This ain't hunting terrorists.
This is a good old-fashioned war.
This is brutal.
Okay?
This is a war.
This is like the Western Front in World War I. The Russians don't do maneuver warfare.
They do ground it out.
They've either artillery, the queen of battle, the tanks, the infantry, and they're not particularly shy about how many folks they lose.
Remember the first thing they go into place like Stalingrad and it's a little bogged down, the first thing they do as a commissar is they stand up a couple of generals against the wall and they shoot them for morale purposes.
These are not holistic and they're not about self-actualization.
They're about take an inch and hold an inch.
That's what you're fighting over there.
That's what you get entangled with.
And you're great, our greatest ally, the guys that actually fought side by side with us, the Brits.
Kurt Stormer is not even off the plane.
And Andrew Neal, the old conservative war horse, he's got a tweet up that just blows the whole thing up.
He says, This thing is totally fake.
We're broke.
We don't have a military.
We can't even defend what we've got, our own territory.
I got, I got, I got a thing.
They want to give a security guarantee.
Why don't they give a security guarantee to the English whose churches are being burned down, historical monuments are being burned down.
They got another one today., I think, outside of Liberty being burned down.
And you got a mosque in route.
Why don't you go into central London, go into Soho, send the troops to Soho.
Go give a security guarantee for the British people.
How about that?
I think they'd vote for that.
Start with your own country since you're now, and it's not me, it's the British Lieutenant Colonel from the other day saying, hey, I think we're on the brink of civil war.
I think you might need your troops for that.
Starmer knows that.
No money, no arms, no men.
Short break.
Talk about the Federal Reserve next in the War Room.
unidentified
Thank you.
jonathan ferro
The Fed's next move The Fed's next move is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, when the chairman gets the committee together and has a big conversation about the future.
The elephant in the room is the political pressure coming from the other side of Washington, DC, more specifically coming from the White House.
This was the latest this morning.
We've been tracking this story.
The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Poulte, is urging the Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the Federal Reserve Governor, Lisa Cook, over a pair of mortgages.
The President takes that story, putting it out on social media just a moment ago, and writing this that Cook must resign now.
unidentified
It's predictable in some ways because there has been a focus on reshaping the Federal Reserve.
Putting some of the allegations aside, it just highlights how fraught this meeting is in Jackson Hole at a time where there is so much political focus on reshaping the way that they set monetary policy.
jonathan ferro
Framework review.
How valuable is this framework review when we've got a lamed up Fed chair and an administration pushing to change the Federal Reserve as an institution from the bottom up?
unidentified
People will be asking that question and how much does that threat kind of loom large over some of the way that these things are shifted?
Look, a real question here, and this is something that the market is looking for, is how much credibility will whoever comes into the Fed continue to lend to the idea of independence and how much will global leaders on central banks try to edify that message.
steve bannon
Okay, folks, it looks like they're going to indict a sitting governor of the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook, for this mortgage fraud.
The same thing as Latisha James, I think Polte over at, I don't know, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, one of them.
went through the files and came back and turned it over to the Justice Department, referred it to the Justice Department for criminal referral.
And methinks that Ed Martin and his weaponization team, and he's all over Latisha James, Ed Martin actually put out a statement yesterday telling Latisha James to resign as Attorney General of New York.
Big Tish James, right?
And he had essentially said, we're going to indict you and we're going to put you in prison because you're guilty, girl.
Lisa Cook looks like the same thing and happening.
I'm going to bring in David Malpass.
David, I don't believe this has ever happened before.
And on the eve of the Jackson Hole meetings, why don't you tell our audience first, what are the Jackson Hole meetings?
Why have they become..
so important, sir?
david malpass
Hi, Steve.
In general, the Federal Reserve is not transparent.
So there are meetings where it's hard to know who's on the invite list, who is there.
Some will be on TV.
They meet in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, so it's an exclusive controlled environment.
There are chosen TV reporters who will be there interviewing people and they put out the message.
And in general, the message is central banking is great and should run the world.
And that is the core of the problem.
If you think about the deep state., it applies to the military complex, the trade complex, the regulatory complex, the spending, government spending and getting bigger, and to central banking.
It's the core in many ways of the deep state, and they're not transparent about what the senior people do in terms of their investments, how they get mortgages, all of that, which I guess they're looking into.
steve bannon
You wrote this piece.
You know, I'm kind of, I'm getting very concerned that there hasn't been the effort to support President Trump.
I mean, he had to with the vote to get the thing done.
I mean, think about that for a second.
Of course, the Senate left.
They didn't think President Trump was trustworthy enough to go on real recess so he could have recess appointments.
So as you know, it's not nobody staffed, right?
You got the cabinet heads.
We don't really have anybody else.
You got hundreds of people backed up, including U.S. Attorney.
So that thing's a fiasco.
But there really hasn't been a huge effort by the Senate and the House.
to get out and to basically sell the big beautiful bill.
Now you've got a piece, I think in the Wall Street Journal, you're a growth guy.
You're a supply side guy.
Walk me through where we are right now and how you believe the central bank is starting.
distorting our ability to really take the chains off and unleash the animal spirits on growth, sir?
david malpass
The interest rates are too damn high and the central banking around the world thinks that they know what the right interest rate is for a market economy.
That's not possible, especially nowadays because they pay interest to banks and so they're distorting and controlling the market and it hurts growth.
It means that there is not enough lending to small businesses.
They are not creating the supply chain that's needed to hold down prices.
So they work on this fiction that fast growth causes inflation.
Think what that does to the Trump agenda.
President Trump has a full growth program in terms of energy, in terms of the dollar as the global reserve currency, the growth of crypto, the trade changes that are going to bring manufacturing home.
All of that is undercut precisely by the way the Fed regulates small businesses and and discourages banks from doing that.
The banks are lending to governments and big corporations and that just kills growth at the at the at the at the at the at the working person.
person is not getting the new jobs, it's going elsewhere, you know, to the upper end of the economy.
So that's, and my point in the Wall Street Journal article today, this is a big article pointing out that the likelihood is that the Fed, the academics will join ranks and prevent change at the Federal Reserve.
steve bannon
And how are you optimistic at all that Powell, because clearly Powell and the 8,000 economists at the Federal Reserve do not agree with you.
They don't agree with President Trump.
They don't agree with, was it James Fishback and all these guys that come on here and say, or Scott Bessant, Secretary of Treasury, come on and say, hey, the natural interest rates, and we make this analytical argument that rates could be cut.
And I think Bessant, who's a pretty, you know, safe pair of hands guy, he's no radical.
He's saying that it could be cut by 100 to 175 basis points.
So they don't agree with, you would, you would, you're in agreement with me that they don't, that Powell and his team of economists don't believe that, correct?
david malpass
That's right.
They have their heads in the sand, but isn't that what's going on in so many of the deep state areas?
If you say how many of the traditional economists agreed with Trump on trade, it was two percent.
And if you say how many of them actually realize that government spending subtract from the will of the people and subtract from the growth of the economy, they don't agree with that.
They've been skilled, schooled in Keynesianism, which says government spending is great.
And it's the same at the Fed.
They really do think that fast growth is dangerous for the economy because someone might get to raise their prices.
And they also think, and this is what's important right now, that in some way high interest rates hold down the inflation rate.
They just don't see that the high interest rates hurt small businesses the most.
And so they actually are keeping the inflation going within the economy.
I think we have to have a full upheaval in the models at the Fed.
It's not just the personnel.
It's the actual economic thinking on how the economy works.
And it's very President Trump is exactly on the right track and I think unless there's this magnitude of change at the Fed then they will undercut what the president is trying to do on growth.
steve bannon
Well, you mean not just of, I mean, financial models come from from people.
I know today AI comes over some, but you've got to purge.
You've got to, you've got to rethink like Besson's been saying, you got to go back to the beginning on a whiteboard and say exactly what we're doing here.
Why do we need a central bank?
Maybe we should audit the central bank.
What's the mission of the central bank?
Does it have too many mandates?
Does it have not enough mandates?
And I guess you're saying really rethink this because this deep state on the financial side tied to the Wall Street, tied to the Larry Finks of the world, the hedge funds of the world.
It's actually it's supposed to be independent.
It's actually controlled.
It's just not controlled by the American people.
Is that the case you're making that this has to be totally rethought?
The Federal, our, our concept of the central banks and how it interacts with other central banks throughout the world?
david malpass
That's right.
I'm trying to simplify it down for people because I think that people around the country can understand it better than the Federal Reserve can.
The high interest rates pays Wall Street.
It pays rich people for interest on money, but it's not necessary for fighting inflation.
That's what foreign central banks are doing.
The Bank of England has cut three times this this year, the pound is not weaker, the inflation rate there is not higher, and so it means because it allows more growth within the economy.
So I invite people not to overthink this in terms of economic models and fancy PhD economists that they've had it wrong.
That's why we keep getting these waves of inflation that really hurt the median income.
They hurt people's wages more than inflation.
So people lose ground when the central bank is operating and controlling the economy the way it is now.
They set the floor on interest rates and they set it, the Federal Reserve is setting the interest rates high enough to benefit rich people.
And that is not necessary within economic theory.
Why are the US the US is the world's super superpower, why are interest rates higher here than in weaker countries?
It doesn't make sense.
Important in this, Steve, is that I think the Trump plan has to bring in more about defending the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
The whole world wants to attack that and take down the US.
China in particular wants to do that.
And so a core thing for the for within the Trump plan is to realize that the dollar is going to be a stable store of value for fifty years.
It's the Trump dollar.
interest rates could come down quickly right now, I think.
steve bannon
Also, I love that about the stable.
This is one of the things we teach in the end of the dollar empire, what you have to do.
This plan, our supply-side plan, which Scott Besson said, this is going to be the last shot you're going to have to really have a supply-side solution.
It's predicated on three, three and a half percent, maybe even higher growth.
We hit three.
Now, people are saying that's an anomaly because of the tariffs and people are trying to get ahead of the tariffs.
But if rates don't come down, we've only got about a minute here.
If rates don't come down, do you see the possibility we could get that to 3.5% growth, which is kind of what we need to grow our way out of this financial fiasco that handed us by Biden.
david malpass
I don't think we can get there because the Fed is setting the interest rate at such a high level.
So it's hard to see that the supply chain can be repaired by the small businesses that need working capital, unless the Fed really makes the interest rate cuts.
I think they're against Trump and will resist and resist.
That's going on this week at Jackson Hole, but it will go on over the coming months.
And then some PhD economists will say, oh, we can't possibly cut interest rates, even though if you look around the world, everybody else has been able to do it.
So this is the moment of truth.
It's a golden opportunity for President Trump to really create an upheaval, a full upheaval in the Fed's models that give us better growth and more market confidence.
steve bannon
If real quickly, if Lisa Cook has to step down, President Trump's demanding she step down from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve.
If she was to step down, are you available to step in, sir?
david malpass
Well, Steve, I'm, you know, I'm, you know, I'm a mega guy.
I'm a manufacturing guy.
I want to see the country do really well.
So everyone should step up to the moment.
And so I don't know about that.
steve bannon
David Malpass, former head of the World Bank under President Trump, Under Secretary for International Finance, I think number three job in the Treasury.
Thank you so much, sir.
What's your social media?
Can you hit me quick?
david malpass
Yeah, at David R. Malpass.
So that's the Twitter or the x dot com.
steve bannon
Thank you, sir.
david malpass
I appreciate you.
steve cortes
Republicans in Washington, wake up.
You're losing it on the most important issue in America, and that is the economy..
And that's not my opinion.
It is the reality as expressed by all credible polls, including my own surveys.
Now, my newest survey, it was positive overall for Trump and for the GOP.
Voters, thankfully, they trust Republicans on security issues from street safety to the border, and they massively back deportations.
But they are also super upset and anxious about the economy, and for very good reason.
Right now, a scant 23% say that your big, beautiful bill will help them.
Independents, today, they're far more pessimistic on the economy than they were last November when Trump won.
Here's why.
They can't afford their lives and they now blame you, Republicans, as the governing party.
So the time for real action and the time for a new media campaign is right now.
Or get ready to get rinsed in the 2026 midterms, especially without the help of Trump on the ballot.
Now there are solutions if you get a sense of urgency immediately.
See my column for the details.
steve bannon
Okay, Steve Cortez joins us also.
So you just heard Malpass about the dollar.
We're going to get also hopefully Philip Patrick this morning if we can do it.
If not, it'll be tomorrow morning.
Birchgold.
You'll understand it all.
It's not the price of gold.
It's the process of how the price is determined.
Birchgold.com, the end of the dollar empire.
Birchgold.com slash Bannon.
That would be me.
That's the promo code.
End of the dollar empire.
Seven free installments now.
Eight and nine are underway.
We're also coming out with a physical copy of it.
So you can have it.
Steve Cortez.
Jeffrey Tucker, who I think very highly of, Jeffrey Tucker's got a big piece in Epoch Times, which is the best broadsheet in this nation as a paper that's been linked to by Zero Hedge.
I love the Zero Hedge guys, although let's be blunt.
Every now and again when you're clicking through to Zero Hedge, I tell people this, you may click through to RT or to one of these think tanks in Moscow that maybe took a dollar or two from the KGB.
Not that some of our think tanks don't take money from USAID, the CIA, but just be aware when you go through.
But Tucker's got a thing about the inflation.
His piece, and he's an economist.
It really doubles, it really backs up yours that we got to get serious about this now.
And my concern is, Steve, is that the House and the Senate are not out selling the big, beautiful bill.
They're not selling the supply side tax cut of this.
We're not getting, we're not getting any momentum on that.
And we're coming back, folks.
And guess what?
get ready to bend over and grab them because they got a $55 billion, you know, Uncle Sugar is going to be tapped for $55 billion up to $100 billion in the Ukraine fiasco immediately.
And they're going to jam in the third week of September.
Take your number two purse allowed and write it down.
They're going to come back with an omnibus that they're working on right now now.
It's going to have a two trillion dollar deficit for next year.
And they're going to put a gun to President Trump's head and say, hey, you know, we have to take care of all this at once or your government is going to have to shut down.
We have to get funding.
It's all going to happen, folks.
It's all out there to happen.
Steve Cortez, your thoughts.
unidentified
Yeah.
steve cortes
So listen, Steve, you're exactly correct.
You're exactly correct.
There is way too much complacency, way too much complacency among Republicans in Washington, DC on the fundamental issue of the economy.
And as I point out in that video and in my article, because of my poll and I just polled the state of Georgia, right?
Key swing state, overall good poll for Republicans.
But on the economy, the numbers are bad and they are trending worse.
As a matter of fact, Republicans and this administration are roughly where Biden was on the economy before the election last year.
So think about that, okay?
And take that seriously and get a sense of urgency.
You're exactly right that neither the admin nor Republicans on Capitol Hill are selling the economic message, uh, the way they should.
You know, they believe that once they passed the big, beautiful bill, they were done selling.
No, that's in many ways the start of the campaign, right?
And they should be promoting the wins on trade, uh, the wins on onshoring, the fact that wages are going up, going up.
There's a lot of good news to tell, but there's also really worrying some guys.
And I think you're exactly right.
That article from Jeffrey Tucker, who's brilliant.
He points out, for example, that M two aggregate money supply is now back near the highs of 2022 when inflation was raging at its worst levels of the Bidenomics fiasco.
I point out in my article, you right now have beef prices at all time highs, they have set a new all time high in each of the last six months.
Chicken at all time highs, bananas at all time highs.
When you look at the United States dollar, one of the reasons that pain is at the grocery store is a lot of Americans, Steve, they don't realize that they are implicitly currency traders.
They may never watch currency markets.
But you are buying these goods in dollars.
And when you go into a Walmart, the majority of the goods there are from overseas, which is a shame, but that's the reality right now.
So the value of the dollar is directly tied to your buying power at Walmart or wherever you shop.
And when you look at the dollar, the euro currency for all the problems of Europe, the euro currency has been kicking the dollar's ass all year.
Gold well above $3,000 an ounce, Bitcoin well above $100,000, just hit $118,000 per coin.
So the dollar is sliding demonstrably.
So what I want to see from Capitol Hill and the administration is a decided effort on messaging to start defending the dollar, by the way.
I think David Malpass is exactly correct to start jawboning the dollar because if the Fed lowers interest rates and we don't have a concurrent strong dollar policy, then the dollar is going to get absolutely rinsed from here.
And that is a very real danger.
And in terms of a policy change, tangible policy change, President Trump has floated these tariff rebate checks.
Steve, that needs to happen and it needs to happen now and make them a consequential amount only for middle class folks.
unidentified
Okay.
steve bannon
Well, hang on.
But for middle class, hang on.
Hang on.
Yo, hang on.
You're not a crazy man.
You're very, you're very, you know, you're always.
very safe, Perhans.
You talk about the economy.
You are coming empirically.
Last time I looked, we had 37 trillion in debt.
We just had 37.
We're going to have a $2 trillion deficit by the time midnight strikes.
When it strikes for Cinderella at midnight on the 30th, $2 trillion for this year.
They're going to jam us.
I'm telling you, they're going to jam us in the third week of September.
They're going to jam us with an omnibus that's going to have another $2 trillion.
deficit.
That's why they kicked up the debt limit to $5 trillion.
So how can we give rebate checks off the top when we got to pay down?
that deficit, Steve Cortez, give me thirty seconds and I'll hold you through the break.
What do you have?
steve cortes
Sure.
I'll tell you two ways.
One is to cut defense, right?
Which we can and should do if we're smarter about our defense budget and not defending the world.
And the second one related to that is to stop spending on Ukraine.
Okay.
But also, look, I don't want to hear that Republicans on Capitol Hill are going to suddenly get religion on the deficit after they pass this gigantic profligacy bill, right?
I mean, don't tell me now that you've got religion when we need to deliver tangible benefits to middle class people.
Middle class people need to have a seat at the table in trade negotiations.
They need to have skin in the game in these terrorists.
They need to feel a financial benefit from what President Trump is doing.
And again, I don't want to hear that they suddenly have religion on debt.
steve bannon
Okay.
Hang on for a second.
We're going to go out with the right stuff because that's what this show promotes.
Mike Lee is going to join us, the great constitutionalist in the United States Senate from Utah.
Steve Cortez is going to stick around.
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