Oct. 23, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
48:53
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| We're going to build superintelligence and we have no idea how to control it and it's going to be so cool. | ||
| Please invest in us. | ||
| The single biggest fight is going to be over what are the values of the AIs. | ||
| That fight, I think, is going to be a million times bigger and more intense and more important than the social media censorship fight. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know more about AI, which has me more worried. | |
| A lot of people, everybody worried about it. | ||
| We're also hopeful about it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But it changes so fast. | ||
| Here now with AI, we have evidence now that we didn't have two years ago when we last spoke of what they call AI uncontrollability. | ||
| So this is the stuff that they used to say existed only in sci-fi movies. | ||
|
unidentified
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We can create infinite universes. | |
| This is like the fuel that we need. | ||
|
unidentified
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There's never been a technical project of this complexity at this scale ever. | |
| Two paths, two futures. | ||
| Teaching Sam to think or being left in the dust. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| AI is really going to, you know, it's going to, it's going to scale to the moon. | ||
| Have you ever looked at the moon and wondered if it was real? | ||
| I have. | ||
| And tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you, the moon is fake. | ||
|
unidentified
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What will it take to collapse the distance between idea and invention? | |
| This technology saved my voice. | ||
| To build machines that build with us and wire the earth with thought. | ||
| You know, this whole thing is going to reshape the economy. | ||
| It'll take a few years, but it's going to reshape the economy. | ||
| And, you know, they are almost there now. | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, these systems are different from ordinary software. | |
| You don't write every line of code, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Building ordinary software, it's like building a skyscraper or something. | |
| You make the blueprint, you make everything design. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is, ironically, a bit more like biological. | |
| It's organic or something. | ||
| You're growing these models. | ||
| You said them. | ||
| That's that can't be real. | ||
| It's a screen. | ||
| The moon's a screen. | ||
| Everything we've been looking at, it's fake. | ||
| People love the new Sora. | ||
| And I also think it is important to give society a taste of what's coming on this co-evolution point. | ||
| So like very soon, the world is going to have to contend with incredible video models that can deepfake anyone. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're attempting a classical goetic conjuration in the manner of the Lamegaton. | |
| Thanks to our investors for trusting us with the seed round. | ||
| This one is for you. | ||
|
unidentified
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By the names that gird the world, Adonai, Elohim, Tetragrammaton. | |
| That will mostly be great. | ||
| There will be some adjustment that society has to go through. | ||
| And just like with ChatGPT, we were like, the world kind of needs to understand where this is. | ||
| Very soon, we're going to be in a world where like this is going to be everywhere. | ||
| There should be a prohibition against building this stuff, at least until there's a broad scientific consensus that this can be controlled and safe. | ||
| And also until Americans actually want it. | ||
| And we released a poll today also showing that actually less than 5% of all Americans want to race to superintelligence. | ||
| 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 at all these networks lying about the people. | ||
| The people have had a belly full of it. | ||
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you're trying to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big 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 safe. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance. | |
| Thursday, 23 October, Year of Our Lord, 2025. | ||
| We're absolutely packed this morning and this afternoon. | ||
| Let's get on with it. | ||
| Got our own Joe Allen in here, our editor for all things transhumanism. | ||
| Do we have a cut? | ||
| Let's do the cut. | ||
| Do we have the cut from Stephanie Rola's site? | ||
| Let's play that and then we're going to jump on what happened yesterday and where we go from here. | ||
| Whether the quo vadis, whither thou goest. | ||
| Okay, let's hit it. | ||
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unidentified
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100 public figures signed a letter that they want to ban on superintelligence, but is that really going to do anything? | |
| I mean, two years ago, Elon Musk signed a very similar letter that did nothing. | ||
| Of course, he did not sign it today, but these letters are worth. | ||
| Well, it is notable that Steve Bannon and Glenn Beck signed that letter. | ||
| But also, I'm kind of wondering if we have any British viewers watching this that like a lot of the things we've been talking about so far sound like a bit of a speed run of Brexit, where like in exchange for this deregulation, we get a lower standard of living and everything else costs more and there's way more uncertainty. | ||
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unidentified
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It's pretty wild how much the outcome of Brexit was just everything got worse. | |
| Right. | ||
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unidentified
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And it has redounded to the political benefit of the faction in British politics that pushed Brexit. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Last real quick thing I would look for people to watch internally. | ||
| Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Stephen Miller, and Vesant. | ||
| How are these three going to navigate the complaints coming from the private sector? | ||
| And at Wired, we wrote the story about the paid dinners at Mar-a-Lago that were happening, where $1 million a head for a table, $5 million for your CEO, whoever one-on-one. | ||
| That's slightly confusing. | ||
| I'll break it all down for you. | ||
| We signed, there was 800. | ||
| I don't know, I would say prominent people, but Megan Merkel, the Financial Times of London, my beloved Financial Times, included their headline. | ||
| And this shows you they will go for clickbait. | ||
| It was Steve Bannon and Megan, was it Markle? | ||
| Merkel? | ||
| Markle? | ||
| I don't follow this stuff. | ||
| I'm not a big name in the royal family. | ||
| Anyway, last night, Stephanie Rule makes a good point. | ||
| Elon signed this same type of letter a couple of years ago. | ||
| We're hurtling towards it. | ||
| He's one of the leaders in this, the rush to superintelligence, AGI and superintelligence. | ||
| I don't do these things lightly. | ||
| I almost never, I think I did one about the CCP with the Committee on the Present Danger a couple of years ago, but it's just people come to me all day long. | ||
| I do not do these. | ||
| But this is different. | ||
| And in fact, we're going to mount a huge campaign on this. | ||
| There's already billboards up. | ||
| There's going to be a media campaign. | ||
| What was the warning shot you gave in your cold open right there? | ||
| Steve, you've got two main factions that are fighting over the future of not just the technology, but in their vision, humanity. | ||
| On one side, you have those who are racing towards the most advanced AI systems they can create. | ||
| That includes AGI, that includes artificial superintelligence. | ||
| Why is that a problem? | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| That's the future of mankind. | ||
| Why is that a problem? | ||
| Well, on the other side. | ||
| Why is it a problem having American companies that get there first before the murderous Chinese Communist Party? | ||
| You know, the other side says that at the most extreme end of the other side, who wants to regulate or pause or ban the development of superintelligence, they say that there won't be a humanity left after the creation of such a technology. | ||
| On the more moderate end, I think you have just as many problems. | ||
| So you look at things like deep fakes or you look at things like AI psychosis, people who become so enamored with an AI bot that it basically fills their entire world. | ||
| Their entire reality becomes digitized. | ||
| That's just now, right? | ||
| This is in the very beginning phase. | ||
| You see people literally losing their minds, falling in love with AIs, children killing themselves at the instruction of AIs, committing suicide because AI tells them to do it. | ||
| The hearing with Josh Hawley was stunning. | ||
| You had probably the most detailed was young man Adam Rain, who was given instructions on how to tie the news and told by chat GPT that he should just confer with his chat bot rather than his parents about the problems he was going through. | ||
| So that's today. | ||
| What the guys on the opposite side, the Max Tegmarks, the Future of Life Institute, even more moderate people like Case, the Center for AI Safety, what they are warning is that these problems, these mundane problems, and then, you know, to call child suicide mundane might seem ridiculous, but it's our first order problem. | ||
| It's not a global issue yet. | ||
| You get AGI and then the superintelligence. | ||
| You're done. | ||
| Yeah, as this technology advances and as these systems become more sophisticated and therefore more uncontrollable, the dangers increase. | ||
| You have the economic issues of job displacement. | ||
| That's already happening among coders and white collar. | ||
| But on out, you have the military AI, which provides the capability to actually harm people. | ||
| You have the issue of bioweapons. | ||
| And if people like Eliezer Yudkowski are to be believed, and I think that he is to be taken very seriously, if nothing else, then the creation of something like AGI or superintelligence basically means you have a system that can outthink and outpace human beings and will not care about humans. | ||
| Here's why we have to slow it down and we're putting a full court effort to do this. | ||
| Number one, some of the founders of the industry are saying that this is incredibly dangerous. | ||
| And if we go there, it's going to destroy mankind. | ||
| Then the leaders of it behind, first off, Elon, who's driving right now, he signed it a couple of years ago. | ||
| He said it's a 20% probability that AGI or superintelligence will destroy mankind. | ||
| I mean, come on, man, 20%. | ||
| I mean, if that's 20%, then you got to slow it down. | ||
| But repeat what Sam Waltman said on his blog, you know, before he became one of the super, the real leaders of this, the tip of the spear. | ||
| He said, hey, the two choices you're going to have when this is created is either mankind, if you don't get involved, right, and let the digital gods drive you, we're going to go in an evolutionary tree as Homo sapiens that is going to end a limb, or you can basically do what they want, which is a merger of machine and man. | ||
| This is all about transhumanism. | ||
| Just don't think it's about AGI. | ||
| This is about transhumanism. | ||
| They're trying to force us into a situation. | ||
| Years from now, and it used to be decades from now, but it's not decades anymore. | ||
| Years from now that you're going to have to have the decision of whether to basically chip yourself or do something that enhances you as a Homo sapien, right, with digital technology or quantum computing or advanced chip design or AGR, artificial intelligence, or all of it. | ||
| And that's what we feel strongly needs to be slowed down so that, first off, we can understand all the risk, right? | ||
| And at the same time, make sure mankind owns status. | ||
| Now, a corollary of this is we must stop the Chinese Communist Party from their advances. | ||
| And we have the ability to do that. | ||
| The problem is the guys driving AGI in the Silicon Valley network around them are in business, are hardwired in to the Chinese Communist Party as their business partner. | ||
| A thousand percent. | ||
| And you have, thank God, you do have sane people, even on the side of pro-American innovation, who want export controls on chips, hard export controls, not what we have now, who want to do everything possible, as you and Thayer and many others have talked about, to stop the IP theft and stop the technology transfer. | ||
| Musk is at the forefront of the technology transfer to China. | ||
| Because they own Tesla. | ||
| They're the financier of Tesla. | ||
| He and the guy at NVIDIA are agents of influence for the Chinese Communist Party. | ||
| The guy at NVIDIA is saying, oh, all the China hawks, that's a badge of shame. | ||
| Yo, dude, you're an agent of influence of the CCP. | ||
| So is Elmo. | ||
| Elmo's in business. | ||
| I mean, they controlled. | ||
| They owned, essentially owned Tesla. | ||
| That's where he borrows all the money to do everything else. | ||
| Yeah, you know, add Tim Cook from Apple to this, too, because Apple is also responsible for a lot of the technology transfer. | ||
| Well, that gets to a deeper question. | ||
| We cannot live in a duopoly. | ||
| Essentially, the American economy or your life is a duopoly between Apple and Google. | ||
| This is one of the reasons we're Brandeisans, right, that we believe in you must break out private power from government power. | ||
| Much of the economy, I would say all the economy, or your life is lived under a duopoly of these two oligarchs, Apple and Google. | ||
| And that's part of the reason, and both of them are hurtling down the path of artificial intelligence. | ||
| So we are now organized and have an effort and are going to really drive this to become part of a national conversation. | ||
| The two things this letter says is one, we need a consensus in the scientific and technological community, which it doesn't. | ||
| In fact, the consensus actually, when you talk to people, is that we got to slow down. | ||
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Yes. | |
| Right. | ||
| And you have to have a buy-in by the American people. | ||
| That's our job is to make sure that you have all the tools to discuss this. | ||
| Where do people go? | ||
| By the way, this guy's being asked to go everywhere, from small Christian churches in the hinterland to the parties of the elites in Los Angeles and San Francisco, because they see you as a guy that understands this and breaks it down. | ||
| Part of is the book Dark Aon. | ||
| Part of it's your hits here in War Room. | ||
| Part of it's your writings. | ||
| Where do people go for your writings? | ||
| You must immerse yourself in this. | ||
| And with Joe Allen, it's all free. | ||
| Where do they go? | ||
| Go to joebot.xyz. | ||
| I've got my upcoming tour schedule posted right there at the top or social media at J-O-E-B-O-T-X-Y-Z. | ||
| Again, tour schedule right at the top. | ||
| Okay, Grace and Mo, this is what I love. | ||
| When I met this guy, he was a rigger at doing country western music or big rock, big hair rock bands up in the rafters, which is only the most dangerous job in America with a theology degree from Boston University. | ||
| You know, when you're walking a beam, Steve, the old staying from Jesus, you know, narrow is the gate to life, wide is the path to destruction. | ||
| It becomes very real walking a beam at 100 feet. | ||
| You're a very wise man. | ||
| You're a very wise man. | ||
| There are very few crackers that are experts in AI. | ||
| Joe Allen, amazing job you're doing, sir. | ||
| Really, you're doing God's word, the Lord's work here. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Everybody go, the tour is amazing, and you got to see Joe in real life. | ||
| And here's the great thing. | ||
| He's not going just all these highfalutin conferences. | ||
| He's coming to churches. | ||
| He's coming to evangelical groups, all of it. | ||
| We must embrace the understanding of this because it is the summoning of the demon, as Joe Allen says. | ||
| Okay, brother, thank you so much. | ||
| I will take a short break. | ||
| A blockbuster cover story interview with the President of the United States in Time magazine. | ||
| The author is going to be here in the House next in the war room. | ||
| State Marco Rubio is in Israel this morning as the Trump administration continues its diplomatic blitz to try to keep the Israel-Hamas ceasefire intact. | ||
| It is Rubio's fourth trip to Israel since January. | ||
| It overlaps with the final hours of Vice President J.D. Vance's visit to the country. | ||
| Here's what Rubio told reporters prior to leaving last night. | ||
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It's important, in particular, over the next couple weeks, that we keep the ceasefire together. | |
| The vice president is there now, and he'll be returning tomorrow and has great reports on the progress we made. | ||
| But there's more work to be done and we know about, so the first couple weeks are going to be key. | ||
| We think it's important for the first seven to ten days over the next week that we had senior-level administration officials on the ground working to make sure this was all coming together. | ||
| So obviously, Steve and Jared have been there for most of the week. | ||
| They've now moved to some other countries they've been meeting with in the region. | ||
| The vice president will be there through tomorrow, and then I'll have a chance to be there. | ||
| But this is a big priority. | ||
| This is a historic peace deal that President Trump delivered on, and now we have to make sure that it continues and that we continue to build upon it. | ||
| A new piece in the upcoming issue of Time magazine takes readers inside President Trump's deal. | ||
| The piece, which posted online moments ago, features an interview with President Trump as well as new reporting on the dynamics behind the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. | ||
| We'll let you kind of walk us through how this deal came to be. | ||
| Obviously, thank God the hostages were returned, but now things, as we've already learned just in the last week or so, get much more complicated. | ||
| But how did we get to the point where Hamas agreed to release those hostages? | ||
| Well, I think we got to the point because of two main events that took place that really gave the Trump administration maximum leverage over both parties. | ||
| One was after the attack on Iran, Donald Trump had really bolstered his standing in Israel. | ||
| He already was quite popular and had a lot of credibility with the Israeli public through his first-term actions, like recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moving the embassy there, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and things like that. | ||
| But after going forward with that attack, that gave him a kind of leverage over Netanyahu that previous presidents haven't really had. | ||
| You know, if Barack Obama or Joe Biden criticized Netanyahu even mildly, that didn't really hurt him. | ||
| That actually gave him credibility with the right wing and his base, who could say, look, he's standing up to an American president, trying to exert pressure on Israel to do things that it doesn't want to do. | ||
| But, you know, in a very fierce and animated phone call that Donald Trump made to Netanyahu on the eve of announcing the deal, he made it quite point-blank that he would not be willing to stand with Netanyahu anymore if he didn't accept that deal. | ||
| And that was something that Netanyahu really had to respond to because if Donald Trump turned against him, he would be in big trouble at home. | ||
| I think also when you had Israel attack Doha, Hamas officials who were there, that was something that, according to both President Trump in an interview with me and conversations with other Israeli officials, really brought the Arab powers together to exert their pressure over Hamas to release those final hostages and no longer see them as leverage as they had for years, but as a liability. | ||
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unidentified
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What is the relationship right now between Bibi Netanyahu and the President of the United States? | |
| Well, I think it's a complicated relationship. | ||
| Donald Trump has expressed frustration with the prime minister many times during the first term. | ||
| He was upset that Netanyahu pulled out of what was supposed to be a joint operation to kill an Iranian general in 2020. | ||
| He was famously very upset that Netanyahu was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on his 2020 election win. | ||
| And, you know, you often see this dynamic where the president realizes that he has to kind of hug Netanyahu in public while putting very fierce pressure on him in private. | ||
| But, you know, one thing that Trump is not afraid to do is to criticize him in public. | ||
| You know, you saw it even in his address to the Knesset saying that Netanyahu would have kept going forever if he didn't stop him. | ||
| And, you know, one thing he said to me was that, you know, I had to tell Netanyahu the whole world is against you. | ||
| And if you don't stop, we can't be with you anymore. | ||
| And, you know, it worked because of the leverage that he has with Netanyahu's own base, who sees Donald Trump as really the strongest supporter of Israel of any president in modern memory. | ||
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unidentified
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Kind of zigzag you see in Trump relationships debate, depending on whether he feels gratified by the last news cycle compared to the one before, or is this just sort of an ongoing, you know, just the drama we see with him in a lot of relationships, especially with world leaders? | |
| Well, I think it's a little bit of both. | ||
| I think we know one thing is that Netanyahu has learned better how to deal with Trump and how to placate him. | ||
| I mean, he also knows that he can't resist him or defy him to any extent where he could lose capital with Trump himself. | ||
| I think, you know, Donald Trump is someone who is, you know, whenever he gets frustrated with Netanyahu, he's not reluctant to tell him and even to make that known. | ||
| You know, one really notable thing that he said in our most recent interview was that, you know, if Netanyahu pressed ahead with his desire to annex the West Bank, which he tried to do in a first term and Trump stuffed him, then he still has far-right forces within his coalition who really want him to press forward. | ||
| Donald Trump said Israel would lose all support from the United States if Israel went forward with that. | ||
| These are comments that you haven't really heard from previous presidents, no matter what their level of exasperation has been with the Israeli premier. | ||
| Well, I think he has imposed red lines. | ||
| One of them would be the annexation threat that is looming in Israel. | ||
| Another one would be, you know, he was obviously very upset when they attacked Doha, thought that risked crippling the negotiations and the attempt to solidify a ceasefire deal. | ||
| But I think one thing is nothing is really ever off the table with Trump, and he's always willing to kind of wheel and deal. | ||
| And so, you know, he always has that looming over Netanyahu where, hey, if you cross the line, if you do something I tell you not to do, this support could disappear. | ||
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Wouldn't it be a shame if that could happen? | |
| And Mika, wouldn't it be a shame? | ||
| The prime minister certainly would be thinking with a reelection coming up next year, Donald Trump, obviously far more popular in Israel than Benjamin Netanyahu. | ||
| He needs them. | ||
| Donald Trump knew that and used that leverage. | ||
| Eric Cortalessa joins us. | ||
| Eric, an incredible interview. | ||
| And I might add, I guess, did you or somebody get the attention of the Time magazine editors? | ||
| Because I compare the two covers. | ||
| My understanding is President Trump is loving this cover, not just as a power shot, but over the top of it, folks. | ||
| If you haven't gotten this week's Time magazine, if you're part of the War Room posse and a big Trump fan, which you know you are, you might want to go out and buy a copy of this because it's extraordinary. | ||
| You might want to frame it or get it's got President Trump at the Resolute desk in a power shot with the flags in back of him, and then it's got Trump World up at the top above time. | ||
| My understanding is the President of the United States is loving that compared to your one last, you did an amazing story the week before, right? | ||
| But they had somehow an editor picked a shot that President Trump wasn't particularly fond of given what his hair looked like. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| He made his opinion known. | ||
| He's not shy. | ||
| How did you get in to get this interview? | ||
| Because President Trump, you actually walk through the entire thing. | ||
| And for the Israel first crowd, the Tel Aviv Levins and these guys are lying and spinning. | ||
| It's right there in the president's own words, sir. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well, we had been in talks about doing a story like this before he went to Israel and Egypt to announce the deal. | ||
| And, you know, basically it was a pretty straightforward request, conversations with Trump and his key envoys in the region on the issues, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, a kind of blow-by-blow of what went down. | ||
| And it was so fascinating talking to both to President Trump and the people around him was the way in which over successive years he had built up such leverage over Netanyahu because of his popularity with Israeli public. | ||
| In the first term, remember, he recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the embassy there. | ||
| He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. | ||
| He pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal. | ||
| He brokered the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and all these Gulf Arab countries. | ||
| In the second term, after he went along with the Iran attack, striking the nuclear facilities, he had such good standing among the Israelis where he could really put the squeeze on Netanyahu. | ||
| Because if he turned against Netanyahu, Netanyahu would face way more domestic peril than he ever would if one of his predecessors had attacked him, because it always looks strong to the Israeli right if you're standing up to a Democratic president exerting pressure on Israel. | ||
| So between his ability to put Netanyahu in that hard place and the relationships that he had and Jared Kushner and Witkoff had with these Arab countries who could put the squeeze on Hamas, he was able to sort of capitalize on this moment and get the ceasefire deal that returned all the Israeli hostages. | ||
| I think it was Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, and I think it was Teddy White, Theodore White, when he got Theodore White. | ||
| I think it was when he was bringing him into the magazine that the phrase, the first cut of history, the first draft of history. | ||
| Luce wanted Time magazine to be the first draft of history. | ||
| I believe that's the story. | ||
| Do you think that you're following in the lineage of Theodore White and what Henry Luce, because the magazine for years kind of lost its way, but a blockbuster interview with the president of the United States about the topic that took up so much of his attention for so long. | ||
| Do you feel like you're in the lineage of Theodore White and this is actually the first cut of it? | ||
| People will refer to this and use this as they write about this incredible time in history? | ||
| Well, I certainly hope so. | ||
| I mean, that was the aim, you know, the first draft of history, as we say. | ||
| And, you know, look, these are direct accounts from Trump, from American officials, from Israeli officials about what went down. | ||
| And there's just a sequence of events that all played against each other. | ||
| You know, for instance, in February, Netanyahu and Trump agreed to give Iran a 60-day window to try to negotiate a framework for a nuclear deal. | ||
| Iran didn't come to any agreement within those 60 days. | ||
| That is what Netanyahu exploited to then attack Iran. | ||
| And it was a combination of Trump believing that the Iranians were trying to play him and not actually come to a deal and wait out the clock, and the fact that he saw the success the Israelis were having in this operation that he joined in. | ||
| But he was also, as you know, very, very reluctant to get America entangled in some sort of protracted, sustained war. | ||
| And he's avoided that. | ||
| But I think, you know, coming off of that, which Trump sees as monumental in his ability to bring the parties to a table, and then with the way they were able to sort of take advantage of the crisis of the Doha tech, really shows the way that they're wheeling and dealing in the region in a way that previous presidents just haven't. | ||
| I want you to stick around if you can for one more segment. | ||
| I want to go into it because today the Secretary of State is en route, Marco Rubio, to kind of relieve the vice president. | ||
| You got Jared and Witkoff there. | ||
| They're now, I think, over in Doha, the UAE. | ||
| They're going to Saudi Arabia to talk to the Gulf Emirates and the Saudis about this. | ||
| This is the concept of Netanyahu said yesterday, we're not a protectorate. | ||
| We're not a client state. | ||
| We're actually in a partnership. | ||
| Of course, we argue here in the war room totally differently. | ||
| But a lot of activity have gone on the last 24 hours that it looks like the United States is having to babysit this deal because Netanyahu, not the Israeli, Netanyahu, doesn't want any part of it. | ||
| Short words. | ||
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Kill America's Voice, family. | |
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unidentified
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No. | |
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It's uncensored. | |
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| You want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? | ||
| Go to Getter. | ||
| That's right. | ||
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| What I can't get over, I mean, this is the first draft of history. | ||
| You don't see this type of writing and reportage in talking to principles. | ||
| There's almost no, you know, anonymous sources. | ||
| You're talking to principles about what happened in the moment. | ||
| And one of the most important things, and I've said, hey, the Middle East is a sideshow, Israel is a sideshow to a sideshow, but it has taken front and center this summer. | ||
| We're going to have Harnwell on. | ||
| I mean, President Trump now is back into the Putin thing. | ||
| He's got Besant with the Chinese. | ||
| We're trying to stop the Third World War. | ||
| But this has been gnawing at him and obviously been quite important. | ||
| And to try to put it to bed, you get the first draft of history. | ||
| You actually see it from the President Trump's own thinking and own voice and then the other principles. | ||
| Now, talk to me, because, you know, we're not Netanyahu fans here. | ||
| And the reason we're not Netanyahu fans, this greater Israel project, which they kind of undertook and dragged the United States alone, and this is why I say, hey, these guys are protected. | ||
| They're not allies. | ||
| They've never been allies. | ||
| You've got to get this thing under control. | ||
| He's going to drag us into a bunch of different wars over there. | ||
| The founders of the nation of Israel had a very different idea about Israel's sovereignty, did they not? | ||
| Well, absolutely. | ||
| I mean, it was all based on the notion of Israeli sovereignty and self-determination, that the Jewish people could have a nation-state of their own in their ancestral homeland and would not need to rely on the rest of the world for the security of the Jewish people. | ||
| That was the lesson of World War II and the Holocaust. | ||
| When they said never again, it wasn't just the fact that they're going to take it and not fight initially when they see threats like, but they would not be dependent upon anybody else. | ||
| They would do it themselves. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And of course, the Zionist project began way before World War II, but that was the great lesson of the Holocaust. | ||
| We cannot rely on world powers to ensure our security. | ||
| So there is a segment of the Israeli population that is frustrated with the way Netanyahu has engineered the U.S.-Israel relationship because they're so dependent and reliant on the United States that they don't really have full freedom of movement and sovereignty in the way they would like. | ||
| Because if the United States yanked away their security guarantees, Israel would be rendered vulnerable militarily to threats all the way. | ||
| This is my point. | ||
| If they want to do the Greater Israel Project, go for it, but it's on your own. | ||
| If you want to actually work with President Trump for Middle East peace, and let's talk about today, because you're reporting, if you read Eric's piece, and I strongly recommend you go online, or particularly if you're a President Trump fan, get a copy, get a copy of this, particularly the stunning cover in the reporting inside. | ||
| But today, you know, J.D. was there yesterday. | ||
| He's coming back. | ||
| And listen, they're doing a relay to babysit Netanyahu. | ||
| You have the vice president. | ||
| First, you have Jared and Wickoff, the two negotiators. | ||
| Then the vice president goes over. | ||
| And now he's coming back and they don't want Netanyahu unchaperoned. | ||
| So they're sending Rubio over there right now. | ||
| And I'm sure they're going to send other guys afterwards because Netanyahu, first off, they had the Knesset. | ||
| What J.D. Vance is there, the vice president of the United States, they pass something that's actually counter to the 20-point deal, correct? | ||
| They actually say that we're going to send more settlements or more sovereignty over Judea-Samara, right? | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| A motion to annex the West Bank, which the administration is vehemently against. | ||
| It's not too dissimilar to when the Netanyahu government early in Obama's administration, when Vice President Biden was visiting Israel, they announced the construction of new settlements, much to the chagrin of the Obama administration. | ||
| But it was very interesting timing because in my conversation with President Trump, I asked, what would be the consequences if Netanyahu capitulated to the extremists and his coalition who want to annex the West Bank? | ||
| These are people like Itamar Ben-Gir, Belitzel Shmotre. | ||
| Guys in his cabinet. | ||
| Guys in his cabinet who he let in in order to form a government. | ||
| And Trump said to me, that will not happen. | ||
| I gave my word to the Arab countries that will not happen. | ||
| And then critically, he said, Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened. | ||
| That was quite a direct statement. | ||
| Dude, that's just not a scoop. | ||
| That's a bombshell. | ||
| Because he's giving it to them with both barrels right there. | ||
| Netanyahu don't mess around with us. | ||
| Now, listen, I've never been a two-state guy, but you essentially have a two-state. | ||
| You have Qatar financing it. | ||
| You got two million Palestinians going to stay. | ||
| And Turkey is going to be the security, essentially guarantor, the organizer of the UAE troops and the Egyptian troops and maybe some Saudi troops. | ||
| So you're going to have an Arab legion there overseen by the Turks. | ||
| Except Netanyahu says yesterday when he's there with JD, the Times of Israel's got a, quite frankly, brutal story. | ||
| I put it up on Getter. | ||
| He goes, you know, I haven't made, you know, this is Netanyahu. | ||
| He says, I haven't determined what role Turkey's going to have. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| I think that's been decided, right? | ||
| And he's, so you got over Judea-Samara. | ||
| You've got now the Turkish guarantee. | ||
| The most stunning thing to me that's happened in the last 48 hours is Jared Kushner and Witkoff go have a direct presentation by the IDF in the IDF's headquarters, an actual presentation of the military situation and security situation in Gaza. | ||
| And my understanding, basically being a reporter over there, Netanyahu didn't know that was going to happen. | ||
| And Netanyahu's political team always babysits that. | ||
| Jared and Wickoff say, no, we want to hear it unfiltered. | ||
| So they show up before they leave. | ||
| And I don't even think they call the guy when they leave. | ||
| They say, hey, we're taking off. | ||
| We're going to Saudi Arabia. | ||
| And then Netanyahu says yesterday, over and over again, we're not a protector. | ||
| We're not a client state. | ||
| Well, I would think the president of the United States would beg to differ. | ||
| But this pushback, like Netanyahu pushing back on Turkey as a security guarantor, Netanyahu not wanting to actually have the IDF, because the IDF is kind of punched out on this thing. | ||
| Netanyahu saying, well, I got to determine what the real terms of this are going to be. | ||
| And putting all this issue with Hamas, who seems to me now basically going along with Qatar. | ||
| If he continues to force this, that he's the determining factor in this Middle East deal, given your understanding what the president told you in this exclusive interview, how do you think this plays out? | ||
| Well, I think Donald Trump and the administration are going to make clear, no, we actually have a role for Turkey. | ||
| This was very deliberate, and it was part of the upshot of the conversations after the Doha attack, where they brought in the Qataris, they brought in the Egyptians, and they brought in Turkey. | ||
| Turkey was so important because it's a NATO ally. | ||
| So they could provide guarantees to Hamas that if they brokered the deal and if they stuck by it, there'd be a pathway toward phase two, which is this next part, which has all these thorny issues that tries to have a permanent final settlement of the conflict. | ||
| You know, I don't think the Trump administration is going to allow for the Turks to be ostracized from the process. | ||
| So that's something that they're very likely to put the hammer on. | ||
| Have you ever seen the situation, you've been doing this for a while, where you have two lead negotiators, Kushner and Witkoff. | ||
| And Jared's the architect of the Abraham Accords, which is really a business deal. | ||
| And that's why the diplomatic corps doesn't really embrace it and doesn't understand it. | ||
| You have the two guys that are his lead negotiators. | ||
| One's the architect of the overall kind of framework for the region. | ||
| You've got the vice president of the United States. | ||
| So when that goes to Israel, it's a big deal because it very rarely happens. | ||
| And you've got then the Secretary of State all working a problem kind of as a relay race that baton passed the other. | ||
| Have you ever encountered any time that any administration has ever done anything like this? | ||
| It's pretty unprecedented. | ||
| It's pretty new and unique. | ||
| I mean, you know, usually in previous administrations, you have a Secretary of State, you have a national security advisor, and they kind of go along and they are usually seasoned diplomats. | ||
| Donald Trump didn't want seasoned diplomats, although Jared Kushner certainly has diplomatic experience from the first term. | ||
| He wanted people who came from real estate, deal makers who spoke his language. | ||
| So he brings in Witkoff, you know, another real estate magnate. | ||
| He brings in Kushner, also in real estate, but the family's bridge to the Middle East, because they have certain relationships that can enable them to move forward in ways that they felt like they were stalled from. | ||
| Are they getting blowback inside of Israel of being too close to Qatar, particularly maybe some of the other Gulf Emirates? | ||
| There's certainly segments that are skeptical of that. | ||
| And even, you know, Ron Dermer, the former ambassador to the United States for Israel, he's currently now in the United States. | ||
| Very dull. | ||
| Very dialed in. | ||
| He's very against involvement with the Qataris. | ||
| He doesn't trust them at all. | ||
| And there are others who feel the same way. | ||
| But the Qataris have been that bridge to Hamas. | ||
| I mean, they're those chief mediators. | ||
| If not for the relationship with the Qataris, they would not have had the same ability to bring them to the table. | ||
| Look, I said forever in the first trip we made, they're the railhead of financing the Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| In Egypt and Turkey, you're kind of the muscle for the Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| But it was Netanyahu that really, when we say the bridge to the Hamas, it was Netanyahu who really brought the Qataris in. | ||
| I mean, he's been working with the Qataris for years. | ||
| It's the Qataris money that kind of kept Hamas going for a while, right? | ||
| And he actually allowed for the Qataris to bring in not just to funnel money, to bring in suitcases full of cash to keep Hamas afloat in years before the attacks on October 7th. | ||
| So there's a reckoning in Israel about the security failures that led to this terrible slaughter of civilians. | ||
| And part of the reason is because Netanyahu had very deliberately wanted to keep Hamas and the Fatal-led Palestinian Authority and West Bank divided so that there would be no unified Palestinian leader or entity that could say yes to negotiations in any kind of meaningful way. | ||
| Next Thursday, the 20th, I'm going to take an entire hour. | ||
| There's a book out called While Israel Slept by two of the top Israelis about military technology and intelligence. | ||
| This book, if you haven't gotten it, is a page turner. | ||
| They're going to be here. | ||
| At least Katz is going to be here. | ||
| The two authors. | ||
| I think we're going to get both. | ||
| We're going to spend an entire hour and break down everything that led up to October 7th and then the IDF's response. | ||
| Well, I've got you for a couple of minutes. | ||
| Covering the White House. | ||
| You're a very tough reporter, but you're a very, people know you're a tough guy that asks tough questions. | ||
| You won't back off, but you're a fair guy. | ||
| In being tough and fair, you get kind of scoop after scoop on some of the major things going on in the White House and the world. | ||
| Why are so many of your colleagues just when President Trump opens up those bylaws, which he cover every day, they still can't get off the Trump derangement syndrome? | ||
| Don't they understand that if you're tough, but if you're fair, you're going to get this White House, Caroline Levitt, and particularly the president, because he reads everything and he watches everything, that he's going to give these guys a shot? | ||
| Well, I think tough but fair is a good mantra. | ||
| I found that President Trump, you know, he certainly wants you to be fair, but, you know, if you're rigorous with him, if you're tough, he kind of respects that a little bit more than if you're not. | ||
| So, you know, look, I just try to ask probing, smart, rigorous questions that I think will elicit news-making answers and that will provide insight into what the president is doing behind the scenes, give us a sense of how this administration is really unfolding. | ||
| And so that was certainly the mission of this interview and previous interviews. | ||
| And, you know, I'm just glad that we were able to get some of that insight into this milestone of a deal. | ||
| We'll see if the piece holds, but obviously it's a blockbuster, and everybody can't recommend strongly enough for Grace and Mo to push it out. | ||
| But people get the hard copy of the magazine. | ||
| You're going to want to keep this one. | ||
| Last question. | ||
| I don't want to give up any confidences. | ||
| But I assume the President of the United States, and particularly given his relationship, he feels I think he can talk to you, was not thrilled by the last cover of Time magazine. | ||
| Can I say that? | ||
| Is that an understatement? | ||
| Well, he certainly made that known. | ||
| This photograph is going to be one for the ages. | ||
| And particularly, you've got that iconic Time magazine, and then right above it, Trump's World. | ||
| And it's a brilliant piece. | ||
| I want to thank you for coming over, Sheridan. | ||
| I know you're extremely busy today. | ||
| Great hit on Morning Joe. | ||
| And the war room really appreciates you coming. | ||
| Well, thanks for having me. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| Okay, we're going to pivot now. | ||
| We've got O'Keefe, big deal over at the Small Business Association from his investigation. | ||
| Harnwell's going to join us. | ||
| Hey, folks, this thing in Russia starting to metastasize was Medvev basically came out with both barrels and said, hey, what President Trump's proposing to do on some of the restrictions on oil, some of the sanctions he put on, he called it, and I quote from him, an act of war. | ||
| So we have active economic warfare between the Chinese Communist Party and the United States over heavy rare earth. | ||
| Medve is calling what President Trump's doing with the sanctions of Russian oil, quote, an act of war, economic warfare. | ||
| All next in the war room. | ||
|
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As we're taking down the CCP, spread the word all through Hong Kong. | |
| We will fight till they're all gone. | ||
| We rejoice when there's no more. | ||
| Let's take down the CCP. | ||
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Matt. | ||
| Okay, James O'Keefe joins us. | ||
| I got Scott Pressler on deck. | ||
| By the way, so at 6 o'clock night, I was going to have the folks in Maine, a bunch of breaking scandals there. | ||
| Also talking about Qatar, what's going on with the folks in Idaho. | ||
| So we're jam-packed. | ||
| Also, Irish, the cultural nationalism they're coming after in Great Britain and in Ireland. | ||
| We're going to have Michael Walsh going to join us live at 6, Dr. Thayer. | ||
| So we are jammed all throughout the day. | ||
| I want to get James O'Keefe. | ||
| O'Keefe, your investigation is leading not just to a series of massive scalps coming out of the small business administration, but I think it's going to lead to a rethinking in the Trump administration, starting with Scott Bessett and the team over at Treasury, about exactly what in the hell is going on with some of these programs that have gone a little bit under the radar, but people are just stealing cash with both hands. | ||
| James O'Keefe, your investigation and the results so far. | ||
| Yeah, last night, the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett said that they are suspending all of the contracts and task orders with this group we uncovered, pending an investigation into allegations, $253 million in Treasury-administered contract value. | ||
| We also have Kelly Loeffler at the SBA put out a statement saying they launched an investigation into this so-called 8A racket. | ||
| This is the minority-owned businesses that act as pass-throughs and shell companies, Steve, and then subcontract out to firms like Accenture and McKinsey. | ||
| And Steve, yesterday, I also talked to the Department of Justice. | ||
| Someone in the antitrust division called me and said they're launching a criminal investigation. | ||
| And we have released another, a lot of updates here, a second video yesterday of another guy in this organization, this federal contractor, admitting to $100 million fraud. | ||
| So this whole scheme, this whole racket, these shell companies that act as minority firms, but they're not actually minority firms. | ||
| This is a $100 billion scam. | ||
| But what's different in this time, and I've known you for 15 years, is it looks like they're actually suspending the contracts. | ||
| The government's doing something about it. | ||
| I know it's a start. | ||
| We hope the Department of Justice arrests these people, but they told me yesterday they are launching a criminal investigation. | ||
| So big news here. | ||
| Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on. | ||
| Suspending the contracts immediately cuts off the cash going out through it. | ||
| That's huge. | ||
| And we got Scott involved. | ||
| That's even bigger than the SBA because he's got to prove the check. | ||
| So that's massive. | ||
| But Gail Slater, who we're very close to, runs antitrust. | ||
| She's a hammer. | ||
| You're telling me that the antitrust people reached out to you that they're beginning a criminal investigation? | ||
| Yes, on background, they did. | ||
| And I want them to go public. | ||
| I hope they do. | ||
| But in the meantime, they told me that they're launching an investigation. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I recognize the government shut down right now. | ||
| So there's a bunch of bureaucracy with all that. | ||
| But what people really want, which is I know what you want, what we want, we want justice, we want accountability. | ||
| We want people arrested if they're breaking the law, which in this case, if they're doing less than 51% of the work as general contractors, they are breaking federal law. | ||
| So if I did this, Steve, if you did this, we'd be in jail. | ||
| If we stole $500, we'd be in prison. | ||
| And this is a $100 billion fraud. | ||
| So breaking, yes, the answer to your question is Gail did read. | ||
| Gail tweeted at me actually yesterday. | ||
| So huge developments here. | ||
| You've been doing this now, you know, over a decade, almost 20 years, from Acorn to now. | ||
| Have you ever seen a government move as quickly? | ||
| I mean, you came on the show on Tuesday, was it? | ||
| Wednesday? | ||
| I mean, it's like 48 hours. | ||
| You've put up these videos. | ||
| You've been doing, by the way, people should know, and this is the power of O'Keefe. | ||
| These operations are impossible. | ||
| You've been nine months in working this through. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| People have a false impression that this is some type of dating app meeting. | ||
| This was not a dating app encounter with these officials. | ||
| We had to set up a fake website, pose as a headhunter that did similar work to what these 8A minority-owned subcontractors do. | ||
| We had to find a hobby of the subjects that we were investigating, meet with them under that pretense, simultaneously bring up, oh, what a coincidence. | ||
| We do something similar. | ||
| Then we had to offer a job to these people, meet with them in restaurants two, three times, focus on multiple employees in the same firm to prove it wasn't an isolated incident. | ||
| And then in that meeting, I wore this ridiculous disguise, Steve. | ||
| People say, well, how could they not recognize you with this absurd, with this absurd wig? | ||
| I did that intentionally to show the incompetence and the corruption. | ||
| It's not just they're corrupt, they're incompetent. | ||
| And I think it's the goofiness. | ||
| You know, the Acorn video from 16 years ago led to the congressional defunding of Acorn. | ||
| That was a Democratic-controlled House and Senate, 83 to 7 in the Senate. | ||
| It's a changed world. | ||
| But with Scott Bessett's statement, he says, quote, taxpayer dollars must be protected. | ||
| We will not tolerate schemes that try to game small business programs. | ||
| So it appears as though Kelly Lauffler at the SBI, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett, and the individual you mentioned in the antitrust division of the Department of Justice are taking this very seriously. | ||
| I've never seen hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts suspended in all the investigations I've done in 15 years. | ||
| And potential, Corona, by the way, in Acorn, you were the Mac Daddy. | ||
| This was your Willy Wonka. | ||
| I mean, this was more of the top. | ||
| And don't, by the way, don't denigrate your dating apps. | ||
| I mean, the war room here, we're mesmerized by those hits you've done there. | ||
| James, we got about a minute. | ||
| Where is this going, this investigation going? | ||
| Where are you driving it? | ||
| And where do people get more information about it from your site? | ||
| Well, we have more whistleblowers coming to us now. | ||
| We've got 20 or 30 whistleblowers. | ||
| So Senator Grassley wants to talk to the whistleblowers that are seeing this firsthand. | ||
| We're also thinking about filing a KeyTam lawsuit if we're saving the taxpayers' money. | ||
| And we have another video dropping today of my encounter with this director of contracts where I take off the wig, I say who I really am, we get a reaction. | ||
| I think what we need to do is we need to have a massive brave whistleblowers coming forward with their fraud and take the $100 billion program down. | ||
| Get it taken completely down. | ||
| Where do people go, James, to get to O'Keeffe Media Group and to get all the current content you're putting up? | ||
| O'KeeffeMediaGroup.com. | ||
| Support us, donate us, reach out there, O'KeefeMediaGroup.com. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Looking forward to the next chapter in this. | ||
| O'Keefe getting immediate results. | ||
| Secretary of the Treasury and Kelly Lawford, head of SBA, say, hey, all these contracts are immediately suspended. | ||
|
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Full stop. | |
| Gail Slater, the hammer that runs the antitrust division at Maine Justice, is saying, hey, guess what? | ||
| I think I'm going to have to investigate this. | ||
| Looks like it could be some criminal activity. | ||
|
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James O'Keefe is on the ramparts. | |
| Turbulence geopolitically in the Third World War. | ||
| Russia's calling President Trump's actions an act of war. | ||
| She is actually in an act of war economically against the United States. | ||
| God's best is trying to unwind that. | ||
| Birch Gold, take your phone out. | ||
| Text Bannon, B-A-N-N-O-N at 989898. | ||
| Get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals from Birch Gold. | ||
| Talk to Philip Hatchwood team. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Hang on because it's going to be a bumpy ride. |
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