Episode 5068: NEOCON's Fight For Relevance In Trump 2.0
Stay ahead of the censors - Join us warroom.org/join
Aired On: 1/14/2026
Watch:
On X: @Bannons_WarRoom (https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom)
On the Web: https://www.warroom.org
On Gettr: @WarRoom
On Podcast: Apple, iHeart Radio, Google
On TV: PlutoTV Channel 240, Dish Channel 219, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV or on https://AmericasVoice.news. #news #politics #realnews
It's Wednesday, January 14th in the year of our Lord, 2026.
It's Natalie Winters hosting today.
We've got a packed show.
I think we're gonna have Mike Benz for most of it.
He'll be joining us in B Block.
But we got some, some breaking news, some news of the day to go through.
I want to start with that clip that we played.
That is essentially the chairman of the Israel Defense AND Security Forum predicting, I guess, more than predicting saying that there will be a US-led strike on the Iranian regime, giving some details.
So I thought it was quite instrumental and important for us, the WAR ROOM, the real MAGA OG MAGA, not a Neocon MAGA to come on here and say that there is absolutely nothing America first about us getting involved in Iran from a kinetic perspective.
Saying make Iran great again is globalist.
And saying that making Iran great again is making America great again is a hoax.
It is a lie.
And I know that the, I would say, most resounding and salient argument that you hear coming from even our side of the football that went to invade Iran, that seems like what the new goal line benchmark has become is because, oh, well, they say death to America.
But here's the fundamental point about the Trump administration and why President Trump won.
There are a lot of people who say death to America.
The only difference is that you don't have to go overseas.
You don't have to go hundreds or thousands of miles away.
To hear that the loudest, I would posit you just go right to Washington, D.C. and you call it what it is, the enemy within, and just remember how apoplectic and how the legacy media melted down when President Trump dared to use that term.
Because it's those people who really want death to America.
I mean, just look at their policies.
Whether it's demographic change, the economic reality, there's a hardship here that is intentional.
They get off on destroying your life, right?
That's the sick, twisted way that our elites work.
And frankly, if you get to the heart of it, I think if we've learned anything from the last 20 years, from the last 40 years, it's not that intervention is the cure.
It's actually the disease.
And especially when we're getting involved in so many countries at the same time, meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party is busy conducting international affairs, global trade, through the lens of how can we actually benefit the Chinese people and the Chinese economy, right?
How can we extract resources?
How can we extract rare earths, critical minerals, defense treaties, bases, ports?
Not how can we spread transgenderism.
This whole color revolution idea, this whole concept of regime change that we've been pushing abroad, it's very cheap talk.
And frankly, it's a very low IQ justification as to why we need to get involved in trillion-dollar costly invasions of every country abroad.
And, you know, I don't know about you guys, but I voted for mass deportations and not mass regime change in every country except the United States.
Frankly, I voted for regime change here in the United States.
And frankly, I think actually going after mass deportations with the level of commitment that we have seen us meddling in the foreign affairs of other countries is a much safer bet, not just because it's what Americans actually voted for, but I actually think we would see better results if we threw one-tenth of the resources that we've been putting into every other corner of the globe historically and right now.
Right, what if we told people, oh, instead of regime change, what we're going to give you is we're just going to focus on the criminals, not the whole regime, and we're just going to, you know, focus on some of the economic crimes.
Because that's essentially what they've watered down mass deportations to, right?
If you look at the numbers.
And I don't know.
I think the concept of America First is that you get our house in order, your house in order first before you start chasing demons in every other corner of the earth, let alone at the same time.
It's quite interesting, right?
This whole concept of a civil war, right?
That's apparently what we're in, whether it's over Israel, whether it's over the deportations, though I think that one, maybe the H-1B, maybe, I don't know, Vivek thinks he won, but considering he got off Twitter, I think maybe we won that one.
But, you know, I would just humbly say to the Mark Levins, the Ben Shapiros, the neocon know-it-alls of the world, don't flatter yourself.
It's not a civil war because you're not even a worthy opponent.
And do you know how I know that?
Because we already won the ideological battle.
That was back in 2016.
The American people do not want continued foreign intervention in every single country.
And sure, these neocons love to tell us that every single thing that Israel wants also is uniquely and directly and 100% and precisely aligned with what the United States wants.
But what they miss, frankly, the original sin of that crowd of people, is that there can be overlap of interests, but it's not 100%.
Just because something is good for Israel does not mean that it's good for the United States.
That's not a radical thing to say.
That's not an anti-Semitic thing to say.
It's the freaking truth.
And us getting involved in Iran from a kinetic perspective when there are a hundred other ways that we could get involved or not.
Frankly, that's what I would do.
We certainly don't need to impede what's happening there.
Right, we already won this so-called civil war.
Frankly, I think what we need more is some sort of exorcism of these people from the party because their ideas are so horrible.
And they are like moloch.
They want the sacrifice of American children in every battlefield except our own.
These are people who are perverting the idea of securing the southern border and not focusing on foreign entanglements abroad into let's secure the southern border so we have the political cover and excuse to get involved abroad.
I don't know about you, but that's not MAGA to me.
You know, all these people who are like the least American I've ever seen.
Apparently, I've been told by what, Ilhan Omar, that Somalians built this country.
I know the 1619 project was pretty woke, but I don't think that even they said that.
But these are the people who are now telling us what it means to be America.
It's in the same way that Muslims tell us, you know, well, Islam means peace.
No, it doesn't.
It means submission.
In neocon ideology and getting involved in these foreign wars, whether it's Iran or wherever, it doesn't mean democracy and it doesn't mean freedom.
And here in the war room, we're smart enough to see through that.
It means death.
And it doesn't just mean death in the countries we're invading.
It means death here at home.
And it means distracted resources, wasted resources, and a distraction of what really matters, which is the enemy within.
If our variable for the type of people that we are going after are those who say death to America, then I'd start in Washington, D.C.
And frankly, I'd start in the Democrat Party.
You don't need to go all the way over seas to the Ayatollahs to hear that being uttered.
Speaking of that, there's a great politico article, some breaking news up, talking about how Democrats are, basically they don't want to fund ICE.
The real buried lead is that they're trying to figure out a way to euphemistically spin the fact that they hate this country and that they actually think that our borders should just completely dissipate.
And here's a quote: Democrats are demanding new rules for DHS agents, such as forcing them to use body cameras, refrain from wearing masks, and to go through more extensive training.
I would say they should apply those rules or policies to their own shock troops, the protesters.
Maybe they could stop wearing masks.
Frankly, they probably need better training, at least for me, a defensive driving perspective.
But there's some really interesting quotes that I want to hone in on.
You guys know we like to stay ahead of the curve here in the war room, but the messaging on this is going to be really important.
But basically, all the Democrat leadership contributed to this article saying, quote, more importantly, we need to look out for the American people right now.
They are terrorizing people on the streets of this country.
There's a culture of violence that happening that does need to be addressed.
That's in reference to ICE agents.
I would say to those asinine Democrats: if you guys care about terrorism and violence and keeping our streets safe, then maybe I would stop defending the importation and let alone letting criminal twice, thrice quadruple convicted rapists, gang members, and criminals stay in this country in the name of human rights and saying that diversity is our strength.
But I guess they only care about terrorism and crime if it has to do with ICE agents, whose, I believe, other kind of modus operandi and sole focus is actually preventing that from happening.
And here's the real tell, and this is put money on it.
This is what you're going to keep hearing.
They're opposing new DHS funding, quote, because unless there are meaningful and significant reforms to immigration enforcement practices.
Now, for those of you who have watched this show for a while or tuned into any form of politics for a while, you know that the number one term that you hear anytime anytime it comes to anything related to immigration on both sides of the aisle is comprehensive immigration reform.
Remember that one, the Gang of Eight Amnesty, right?
It just sort of, I don't know, maybe evolves every few years, but that's always the core of it.
And now they've pivoted instead of comprehensive immigration reform because they know they're not going to get a lot on that front.
Now it's comprehensive reform of ICE and these agents.
And by the way, the only reason that they're throwing out they want more training, it's to throw sand in the wheels, right?
It's to get in the way of everything that's going on and to make it so we don't have the manpower to carry this out.
And I would also just add that it's quite rich, all these Democrat freaks complaining to Politico about how our ICE agents are not competent and they're being hired for the wrong reasons.
I'm pretty sure that that's the party of DEI now complaining and projecting that they think ICE is doing the very same thing, not just that they pushed for, but that they tried to legally mandate and enforce and shove down your throat in this country for years.
But now all of a sudden, now they think there's something wrong with hiring unqualified people.
I don't know about you, but I think I'm old enough to remember the apoplexy over how if you dared to say, well, we can't hire unqualified people that you are somehow racist.
And by the way, I would also add that, you know, I'm so glad there's this newfound respect for law enforcement and Border Patrol and ICE agents and DHS, et cetera, from Democrats.
Well, then, I don't know about you guys.
Have you heard anything from them condemning the wild and rogue Secret Service agent who was basically doxing the vice president's location and advance details to James O'Keefe?
He did wonderful work on that video.
Maybe that's where we need reform.
Yeah, so funny.
Did you ever hear any of these members of Congress complaining about how much reform we need after Butler and Secret Service agents, selection?
No, I guess it's only when it's convenient, right?
Because now suddenly we need comprehensive reform of the only agency that's capable of carrying out mass deportations.
And when they say comprehensive reform, they mean turn them into a welcome committee down at the border like they did under Obama and handcuff them so they have basically no power to do anything and cog throw sand in the gears, make it so they can't even enforce President Trump's agenda.
But I don't know, maybe we're too busy doing mass regime change abroad to focus on the real issues here at home.
And you want to know what the enemy within is?
unidentified
The people who said those quotes I just read to you.
And if a portion of your savings isn't diversified into gold, you're missing the boat.
Here's the facts.
Inflation is still too high.
The U.S. dollar is still too weak, and the government debt is insurmountable.
This is why central banks are flocking to gold.
They're the ones driving prices up to record highs.
But it's not too late to buy gold from Birch Gold Group and get in the door now.
Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA in gold.
You don't pay a dime out of pocket.
Plus, from now until January 30th, when you complete a purchase with Birch Gold, they'll send you a copy of the exclusive Patriots edition End of the Dollar Empire, limited edition book for free.
Go to birchgold.com/slash bannon now to claim your eligibility.
Well, this is one of the most important days potentially in modern American history if the amendment to defund the National Endowment for Democracy can pass.
I say one of, because the House has indeed twice in U.S. history voted to defund the National Endowment for Democracy, once in 1984 and once in 1993.
Both times the House overwhelmingly voted to defund it.
And then secret back channel deals were made through the Senate to kill the amendment so it didn't appear in the final bill.
But this will at least set us up for that fight with the Senate if this does indeed go through.
And the reason this is so important is because the National Endowment for Democracy is the most prolific, aggressive, corrupt spear tip of what you might call the deep state, the blob, permanent Washington, BlackRock, the CIA, whatever face you want to put on it.
I guarantee you it is a face, one of many in the funhouse mirrors of what Ned wears.
for folks who have not followed this issue as closely, the National Down for Democracy was set up in 1983 in large part by the CIA itself.
CIA Director Bill Casey at the time and the Reagan administration were stressed out that the CIA's powers had been cut back in the late 1970s after the church committee hearings.
And they felt like the CIA couldn't do, wasn't authorized to do the kind of dirty black ops that it used to have the power to do before the late 1970s.
And so given that there was a Democrat control over the House of Representatives at the time, they didn't feel that they could legislatively undo it.
And so they used a cheeky little maneuver to create a new agency funded by the executive branch, well, agency, whatever you want to call it.
It's technically an NGO, but it's fully funded by the U.S. government.
It reports to the U.S. government, and it has a variety of very interesting secret agreements with the U.S. government.
Its founders bragged that it was set up to fund the organizations that the CIA can no longer directly fund or that it would be too scandalous if the CIA gave them the money.
And so NED basically confessed to being the CIA's bagman.
And it was the CIA director is who actually back channeled the deal in 1984, just one year after it was created.
The House voted by about a 50-vote majority to defund Ned because they said it was too close to the CIA and already been caught doing CIA dirty work as an outside NGO, completely unauthorized and with no bookkeeping effectively.
And then the CIA director, Bill Casey, then worked out a deal with the Democrat senator Bill Proxmire to have the Senate kill the House defunding.
And today, NED is probably the number one global social media censorship coordinator.
So when you take the fact that it was set up by the CIA, its own founders confess that it runs for, it operates for the CIA, that it has this cloak and dagger relationship where there's no transparency about it because they signed a secret agreement to classify all grants that it gives out, and that it's the number one global coordinator of the censorship industrial complex.
That's a pretty bad combination.
We used to call that Operation Mockingbird, but that seems quite quaint and pale in comparison to what we're talking about here.
So the idea that there's now at least a bill to defund this, now, I think a large part of this was because the Senate Appropriations Committee under Susan Collins, Republican, you know, with friends like this who needs enemies,
put in the in the draft bill about a week ago or so, full funding for the National Down for Democracy, which the Trump OMB, the Office of Management and Budget, wanted to zero out to zero last year.
And so what you have right now is this never Trump Republican wing of the GOP under Susan Collins and however many friends she and her colleagues can muster against the Trump White House running into each other.
And what this vote will prove is really where we are going into the 2026 midterms in terms of how many Trump Republicans there are in Congress versus how many of the kind of deep permanent swamp Republicans there are.
And this is about as pure a metric for determining that as anything I've ever seen.
Well, everything that since Trump first ran for office, we had a free and open internet in this country from basically 1991 until 2016.
And then suddenly the walls all closed in and everything from every angle.
You know, it started with Russian disinformation and anything that you did to challenge any aspect of the blob, whether it's immigration, war policy, war funding, supporting Trump against Hillary Clinton.
It seemed like basically everything started to be censored all at once.
And it was shadowy forces from all different parts of our society.
It came from certain government agencies.
It came from certain private corporations.
It came from certain university centers.
It came from certain international NGOs.
It came from certain foreign regulatory authorities.
Well, who's coordinating all of them?
Was one of the big questions that haunted many of the people who could feel that something was doing this, something was coordinating this, but couldn't name what it is.
And I'm here to tell you, once again, it's the National Endowment for Democracy.
That's what it was.
In 2016, when RussiaGate got started, when Hillary Clinton hatched her plan to frame Trump as a Russian agent, and the CIA and the FBI and the ODNI and the Obama White House went along with it and poured gasoline all over it and set up a special prosecutor as soon as Trump stepped into office in 2017.
The National Endowment for Democracy began working on the problem of Russian disinformation online.
Don't you know?
Trump is an illegitimate president, don't you know?
And Russian disinformation and bot farms and fake accounts are everywhere.
It's fake news spreading fake accounts.
Well, the National Down for Democracy using its then 40-plus year pastiche of network connections in civil society, in NGO world, in the U.S. government, in foreign governments, in the corporate affairs worlds, and within the social media companies who they had worked with to help overthrow foreign governments, like they did during the Arab Spring, the National Down for Democracy, together with Twitter and Facebook.
Same thing as they did in the Crimea Revolution, same thing as they did in dozens of countries.
They were already in the business of social media influence for CIA rental riot operations.
Now they had to do the censorship counterinsurgency play, but they already had all the network connections.
And so they were first movers in space.
And because they had the backing of the U.S. government and every embassy in the region, and basically every aspect of the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department, or USAID that hated Trump, but didn't want to get caught being duplicitous at their desk could outsource the dirty ops to a NED grant.
And that's what happened.
I'll give you a great example.
Elon Musk got fined $140 million, X did, for not, for basically defying the EU Digital Censorship Act's requirements to allow them to police narratives that are available to users on X.
Well, the National Endowment for Democracy was one of the significant forces behind the EU Digital Censorship Act.
I just posted on my X feed a planning coordinating Zoom call they all had about this, about how to use the EU Digital Censorship Act to put huge fines on X in order to force them to give the old jobs back to the trust and safety team that Elon fired.
I mean, this is, I don't, this is as close to treason as you can argue in a civil case using a foreign country censorship law coordinating with them.
When Mike Benz uses the word treason, and you also know that that's time for me to say we got to go to break, but hang through more Mike Benz after this short commercial break.
And if a portion of your savings isn't diversified into gold, you're missing the boat.
Here's the facts: inflation is still too high.
The U.S. dollar is still too weak, and the government debt is insurmountable.
That's why central banks are flocking to gold.
They're the ones driving prices up to record highs.
But it's not too late to buy gold from Birch Gold and get in the door now.
They'll help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax-sheltered IRA and gold.
Plus, from now until January 30th, when you complete a purchase with Birch Gold, they'll send you a copy of the exclusive Patriots edition and of the Dollar Empire.
Go to birchgold.com/slash bandow to claim your eligibility.
We're back in the war room.
Mike, feel free to pick up where you've left off, but I just want to also maybe toss into the fire this new reporting.
We have, I believe it's coming from the Free Press, Gabe Kaminsky, who does great work talking about how a lot of the rhetoric that we heard about these investigations and the freezing of funds in a lot of these kind of left-wing, maybe Soros is the best catch-all phrase to use, but there's obviously more depth there.
But those type of groups that we actually haven't really seen a lot of results, a lot of talk, not a lot of action.
So maybe juxtaposing what is happening with the NE, the NED today and what the administration is doing and how all of this comes together.
Let me touch on that first and then I'll connect it to Ned.
So first, this is unsurprising when I read that reporting from Gabe Kaminski.
That is consistent with sort of what I expected.
There is a bipartisan, unspoken social contract, if you will.
It was violated in the past through things like Arctic Frost and the mass investigation of right-wing NGOs, if you will, right-wing nonprofits like the Heritage Foundation and the Conservative Institute, Conservative Partnership Institute and the like by the FBI.
Obviously, there's the famous Lois Lerner IRS scandal targeting the Tea Party-affiliated nonprofits.
But given that that's kind of a nuclear weapon, if the other party takes power, I had been watching with some eagerness to see how exactly the second Trump administration would navigate that.
The fact is, is the political left does have a much vaster NGO ecosystem than the right, but the rights is still a significant and very,
very powerful pillar of everything from thought leadership to funding to all manner of kind of the political soup that goes into running an administration and putting out a campaign.
Even though these things are not supposed to operate like that, they not only do on both sides, but they neither party is particularly shy about the blurring the lines there.
But the fact is, is What I read in that reporting, to me, is also kind of the logic that gets into the lawfare issue.
I don't know whether the reticence to pull the trigger on prosecutions of very high-profile outright criminal actors in the Democrat Party is because of a fear of retribution by Democrats that if you go hard on them, they'll go hard on you when they get into power.
But then it's like, okay, then what do you do about the fact that they weaponized and completely abused that power and destroyed countless lives there?
And I think this, you know, the reason Democrats were shy to pull the trigger until Trump announced his run for office was because they didn't want to set in motion a tit-for-tat, you know, endless, you know, every election means everybody else goes from the other party goes to jail, like what plays out in so many other countries.
The problem is they did it.
And it's the same thing with the NGO fraud ops.
And, you know, the fact that it took Lindsey Harrington to try to bring charges against Comey when it was out and out smoking gun proof of perjury, to bring charges against Letitia James when it was out and out smoking gun proof of mortgage fraud.
And the fact that it's there's besides that, there's really been no Justice Department prosecutions.
I suspect that there's been something similar as an analogy for what's happening in terms of taking on the foundations.
I don't know what the exact thought process is, but I do think there's still a way to achieve a substantial amount of the victory without using the criminal justice system.
And that is through a mass transparency effort.
See, unlike many Republican NGOs, Democrat and aligned NGOs have a much more robust relationship with the U.S. State Department, USAID, and with other U.S. government-funded grantees, as well as through the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy and Department of Education.
I mean, you name it.
There is this U.S. government cloak and dagger NGO relationship, which is allowed to operate under a shroud of secrecy because these grants and activities so-called promote U.S. interests.
For example, all of the grants that all the activities that the Open Society Foundation is participating in with various local U.S. embassies, with USAID and the like, or for that matter, with our intelligence services.
I believe that one of the best ways to try to get reform here is through sunlight, not necessarily direct criminal action, especially, you know, you don't want to just go on a fishing expedition just because you don't like the other party.
But the fact is, if you use secrecy as a sword to do dirty work abroad, you can no longer hold up that sword as a shield if you're doing dirty work at home, if you're doing campaign or political work at home, or you're supporting various politically infused issues and the like.
And so I believe that that whole shroud of secrecy around liberal, these liberal international NGOs and their relationship with state, CIA, USAID has to be completely unclassified to the extent that it's classified and has to be completely made public to the extent that it's quote SBU, sensitive but unclassified, meaning it can't be declassified because it's not classified in the first place, but it can't be made public.
Well, I believe that if you operate at home, you lose that ability to do that work abroad.
So, and you really don't have that on this side.
You don't have like Heritage getting $100 million grants to influence some election in Kosovo like you do with liberal NGOs that operate here.
I mean, take the Ford Foundation, for example.
The Ford Foundation was working with the CIA since the 1940s, the 1940s, late 1940s.
And the Ford Foundation is still around as a basically Democrat Party surrogate.
Its relationship is now largely with the State Department and USAID and the like.
But when exactly did its relationship with the CIA, which it had for 30 years, go away.
But the point is, is I believe that all of those internal communications, all of the quarterly reports, annual reports, email communications, should be public as a matter of course rather than sort of being treated as a kind of covert operation because we want to swing an election in Kosovo and the Ford Foundation network is passing through grants to help us here.
Yeah, I guess my question, and maybe it will help us better understand too, this apparatus that you're talking about, though in some cases it sounds like they don't totally have to rebrand, right?
They're still getting their money, the grants, maybe a little less now that USAID has been shut down.
But how have they sort of morphed their strategy in these past few months in response to whether it's the rhetoric or some of the actions, and we'll give credit where credit is due that the Trump administration has done, or is it just kind of same old tactics, just kind of, you know, waiting the Trump administration out?
Well, it's been really interesting to watch it because one of the most prolific, notorious, and powerful of these dark money nonprofits on the liberal side was Arabella Partners.
And Arabella has wound down.
Probably should have been a bigger headline than I think many people now remember to be.
But Arabella Partners had this partnership network of hundreds of NGOs.
It was just a dark money fund that would disguise payments all throughout the ecosystem.
And it seemed like two weeks after the Trump administration designated Antifa an international terrorist classification for many of their cells in Switzerland and I believe Spain and one or two other countries.
Arabella just, I don't know if those two things are related, but I do think that it's interesting that that's something on par with the Open Society Foundation itself kind of closing up.
And I don't know if there were investigations that set that off.
I don't know if it was fear of investigations.
It's hard for me to not imagine the latter was the case.
But on the just to circle back to the National Down for Democracy, as these votes are being tallied as we speak, it's interesting to observe that I don't know how this vote is going to go.
The problem with shutting down the National Endowment for Democracy is not Democrats, even though the National Down for Democracy is overwhelmingly Democrat.
It was spent the past 10 years doing political CIA-adjacent black ops to kill Trumpism as a movement and kill basically every Trump-aligned government on planet Earth.
And yet at the same time, you will see, mark my words, a robust amount of Republicans, number of Republicans on the floor today who will vote to fund the National Down for Democracy.
Now, part of this is because they were very clever with the way they structured this.
When the CIA and the Reagan National Security Council first put this together, they made sure to make sure everybody in the swamp got their cut.
So they set up the National Down for Democracy with four branches, two political cores, and then two other cores that almost correspond to it.
So the four cores are something called the NDI, the IRI, CPAY, and the Solidarity Center.
The IRI is the International Republican Institute.
That's the, you can think of it like the CIA wing of Republicans of the Republican Party.
It's the internationalist branch of the RNC that, you know, our intelligence agencies basically do favors for to create markets for our oil companies, our agriculture companies, our tech companies, our retailers, our, you know, you name it, basically, you know, International Debt Collector Service, Intelligence Agency, you know, confessions of an economic hitman type thing.
That's basically the way it's up.
It's always operated, you know, from the days of Bush and before.
But then on the Democrat side, you have something called the NDI, which is the National Democratic Institute, which is the NEDS DNC branch.
And so you have right there, the National Down for Democracy is equally funding Republicans and Democrats.
Now, it has – its leadership reflects that, by the way.
Criminals can forge your signature on one document, use a fake notary stamp, pay a small fee with your county, and boom, your home title has been transferred out of your name.
They can take out loans using your equity or even sell your property.
So let me ask you, when was the last time you checked your home title?
Probably never.
And that's what scammers are counting on.
That's why you should use home title lock.
Use promo code steve at home title.com to make sure your title is still in your name, where you also get a free title history report, plus a free 14-day trial of their million-dollar triple lock protection, 24-7 monitoring of your title, urgent alerts to any changes and a fraud should happen.
They'll spend up to $1 million to fix it.
Hometitleck.com now.
Use promo code STEAVE.
Welcome back to the war room.
We got Sam Fattis.
Sam, we've only got a few minutes left, but I wanted to bring you on to give us your assessment of the latest with everything going on in Iran.
I will stop talking and let you roll until we got a bounce.
Well, look, there have been protests all across Iran now for weeks.
These are not minor.
These are major.
They have clearly been a threat to the regime.
That is legitimate.
That's real.
Starting four or five days ago now, I'm losing track of time, the regime began to confront them violently in the street.
And at some point over the last few days, four days probably at this point, that shifted to simply opening fire indiscriminately en masse against people in the street.
So that doesn't mean police officers were authorized to use lethal force when they were compelled to.
It means regime forces, which includes IRGC and what they call the Besiege, which are essentially their thugs to keep people in line, went out in the street and just began to mow folks down.
And even when they were running away and trying to flee, they were pursued and they were killed in the street.
And even when they were wounded and dragged off to the hospital, in some cases, they were hunted down in the hospital and executed in the hospital.
And then these bodies have been dumped in collection sites all across the country.
And families are now reduced to going and picking through hundreds of corpses in each location, trying to find their largely their kids who were executed.
And then on top of that, what the regime has done is impose essentially a prohibition on funerals and public burials, which is obviously designed to sort of, essentially, this is all about disappearing people, right?
So you don't want to have events at which people can show up in large numbers and mourn and pay their respects.
You want these bodies to just be put in the ground and go away and for everyone to be everyone to shut up and pretend that it didn't happen.
So that is the state of play.
I understand the president has now said that the killings have stopped.
I can't confirm that.
I assume he has good information to rely upon.
I would just say if the killings have stopped, it's because they don't need to kill any more people.
They have crushed the protest, would be my opinion.
And just give us the latest on our side of the fence, where you think we stand with our kind of, you know, COAs, our potential options, what we could do there, and your thoughts on getting involved kinetically.
Well, the best understanding I have is that there was some delay in the military options because Iran had made it crystal clear that if they were hit, they were going to retaliate against our forces in the Middle East.
And the military was saying we need more time to get prepared to withstand that and counter that.
I don't know where we stand on whether we're going to proceed with these attacks.
I mean, what I can tell you from long experience working against the Ayatollah is they don't really understand, they don't care.
They understand, but they don't care about discussion or they're not seeking accommodation.
They're not seeking coexistence.
So you can isolate them, wall them off, and sort of accept that they're going to continue to exist.
Or you can hit them hard enough to change things.
But discussion with them is pointless in my estimation.
Their worldview is such that they do not seek accommodation.
They're not interested in getting along with us.
Again, you can wall them off and say, well, we'll accept that they've sort of been walled off from the rest of the world, or we can do what is required to take them down.
Obviously, if we start talking about kinetic action, everybody, including me, is going to be concerned about how far that goes.
God knows we do not want troops on the ground inside Iran.
We've got about a minute left, but we opened the show with a clip of one of the, I think the chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum saying that it sounds like the cake is already baked, that America is going to get involved with Israel and strike Iran and that the regime will be gone.
Sam Favis, if people want to follow you, stay up to date with everything that you're working on, the Substack, the magazine, where can they go to do all that?
Warren Posse, thank you guys for hanging in with me today.
I'm already getting some news that I ruffled some feathers by saying that being at Civil War with the neocons, that they're the ones flattering themselves.
Well, I stand by it 100%.
In fact, I don't even, when Steve says pray for your enemies, I don't even really consider them as part of that because we beat them in 2016.
We won against them on the ideological front.
We beat them at the ballot box.
We're way past the Bush Republican days.
And anyone who's trying to pull you back into that, it's like invasion of the body snatchers.
Maybe invasion of the ballot snatchers is what we can use in this context.
MAGA is not about doing the bidding of other countries in the name of democracy and human rights.
You know what I care about?
Democracy and human rights here in the United States, where we still don't have free and fair elections and there's still censorship going on.
So maybe focus on that.
Then maybe, maybe, although still I would say no, we can focus elsewhere.
But that's not America First.
And you know, here, the war room, we are the home of America First.