Episode 5149: Trans Epidemic Continues To Lead To Violence; Iran Meeting Kicks Off
Episode 5149 features Stephen K. Bannon vowing to expose media "lies" while Matt Meck outlines the MAGA coalition’s election integrity push, demanding Trump’s executive action amid stalled legislation like the Save America Act. AI experts warn of white-collar job automation and rogue systems, with stock losses hitting $1T, advocating for federal oversight via acts like Cotton’s AI Overwatch and Hawley’s Risk Evaluation. The episode ties this to a British Columbia school shooting linked to transgender ideology, with activists framing it as "human experimentation" and calling for a March 10 fundraiser. Iran’s nuclear talks stall as Israel prioritizes ballistic missiles over nukes, while protests surge over economic collapse—exacerbated by Trump-era sanctions and Ramadan—and China’s 25-year oil deal. Tensions rise with U.S. carrier groups deployed and Iranian strikes in the Straits of Hormuz, suggesting regime survival hinges on U.S. political hesitation rather than military resilience. [Automatically generated summary]
Pray for our enemies because we're going to medieval on this people.
You're going to not get a free shot on all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you'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 saved.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
It's Tuesday, 17 February in the year of our Lord, 2026.
It is the beginning of early voting in Texas, which is the center of the political universe right now, because as goes Texas, so goes the nation, and as goes the nation, so goes the world.
Matt Meck, the MAGA movement and the coalition around President Trump, we're going to have the Maha guys on tonight at five o'clock to talk about this because we kick off really the beginning of the midterm elections essentially kicks off today.
And we want to talk about their coalition and their motivation.
You run one of the, you help organize one of the biggest coalitions out there of people that are very focused on elections, the fairness of elections, and make sure that elections don't get stolen in the future.
What are the number one concerns of your coalition members right now?
Our number one concern right now is that really nothing of substance has changed from 2020 to now.
And if it doesn't, we're toast and it needs to change and it needs to change drastically.
And to do that, we're certainly trying to work from the bottom up with literacy on the education system.
It's we the people's election, not the government, not a third party vendor.
It's our, we, the people's election.
And people will, through us, help them understand registration, validation, tabulation, and reporting.
And it's important that we motivate from the bottom up because to be honest, Steve, we need to see, hopefully, some more bold, decisive action from the top down.
But we're ready.
We've got the ground fertile.
We're ready for whatever Trump's going to do.
We'll help execute it.
Well, here's the thing.
You know, there's all this debate now.
I mean, the Save America Act is basically ground to a halt.
Now, Rachel Bovard, I'll make sure we put this up.
Rachel Bovard's got, as she always does, she's got a very sophisticated piece in the Federalists today about a kind of a workaround of the, maybe workaround is too hard a word, about the filibuster.
Because right now, none of the Save America Act is going to be voted on, implemented.
President Trump is coming out with, he says, a nationwide executive order.
I know they're working on it over the White House.
Obviously, that's going to be challenging courts right away.
And we are burning daylight.
So, Matt, I can already tell that people, a lot of people are quite interested in joining up with you guys.
Where do they go?
Where's the action center?
If you want to be part of the coalition, you want to be on these incredible calls.
I know you got a show every night at seven o'clock that has a fairly big audience.
Where do folks go to become part of your movement?
Steve, they can certainly email me at matt at unauthorized.1 and we'll connect them up.
We have what's called a hub.
It's our own server, our own network that the great Mark Cook is doing the Hand Count Road Show has traded for us.
And we network and share and we scale up from there.
And Sarah, if I could, it's important we motivate from the bottom up because Peter Ticton knows this.
President Trump knows this directly.
Cash knows this.
People out here in our network, we were involved in.
We've got them recorded and we've given that all to law enforcement.
These people, whatever it means, but they said about May or April of last year, Trump won't even exist in two years.
They're serious.
Yeah, repeat that.
I want people, because this is how serious, this is why, you know, Sam Faddis was out of the country and wrote this thing about the American Tet.
We've gone through the American Tet Offensive up in Minneapolis.
I asked him, I said, hey, I know you're on vacation, but I need you up here.
It's so important.
This thing, people do not understand the scale of the hatred coming for President Trump and the scale of the hatred coming from MAGA.
Just repeat what you just said.
There's folks out here, and it's linked to 18AGs and others.
Part of it is part of a case and investigation going on, but they said Trump won't even exist in two years.
That was about April of last year.
Matt, one more time, where do people go to sign up with your group?
Just contact me at Matt at unauthorized.one.O-N-E.
Thank you, brother.
Appreciate it.
Look forward to having you back on.
Every night at 7 o'clock.
Every night at 7 o'clock, they've got their show.
Peter Navarro, very strong message came from the White House on Sunday.
I know the powers that be in big tech picked it up.
I'm not sure all of MAGA got it.
It was on Maria Bartarama.
Let's play the cold open and bring Brendan Steinhauser in it.
Another issue that's happening, and it is changing the economy at every level, and that is artificial intelligence.
Sure.
AI efficiencies are, in fact, replacing jobs, and people are worried that longer term, we will see their job go away because of AI.
What's the plan at the White House to counter those AI efficiencies?
And how serious of an issue are you looking at this?
It's a massive issue, and it's right on the president's desk and on his radar.
I think the one that's been most publicized is the effect on electricity prices.
And the president has already taken action.
We're going to be taking a lot more.
But there's water issues.
There's the loss of agricultural land.
And obviously, there's going to be major structural shifts in the labor market.
The issue for the United States of America is to balance the need to be at the leading edge and the leader in artificial intelligence, not just for economic reasons, but for national security reasons, because this will be one of the most dangerous weapons of war we've ever seen.
So we have to lead China and others on this.
But at the same time, we have to be mindful of the impacts across this nation.
And so we're going to have to deal with that.
And so there's just a lot of thought, a lot of action on this.
So stay tuned.
But I'm telling you, President Trump is aware of all four dimensions of the problem.
Yeah, because he's balancing, on the one hand, wanting and needing to be the number one global power on AI, beating China.
And that means a build out of data centers.
But on the other side, he's battling people like Senator Bernie Sanders and Richard Blumenthal, who are criticizing rapid data center buildout, saying all of these data center buildout, that needs to stop.
I mean, you can't exactly stop if you're looking to be number one on the global stage in terms of AI.
What needs to happen, Maria, is that all of these data center builders, meta on down, need to pay for all of the costs.
Emphasize on that.
They need to not only pay for the electricity that they're using on the grid, but they have to pay for the resiliency that they're affecting as well.
They need to pay for the water.
So there's activity, action here going forward where we force them to internalize the costs.
You can't be a Luddite like Bernie.
I mean, Bernie's one of the great Luddites.
But what you have to do is make sure the American people are not hurt.
And the loss of farmlands, no small thing.
Either Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, she's been a really bright light on so many crises that we've had, dealing with egg prices, dealing with beef prices, dealing with AI.
I just want to assure people that we're on it.
We also feel your pain, America.
We understand the ravages that inflation took on you because of Joe Biden's irresponsibility.
But we are addressing that with economic policies that ultimately will make wages rise faster than the inflation rate.
The cost, who's paying for it, also the agriculture land, that's a huge issue in Texas, and water from West Texas to Arizona, aquifers, all of it.
Brendan Steinheuser, I want to address, you're from the Alliance, and I want to make sure everybody, because you're building, helping to build a social movement.
I want to get to the data centers and all that.
But over the last 10 days, the nine days that shook the world in February, that we now realize the warnings of many of us, you included, about, hey, there's got to be some guardrails here, not just the guardrails for children, not just the guardrails for content creators, all the kind of four C's we talked about, but there's a deeper issue going on.
And now the most sophisticated people in artificial intelligence, including many of the people that oversaw the safety provisions internally to the companies, are saying there's something going on here that this thing is quickly getting out of control because it's developing faster than even the developers thought.
Can you walk us through that, the nine days in February that shook the world?
Absolutely, Steve.
And it's good to be back with you.
The trend lines that we're seeing are picking up very fast.
And so a lot of us have been talking about this for a few years now.
But what we're seeing, even in the last 30 days and the last nine days, as you're citing, is everything is changing much more rapidly.
So you're seeing software engineers and people that run software companies talking about how they are essentially being replaced right now.
And they're putting out warning shots saying this is going to happen to all white collar work.
Mustafa Soleiman, the head of AI for Microsoft, said that he thinks that white collar jobs could be automated within 12 to 18 months.
Now, we may or may not buy that timeline, but they are sounding the alarm.
These are the people building the technology.
We had OpenAI just in the last week, people fleeing that company, leaving that company saying they're not taking safety seriously.
They're not taking security seriously.
And so, you know, some folks who've left OpenAI and Anthropic, one of the other companies, have said the world is in peril.
They're literally going to go do something else with their lives because they're so concerned that we're on the wrong path here.
We've had questions, obviously, about the finance side of this, about, you know, whether there's an AI bubble or this circular financing that's creating all these potential problems in the economy.
So it's that combined with regular Americans.
I mean, I go and talk to people on the road all the time and they are concerned about their jobs.
They're seeing these headlines.
They're seeing more and more people talk about this.
And then their friends who work in tech, their friends that work as software engineers or tech sales are seeing this happening to them right now.
So the problem is that white collar work and then eventually blue collar work is at grave peril right now.
And so the administration and Congress have to act right now to get this right to protect American workers.
I want to go back.
You know, they've eviscerated a trillion dollars of value in software companies the other day.
And it's ironic that the software engineers were the ones that kind of worked on this and did it.
But when you say 12 to 18 months, I've actually talked to some people thinking It's administration, administrative, managerial, and tech, and particularly at the low level, entry level, all the way up to the highest level, where they would probably need some people with some wisdom or guidance that can make decisions.
But that this evisceration, particularly of tech workers, is gone far more rapidly than they thought.
As we warned that, hey, once this thing picks up steam, you have no idea how quickly it can build on itself.
And I'm hearing that, hey, what used to take what they could concentrate for four minutes, now they can concentrate for four hours.
Next week, it's going to be four weeks.
The week after that, it's going to be four months.
It's going to be four years.
That this is accelerating at an accelerating rate and scaring the absolute people that have been the biggest kind of apostles about this that they're actually frightened right now.
And you can see this in the stock market.
You can see it's going through, particularly software.
It hit last week, $1 trillion in value ripped from these software companies, a lot of whom are saying, well, we're trying to do, you know, AI agents and you're still going to have humans.
That's just not working out.
These, the bots and the agents are actually taking over and being prepared to take over in a much quicker pace.
Are they not, Brendan?
They are.
And this idea that you'll hear more about, many of the audience members will hear about this recursive self-improvement.
That's kind of what you're alluding to there.
The idea that AIs are now going to be improving themselves.
We've seen this already a little bit.
Again, the engineers, the people who are overseeing this process are saying AIs are going to basically improve themselves.
They're going to create better and better AIs and it's going to lead to this exponential growth and capabilities.
So that's what's happening right now.
We're sort of entering that stage.
And I have to say, too, one of the other things I've witnessed just in the last couple of weeks is how some of these CEOs, again, especially Dario Amade, the head of Anthropic, Elon Musk, the head of XAI, they're going out there and basically telling the world what's about to happen.
And I don't know if it's a guilt complex or they're trying to, you know, do a CYA or it's something else, but they are basically putting it out there saying what we are doing is going to replace you.
It's going to replace white-collar workers and blue-collar workers.
There's really no escape from this unless we do take some pretty drastic measures in terms of looking at this topic more seriously, studying this, figuring out where we're going.
How do we get this right to make AI go well for humanity?
Because if we don't, then it could be too late.
And all of a sudden, not only are we out of a job, in which case we lose our work, our income, our human dignity, but then this thing becomes so advanced that we lose control of AI completely.
And that's where people really worry about these loss of control scenarios leading to AI just being the successor species to human beings.
Brendan, hang on for a second.
This is not science fiction, folks.
This is science fact.
What the poet tell us, the French poet from World War I, see what you see.
The folks at the center of this, the frontier labs, are telling you right up in your grill exactly what is happening.
Frontier Labs Alert!00:03:52
Short commercial break.
Back in the warm in a moment.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
Brendan Steinhauser, you know, and we'll come on later in the week.
I'll get the group back together to talk about you guys, you get this Utah legislation.
You've got Ron DeSantis digging his heels in in Florida because he's not seen at the federal regulatory level, regulation level coming together.
There are bills bouncing around.
But has what happened in the last, in those nine days in February, now raised this up to the situation that the Secretary of War or DHS or somebody at a cabinet level needs to immediately go in and then come back to the president, the commander in chief, and say, hey, here's exactly what's going on in these frontier labs.
I'm sure there's talk from these frontier labs, but should now, would your recommendation be that the president actually ought to deputize somebody to kind of get their hands around us so they then send out a message to the American people that we're on top of this?
Also, what's happened in these labs over the last week should absolutely have us ban 1 million percent any more shipment of advanced chips to China, any more of the Chinese students coming over here to these great universities to learn.
All the Chinese nationals have to leave the labs, have to leave the companies in the United States.
If the big threat here is to have China get control of this, then we have to go to the 100%, as close as we can get to 100% probability that they have no access to American technology, training, education, or capital.
At the same time, the frontier labs, somebody's got to go in the frontier labs.
I've warned about this, right?
That somebody's got to go in there and actually find out what's happening and report back to the president, sir.
Absolutely.
So I'll start with the second point quickly and say we have to choke off the supply of advanced chips to China.
We have to pass legislation like the Chip Security Act that Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas has been championing.
There's another House bill moving to the House Foreign Affairs Committee now, hopefully to the full House, the AI Overwatch Act.
Those are a couple pieces of legislation that are similar in that they're trying to restrict access to chips from China.
That's critical in this effort.
Going back to your first point, though, yes, I think the president needs to have someone who is focused on national security, who says we have to have transparency and accountability.
We need the federal government to have oversight on the frontier labs.
There needs to be mandatory testing.
We need to have eyes on this, on these frontier models, which are potentially building artificial general intelligence or super intelligence.
That is the path we're on.
And right now, there's no access.
There's no transparency.
There's no accountability.
And so we definitely need someone at that level to do that.
And there is a bill there as well by Senator Josh Hawley from Missouri.
He's championing the AI Risk Evaluation Act, which would do just that.
And it would give that authority to the federal government to say that.
Yeah, I think the legislative part of this is fine, but I think this is a national security issue.
It has to be addressed right away.
This is not coming from the Max Tegmarks or the Brendan Steinhausers or the Mark Beals or the Jason Van Becks, all the people we have on it working on this professionally every day.
This is coming from people in the industry.
This is coming from the top people in the industry.
A lot of these people are just saying, you know what?
This thing's so far gone.
I'm going to go do pottery because I'm not so sure where humanity is going to go.
And I've worked on the safety issues.
I'm going to go garden.
That should be a major flair to the American people that something is up here.
And we just don't have our hands around it.
Industry Concerns Raised00:07:15
Brandon, where do people go?
The alliance, you're trying to form a massive social movement here.
Where do people go?
You can follow us on social media channels at secure AI Now, at secure AI Now, and then our website is secureainow.org.
Brendan, thank you so much, Brendan Steinhauser.
Thank you so much for joining us, sir.
Secure AI Now.
Okay, let's go ahead.
We've got a, this is pretty shocking.
Let's go ahead and play.
This is about this, the radical transgender ideology.
President Trump, as much as President Trump and everybody that's been on here for years, has fought this, the Terry Schillings of the world, the Christian Post people, Brandon Schowalter, all the great efforts.
Let's just see what's happening here.
Let's go ahead and play it.
At least nine people are dead and two dozen others hurt after separate shootings at a school and a home in a remote part of British Columbia.
Canadian police confirming that at least six people were found dead inside the school, while another died on the way to the hospital.
The only suspect, a woman, was found dead inside the school from a self-inflicted injury.
Two other victims were found dead at a nearby home, believed to be connected with the shooter.
The shooting is Canada's deadliest in nearly six years.
The investigation into the motive continues.
So a suspect is identified as an 18-year-old female by the name of Jesse.
We have a history of police attendance at the family residence.
Some of those calls are, pardon me, related to mental health issues.
So it is believed the victims of that residence and the suspect are family members.
Can you say what parent-sibling, what relationship that is?
Yes, the female adult victim is the mother of the suspect, and the youth male is the brother of the suspect.
Or stepbrother.
Can you confirm whether the subject is a male, female?
We've heard that it is a transgender person.
Is that something that you have in terms of information?
So what I can say right now is that we have identified the person, the suspect, by a birth name.
The birth name was Robert Dorgan.
We have also learned that the person does go by the name of Roberta.
Also uses a last name of Esposito.
Were you born a boy or a girl?
I was born.
That's what.
Is that X. Sorry, you're upset because your daughter was born a man.
So you've decided to take it out against the entire district.
What's wrong with you?
No, my daughter was born female.
She has XX chromosomes and she'll always be a woman, right?
She can't change her sex.
You know, why do you think doctors would want to give you guys hormones that'll, you know, change your...
Because they want to make people happy.
I know, but...
In fact, that's why my voice is cracking.
I love hormones.
What was that?
You.
So wait, are you guys worried that you might lose your sexual function if you're on hormones?
Oh, I already do.
I've already lost all of them.
But I've been taking hormones for six months.
I don't give a shit.
I'm happier than you.
Why does it affect you?
That's my question.
Is why would it affect your sister?
And why do you think it's a good idea to show up to you?
Why are you disregarding the way that your children feel so that you get attention?
And disrespect you have to do that.
It's like children.
It disgusts me.
You can't respect the way they love it.
You really birthed this whole child and carried it for nine months just to disrespect the f out of it while it's alive.
Why would you do that as a mother?
And then you have the fing girl to show up in front of our school.
The doctors wanted to give her top surgery when she was 15.
Because that's how she felt.
She did feel like that at 15.
She hated her breast.
She didn't want to become a woman.
How is that your problem?
And I hate my genitals too.
If I had the chance, I'd cut them off.
Come real close.
What genitals do you have?
I'm not going to.
How old are you?
You're old enough to be my finger grandma.
What's wrong with you?
I just want to.
You disgust me.
Well, I am old and I am.
Yeah, you're old.
You're outdated.
Go away.
Can you just leave?
No.
I'm just trying to understand.
You can grow up to be a healthy whole person.
Nobody's transgender.
The medical clinics are making money off.
That person deserves to know the truth.
You are not transgender.
It's not possible.
It is not possible, you guys.
It's mass psychosis!
Nobody's transgender!
Sheila Matthews, Abel Child.
What is this like a Kafka nightmare?
I mean, you saw with all the all the improvements people are making and going and suing these medical centers.
It's like the village of the damned right there.
And you see the horrible, horrible, I mean, this guy yesterday, Robert called Roberta, looks like a look like a pulling guard for the Green Bay Packers, right?
Tell me what's going on.
This is human experimentation, okay?
And we saw this with the Nazis, with Germany, okay?
And this is a mass psychosis.
This is a paper tiger.
Okay.
Once we talk about it and we get to the funding of it, which our government is doing, both sides, it's a bipartisan Community Safer Act that is doing this.
This is the school psychologists in the school system.
We have to be able to talk about this.
This is a crime against humanity.
It's not hurting anybody's feelings.
This is about changing humanity the way we see it today.
Women and men have been around for over 300,000 years.
Okay.
This is a cult, okay?
And it's funded.
It's funded within our government.
We're seeing that.
Okay.
And so President Eisenhower freed the Nazi camps in April of, I think it was April 12th of 1945.
And he wanted German people to see the atrocities of what was going on.
This is what we are seeing.
We have no accountability.
This is on the presidential level.
Abel Child has worked through this for multiple years.
And we're appealing to anybody that will listen to us.
And I believe it comes down, people watch your show, Steve.
And I know President watches your show.
We Want a Seat at the Table00:04:09
And we want a seat at the table.
And we want it now.
We are not going to put up with this any longer.
We don't care to vote if you're a Democrat or Republican.
This is our main priority right now.
We all understand.
You guys don't, but we do.
So this is a crisis, and we want a seat at the table.
I'm willing to sit down with the drug companies.
I'm willing to sit down with President Trump.
I'm willing to sit down with this Mr. McBride of Delaware, this congressman who is saying he is a woman.
I am a woman.
He is not a woman.
He's not going to take over my life.
Yeah.
Hang on one second.
We're going to take a short commercial break.
Natasha Owens takes us out.
We're going to finish with this.
And we're going to go to the Middle East on Next in the World.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
We're going to go to geopolitics in a moment.
Jim Rickards, I'm working to get Jim Rickards on tomorrow until that time.
Rickardswarroom.com.
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he throws in a free book, Chat GPT, Money GPT, Money GPT.
He talks about fiat currency and artificial intelligence.
After you read that, I think you'll understand that maybe now you go over to Birch Gold.
You'll take your phone out, text Bannon at 989898, and get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump.
If you make a qualifying investment, you get a free copy of the Patriots, the Patriots edition of the end of the dollar empire.
These have flown out.
In fact, we've gone through the entire first printing in just, I think, the first week.
They're getting more made right now.
But go take your phone out.
Talk to Philip Patrick and the team.
What I want to do, this thing's so shocking.
And that video with the kids, something like Children of the Damned or Village of the Damned.
I want people to get as much information as possible here, Sheila.
So where do they go?
What's the site?
What do you guys do?
You have a big fundraiser, I think, in March.
Tell us about that.
And then where do people go?
What we need now is people to be immersed in the information about this because it is a mental illness and it's a psychosis, ma'am.
Well, we have articles on our website.
So it's ablechild.org, ablechild.org.
We encourage you to read about it because we don't want more mental health funding.
We want more return to education.
You need to read the articles.
We've been following this for 25 years.
And we are celebrating March 10th in West Palm Beach.
And you could go to ablechild25.com for tickets.
We still have a few left.
I have to tell you, we're selling out pretty quick.
And so that is our 25-year anniversary.
And so please support us.
Oh, there's a petition on our website.
Please sign it.
And again, our articles will really show you what is going on here.
It's the structural system within the education system.
And so it's not about just labeling everybody mentally ill.
It's taking care of children before they get to psychiatry.
And so we want to help.
And we urge you to go to ablechild.org, read our articles, their black box suicide warnings and increased risk of suicide and homicide from these cocktails of drugs.
You saw this yesterday.
Iranian Nuclear Deal Concerns00:15:25
Look, this guy looks like a blocking back.
And he, I think, murdered his wife in cold blood, shot three of his six daughters, I think, and then killed himself.
Roberta, check Roberta out.
Denver can get some photos up.
Sheila, thank you so much.
You're fighting the good fight.
Look forward to having you back on, ma'am.
All right.
Thank you, Steve, for everything you do.
Thank you.
This is part of that revolution, a big part of the revolution.
It's also the under, it's transhumanism.
It's if you can be any gender you want, or where they say they got 30 types of genders.
Back to hard geopolitics right now.
Rabbi Wilicki, you know, we have Kurt Mills on a lot.
I always like to balance it with your thinking.
I'm hearing now that there's a framework.
And Captain Final is going to be here because we're shipping more hardware and assets into the Middle East.
I think at any time, I actually think if you take the ground troops out, it's bigger than the buildup to the Gulf War.
I'm hearing now that there is a framework for, there's a framework for a deal that the Persians in their own negotiating method now have a framework of a framework of a framework.
Am I correct on that, sir?
Yeah, welcome to the Persian negotiating table.
You know, there's no such thing as negotiating successfully with Persians.
When you walk into the room, you've lost.
But What's been agreed upon, according to the reports, foreign minister of Iran, Abbasa Ragchi, gave a statement really just a few hours ago saying that they've made progress and that each side is going to work towards putting together a draft to be negotiated later.
But guiding principles were worked out.
And he specifically told the Iranian media that, quote, progress does not mean that an agreement will be reached soon, but the path has started.
And this is consistent with what I've been saying is their strategy.
Their strategy is to drag this out as long as possible.
The longer it takes, the better they have.
They just want to keep kicking the can down the road.
And ultimately, their goal is the survival of the regime.
Look, I just want to make sure President Trump wants, I think, a total eradication of their nuclear program.
I think they've said that's not possible.
The Israelis want a broader context of that ballistic missiles, everything.
Just make it so we can understand it.
There's all these different things.
And I realize there's people in Israel that want regime change and they've asked permission of the United States that they have to to go it alone.
Just take a minute and set the framework.
What's going on?
Because they're giving us diplomatic speak.
And we're still sending a second carrier strike group over there to provide some muscle.
So where do you think this all is right now?
Well, that's a great, that's a great way to frame the question, Steve, because the different players here really do have very different agendas, even people who are on the same side, ostensibly, meaning like the United States and Israel are, of course, coordinating, but they don't have the same agenda.
And it's very important for both Americans and Israelis to remember that, that we don't have identical interests.
The United States, of course, does not want Iran to have a nuclear program.
And a lot of what they had was devastated during the 12-day war.
And Trump has kind of shifted back to talking, you know, to making these conversations about that.
But the truth is, from Israel's perspective, and even before the riots that led to all this erupted, you know, back whatever it is, a little more than a month ago, a month and a half ago, even before those erupted, Israel had been talking a great deal about the fact that Iran had very quickly, very successfully rebuilt a lot of its ballistic missile program.
The ballistic missile program in Iran, from an Israeli perspective, is talked about more as an existential threat to Israel.
That's more of a pressing issue for Israelis than the nuclear program ever since the 12-day war, because the nuclear program is kind of like it was damaged and it's, you know, it's, you know, let's see what they could do with it.
And we also know that we have more of the backing of the rest of the world who also cares about Iran not getting a nuke.
But when it comes to the ballistic missiles, that's the real existential threat.
That's what caused so much damage to Israel during the 12-day war.
And that's what's worrisome about it to the future.
So if the United States comes up with some kind of deal with the Iranians that has to do with the nuclear, but doesn't deal with the ballistic missile threat, the Israelis have already been saying over the last week or two, they've been saying it here and there in statements, but they mean it, that Israel's not going to feel bound by that agreement.
We still have existential threats to our country that we're going to have to deal with.
And, you know, so that's something also to keep in mind.
And then you have the Iranian people.
And here's where things get a little dicey in terms of what Trump, what Trump is doing, because when he made that statement, help is on the way.
And whether that was a wise statement to make or not is neither here nor there.
It was made.
The Iranian people took it very seriously and went out to the streets in much greater force.
And it is undoubted that many more Iranians were killed because of that boldness, because they really felt that they had a back, that someone was coming, you know, coming to help them out in their attempts to bring down the regime.
And there's a lot of chatter coming out of Iran.
And I pay close attention to whatever seeps out of Iran through social media and stuff that gets translated into Hebrew.
There's a lot of material that comes out.
There's a big Persian community in Israel that also brings forward a lot of that information.
There's a real sense of betrayal by Trump.
Now, again, whether that's justified or not or whether Trump made the right move is neither here nor there.
And if in the end of the day there aren't strikes, there's going to be this perception in certain quarters in the Middle East and also from the Iranian regime who's been taunting Trump, saying that he's chicken and that he failed and that his real goal is to bring down the regime and he failed to do so.
So Trump's perception on the stage in the Middle East is also at stake here.
Again, I'm not so sure it was wise for him to say help is on the way, but he did it.
Scott Besson's destroying their currency was, I think, what drove people into the streets.
Hang on for a second, Rabbi.
Do I have Captain Finnell?
Oh, I don't.
Okay.
I was going to have Captain Finel.
Captain Finel is going to talk about, we're not going to be able to do it today, so we're going to have to do it some other time or run out of time.
Captain Finel is going to talk about, Rabbi, you know, having been over there with a carrier battle group or two carrier battle groups in the North Arabian Sea, I know the amount of force that a strike group can get.
We've got a second large strike group there right now.
Other assets are flowing into the region.
There's all discussion about some of our Arab allies, people like UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia giving us overflight rights.
This concern in the Gulf Emirates about those ballistic missiles about taking out their oil and gas reserves.
I've heard in talking to people there, some people are afraid they could knock it down for five to seven years.
There's reports out right now that the Persians are actually going through pretty sophisticated operations in the Straits of Hormuz.
Now, why they would want to, I guess their threat is that, hey, we'll shut down UAE and Qatar forever by blocking it.
But of course, the Chinese Communist Party's oil has got to go through there.
What is, as you see it, the military situation right now?
Because the United States, President Trump is going to have a lot of options, right?
And he's going to negotiate.
He's a man of peace.
He wants to negotiate, but he's going to have a lot of options.
How's that viewed in the region?
It's viewed in the region as, I mean, for those who are anti-Iran, the negotiations are viewed as basically a waste of time, but we understand why President Trump wants to go down that route and reach the end point of them so that he can turn around and say, okay, I tried everything.
I tried to negotiate.
That's the way people are interpreting it.
I'm not advocating for one side or another on that point.
I'm just saying that is how it's being interpreted in Middle Eastern media, that negotiating is really not going to lead anywhere.
But, you know, when we look at the behavior of the Iranian regime, I think this is a very important point for your audience to understand.
All of this muscle flexing and like having military drills in the straits of Hormuz, which they closed today for those drills, and displaying coffins of American military brass at a public demonstration last week and trash talking Trump, which looks on the surface to be counterproductive.
It looks almost suicidal.
Why are they poking the bear?
Why aren't they being more conciliatory?
So I believe that what's happening here is that the regime, I think the regime feels that no matter how bad the U.S. military strikes on them will be, they won't bring down the regime.
You can't bomb a regime out of existence.
And that's something that everyone needs to take a deep breath and understand.
You cannot bomb a regime out of existence.
You can bomb them.
You can weaken them.
But in the end of the day, the regime can only fall if the Iranian people bring it down.
You can create conditions that make that easier, but you cannot obliterate a regime.
And I think the regime is counting on Trump not wanting a prolonged conflict and also not being willing or not being able politically to absorb any U.S. casualties at all.
And therefore, they don't really need to beat the American army.
They just need to survive and weather the storm of American attacks enough and possibly even slip a missile or a drone through to some American base in the region and kill a few American servicemen.
And there will be a hue and cry in the U.S. for you know for Trump to stop this entire thing and get out of there.
And if that happens, they survive.
And no matter how weak they are, as long as they're in power, they can reconstitute themselves.
They're still getting their cash flow from selling oil to the Chinese Communist Party.
And then they can just keep their head down until Trump is out of office and continue their regime.
That's how the Iranians see the calculus here.
So you have the way they're thinking.
Then you have, like what I said, the Israelis are looking at this purely from our own security perspective and saying, we want to deal with the proxies.
We want to deal with the ballistic.
Yeah, we want to deal with the nuclear too, but that's mostly been dealt with recently.
And that's less of a pressing issue.
And then you have the Americans who are making noises about it being mainly about the nuclear.
So there's, you know, people are talking different languages in this space, but there's a strong consensus in Middle Eastern media that this is going to kinetic conflict.
Hang on for one second.
I want to hold you through the break.
We're going to get Captain Finnell.
We're going to work to get Captain Finnell because I want a detailed day at five.
We're going to figure that out.
I want to talk about the assets flowing into the area.
We are a strong believer in bring it down economically.
Big difference of opinion with a lot of people about that, including folks.
Department of War.
Short break.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
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Rabbi, can't we just bring this down if we cut the oil off to the Chinese?
And I realize geostrategically why President Trump, particularly since he's got a state visit there in April, may not want to do this.
I think it's 40% of oil for the Chinese Communist Party, but it's like 90% of the cash flow to the MULAs.
If Beson keeps the pressure on the currency and you cut off the oil, the Persian people just take it down by themselves and we don't have to go kinetic.
That could very well be.
Look, let's remember that these protests started for economic reasons.
And that's a very critical point.
If we're looking downrange, and this is what we do in War Room, try to look downrange and anticipate what's coming.
If we're looking downrange, we have to recognize that all of the problems that led to this flare-up of protests that have caused this entire situation right now, none of them have been resolved.
None of those economic conditions have been addressed and they're not about to be addressed.
In the first Trump term, Trump put sanctions on Iran that prevented any country that bought any Iranian oil from doing business with the United States.
That led to a situation where only North Korea was buying Iranian oil.
And the Chinese Communist Party was buying some Iranian oil through shadow fleets.
They were trying to circumvent the sanctions.
They were doing it on the sly, but it was a small amount.
And then when Biden lifted those sanctions, China signed this 25-year strategic agreement with Iran and purchases about 90% of the oil that Iran ships out, as you said, 80 to 90% of it.
And when Trump came into office, he has chosen not to reinstate those sanctions.
He's put other sanctions on.
But reportedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump did speak about the possibility of reinstating those sanctions somewhat.
And it was, I think, deliberately leaked out because the Chinese then responded and basically said, hey, don't do that.
But look, this regime was on the verge of collapse at the end of the first Trump term.
If the 2020 election doesn't get stolen and Trump leaves those sanctions on, this regime might not even be here today because of sanctions, because of the real sanctions.
Yeah, and there's a couple other things to look for, Steve.
If I could just make your audience a little smart.
Ramadan starts tonight, and the Iranian people are much more secular than the regime.
And a lot of them are rejecting Islam.
They've been burning mosques during the course of these protests.
But the regime enforces Ramadan.
They prohibit eating in public.
And it's a time that typically could lead to a lot of unrest.
Also, today and tomorrow, the bizarre shop owners who started all the protests have called for a national strike, including a strike of all the petrochemical workers and all of the trade unions.
And also calling for people to potentially come back into the streets, although there's, of course, a lot of fear of getting gunned down.
We could see a lot of unrest in the streets of Iran over the course of the next couple of days with the convergence of these factors here.
Let me go.
I'm going to have you back on, but let me go.
I got to bounce, but I got one question.
Part of the discussion of the three-hour meeting in D.C., we now find out was Bibi making the point to say, look, if you guys don't want to do it, we've got to have the ability to go it alone.
Is there any possibility you could go alone and not drag the United States in as an actual combatant on logistics?
I mean, isn't that kind of a fantasy?
Mega Sale Announcement00:03:17
I know you've been a big advocate, probably the leading advocate, that you've got to wean off American military assistance and American military hardware because it restricts the Israelis' ability to go strike on their own.
Is there any real possibility you guys could do it now and not drag the Americans into a kinetic conflict?
Well, I think that defensive help in terms of missile defense is probably necessary.
Although Israel has been bolstering its missile defense in preparation for this, I'm not privy enough to know if Israel can handle the missile defense alone, because if the regime senses it's going to collapse, they could unload their, you know, their arsenal of missiles.
And their ballistic missile capabilities have actually gotten better since the 12-day war.
So defensive assistance Israel might need.
But here, we're not talking about anything where we'd need B-2 bombers.
This is really about the ballistic missile program and slapping down the proxies even harder.
I'll also point out that Israel has been hammering Hezbollah over the last couple weeks in preparation for keeping them down if there's a kinetic conflict with Iran.
Rabbi, can you tell people where to go get your content?
You're putting up good videos every day.
Thank you very much.
Go to Israel365 News YouTube channel, Israel365 News YouTube channel, and these videos or Israel365Action.com, which you see up on your screen now.
And you'll see all the videos I'm putting up.
They're not regular news videos.
They're explanatory videos of what's really going on in the Middle East.
Thank you for mentioning that, Steve.
Or you can follow me on X at RabbiPW or my author page at the Jerusalem Post, where I am a regular columnist.
We're going to have you and Mills on it one time.
We're going to work this thing out on War Room.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Rabbi.
Thank you, sir.
Mike Lindell, the next governor of the great state of Minnesota.
What do you got for us?
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The Charlie Kirk show with Andrew Colvette is next.