Episode 5242: America Is Closing In On A Fiscal Cliff
Stephen K. Bannon warns America is driving over a fiscal cliff, where deficits hit 6% of GDP and Social Security funds deplete by 2033, risking a "China shock" if AI fails to boost wages. While political gridlock ignores these threats, Bannon highlights election integrity failures in Georgia and praises grassroots efforts in Texas and Virginia. The episode also features Ying Chen exposing CCP atrocities against Shenyun Performing Arts and Mike Lindell discussing his CPAC appearance and legal battles over MyPillow, framing these struggles as part of a broader fight against stolen elections and dangerous forces. [Automatically generated summary]
Thank you for the second stick around for the second hour, first hour we did.
Oil markets, commodity markets, and these negotiations President Trump's trying to get rolling.
I want to pivot now to something that I think, just like artificial intelligence, kind of the big issues that don't get taken head on.
Neil Irwin joins us from Axios.
Neil, I remember coming first acquainted with your writings back in the financial crisis of 2008.
And things have only gotten worse and the political class has really not ever addressed what the situation is with our fiscal crisis as you talk about.
You talk about a fiscal cliff now.
Scott Besson, when Scott came in and, you know, he was a contributor here for years at the war.
I mean, he used to talk about, hey, my plan is, you know, I can't, this whole debt and the debt's run out of control, but if I can get the annual deficit, the 3% of GDP through cuts in revenue increases, then somehow I think we've got something manageable we can go forward.
As we look through the first year, given a whole host of reasons, it looks like we're not going to hit that.
So what is your concern, your article?
Just walk people through it, why America appears to be, you know, with the pedal to the metal, driving over the fiscal cliff, sir.
Yeah, so we're running deficits of about 6% of GDP.
That's the largest we've ever seen other than in major wars, you know, financial crises, depressions, recessions.
So what's unprecedented is to be running 6% deficit of GDP in a time of not having those huge one-off expenses.
And Scott Besson's exactly right.
If you got to 3% of deficit of GDP, that would be a manageable target that would be sustainable given the growth path the U.S. is on.
You know, what's not happening in Washington is any sense of urgency getting there.
Look, if the tax law from last year unleashes amazing growth, deregulation, all these great things, create the kind of rapid growth that people in the administration want to see, that's fantastic.
That would help solve the problem.
But what we're seeing so far is those numbers are not coming in that way.
We're seeing numbers more like 6%.
And you see it on both sides of the aisle.
You see Democrats wanting to kind of cut taxes for their base.
So there's not a lot of incentive and urgency around in Washington around the idea that these deficits are unsustainable and Social Security is going to hit a point in the early 2030s when its finances are strained.
And the guy came out the other day and said, hey, look, I know everybody talks about 38 trillion.
And 100 days later, 180 days later, we're 39 trillion.
But he makes the calculation that our number is really 100 trillion.
And that's what we have to be focused on.
Do you believe that that, and we just had this article, I'll get it up and put it up after the show, of another take on things that says, hey, America's insolvent.
It kind of does our balance sheet, right?
And it's maybe not totally accurate because it looks like it's government accounting, maybe not gap accounting.
But there are a lot of smart people coming out right now and saying, hey, this time we mean it.
So think about it of entitlements, Social Security, Medicare.
We know because you can project these things out pretty accurately over long time horizons by 2032, 2033, those trust funds are empty.
Congress has to do something.
It either has to cut benefits.
That's what happens automatically if they don't do anything.
Nobody really wants to see that.
Or they have to find some way to make those programs solvent and pay for them.
And then you have Social Security and Medicare in competition with the rest of the budget, the Defense Department, everything else the government does.
And so that's not that far away.
That used to be this distant problem.
But, you know, the people being elected to the Senate this coming November are going to be dealing with that problem at the end of their six-year term.
So this is not some far-off problem.
This is a here and now kind of problem.
And again, the discourse wouldn't reflect it.
You know, we're about to have a $200 billion Defense Department request for the Iran conflict.
This is a situation where you wouldn't guess that we're facing this real cliff, this real difficult situation from the way people talk about financial options in Washington.
You know, Scott had said before he became Secretary of Treasury and then after he said, hey, look, this is our last chance for a supply-side tax cut.
And whether you believe that theory, supply-side or not, but the theory was, hey, we get a tax cut to bring jobs back, increase manufacturing.
We have to grow our way out of this.
We get growth of 5% or more.
I get the deficit down to 3%.
That's the way you start chipping away at this thing.
Is one of the reasons that you see the lack of urgency?
I mean, the bond market, now, the 10-year Treasuries are, what, 4-4 or 4-3?
It's kind of popped since this war, particularly since it shifted to the Persian Gulf away from Tehran.
But is it the bond market?
And is it because we're still the prime reserve currency and people just have to, hey, suck on this no matter what the BRICS nations say or whatever the alternative, like you see right now, as soon as the guns start firing, they all come to the U.S. dollar.
Is the lack of urgency of the political class because the capital markets really haven't forced their hand here?
Look, we're still historically, as you say, 4% in change on the 10-year treasury.
Nothing to, that's not a crisis.
That said, those numbers are going to creep.
The debt service costs are going to be creeping up year by year.
As we run these $2 trillion deficits every year, that increases the total stock of debt.
And so whatever rate the U.S. is paying, the government's paying, is coming out of everything else.
So in the CBO forecast, 10 years from now, 2035, 4.6% of GDP, nearly 5% of GDP, going to just pay interest on the debt.
That's going to squeeze everything else.
Again, whatever you care about, whether it's on the defense side, whether it's on retirement benefits, things like that, will be squeezed by these interest costs if we keep rising total debt on the path we're on.
And that's assuming there's not a fiscal crisis.
There's not a reset of rates significantly higher.
That's assuming they stay in the kind of moderate range they've been in the last couple of years.
And there's no guarantees that's the case if the bond market starts to freak out and say, you know, we're afraid there's going to be financial repression.
We're afraid there's going to be inflation that the U.S. is going to try and inflate its way out of this crisis.
Because we've had commissions, you know, every last year when McCarthy got tossed for cutting the deal with Biden, people were talking about we have to have another commission come together.
We've had a series of commissions.
They've made reports that if implemented might have helped to stave this off, but they were just, they were never taken seriously.
They didn't become part of any political action plan of either party.
What do you think it's going to take, absent a fiscal crisis where then you have to go into crisis mode to get to get not just both parties, but any one party to take it seriously right now?
Because the Democrats, their spending thing is out of control.
Of course, they want to tax the wealthy, but their spending is really the problem.
That's what Scott Besson keeps saying.
But on Capitol Hill, we see this at every appropriations process.
The Republicans just kind of tap this along.
And these commissions don't work because people have done it for years, done it for decades.
They come out with these good results and they're just put into the file.
What do you think it's going to take to get the political class to focus on something has to be done here?
Yeah, do you remember Erskine Bulls and the Simpson Bowles Commission in 2010?
I mean, the last 20 years, that's kind of the closest there was to a big deal on entitlements.
But ultimately, then as now, if there's not a crisis moment, if there's not a sense of urgency, why would you make that unpopular vote?
If you're a Democrat looking to, you know, having to cut benefits, if you're a Republican looking to raise taxes, those are not votes you want to make unless something forces your hand.
And that's why I think, look, there are different forms of crisis.
Crisis doesn't have to be something like 2008, where it's a catastrophe.
But, you know, if rates rise even a couple hundred basis points, if we get the 10-year treasury up to 5%, 6%, that might be the thing that forces attention.
And if not that, look, once again, Social Security Trust Fund is up in 2032, 2033.
Something must be done in order to keep there being, you know, if you don't do anything, there's a 25% cut to Social Security benefits.
That would be catastrophic.
That would be bad for a lot of retirees.
That would be unpopular in both parties.
So that may be the thing that forces a deal absent a kind of fiscal crisis of the types you see in emerging markets.
You see, right now, I think when the rates popped over 44344, mortgages went to seven, I think.
You're saying, hey, if these go to five or six, not saying it is, but if it does, mortgages pop to nine or 10%, that's when the folks back home are going to say, start burning up the phone line saying something's got to be done here.
But if you cut through it, this is what I say all the time.
We're like a leveraged buyer.
We're a highly leveraged play on artificial intelligence right now.
I mean, is that not the business model of our country?
And even the executives in the country, they had Dario on from Anthropic.
I'll play the clip later.
It says 50% of all entry-level, which we have said here, all entry-level white-collar managerial jobs, legal, all of that, are going to be wiped out in the next couple of years.
Aren't we just right now a highly leveraged bet on artificial intelligence?
And if artificial intelligence doesn't come in with productivity, which means young generation wiped out what their jobs and they need them the most in their 20s when they're learning their craft or their profession, that's essentially the business model.
It's a dice roll of a highly leveraged company making a bet on a new technology that could turn their business model around.
Last thing, as long as we can sell the bonds, I mean, Scott's got to, what, refinance a third of, I think, of the national debt every year.
As long as the dollar, even though it's had a massive drop in purchasing power during the inflation in the Biden years and then some, as long as people have to need dollars, as long as the dollar is a prime reserve currency, can we stagger through this?
There's no reason to think this is going to flip overnight.
And one thing I'm watching with this Iran situation is: does this accelerate the pursuit of alternatives for other countries for trade in oil and other commodities?
You know, if you're China and the U.S. is in a war with Iran, does that make you all the more add urgency to trying to create alternatives to the dollar?
And does that weaken the dollar's role in the global economy?
That's speculation at this point.
The dollar is holding up reasonably well on currency markets.
It's actually up since the war.
So that's not happening today, but it's something around the corner that I think we're all watching for.
That alternative to the petro dollar, particularly the Chinese, these long-term contracts they did in their own currency with people hedging the risk is key.
Neil, where do people get you over at Axios?
What's your social media?
You've been doing this for a long time and been pretty accurate in those years.
Eventually, people are going to listen to the warning.
I want to make sure everybody gets this article today about going over the fiscal cliff and everything associated with it.
Also, I'm going to put up right off the show this Yahoo Finance article about insolvency.
Like I said, it's not totally correct because I'm kind of looking at the balance sheet.
I think unlike you would do it if you're using gap accounting.
But the point they're trying to make and the point that the Wharton, I'm trying to get the Wharton guys on, if you can't do it this week at CPAC, next week, to say there's maybe the 39 trillion is just what's the iceberg above the water, the part of the iceberg above the water.
If you don't want to be the Titanic, you've got to understand the entire part of the iceberg, particularly under the water.
As you know, we've tried to use this to walk you through.
That's what the end of the dollar empire is.
It's now in print.
The Patriots edition, you can get it by going to birchgold.com, promo code BANN.
You can get this.
Seven installments now bound.
It's taught at a major university.
I shouldn't say it's taught.
It's one of the textbooks they use because it makes it accessible to understand capital markets and the strains on the U.S. dollar.
President Trump just reposted moments ago as we were talking on the fiscal situation, Shabez Sharif, a tweet.
Pakistan welcomes and fully supports ongoing efforts to pursue dialogue to end the war in the Middle East in the interest of peace and stability in the region and beyond.
Subject to the concurrence by the United States and Iran, Pakistan stands ready and honored to be the host to facilitate meaningful and conclusive talks for a comprehensive settlement of the ongoing conflict.
And the President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, reposted that.
Think folks, we ought to get that out to the warrant posse and just put that in your file about this war.
Because, like you said today, and that's why we open up with Kurt, all these different alternatives.
Just once again, the president is very close to Field Marshal.
I think it's Murin.
He was at the White House when I was back there in June.
He was at the White House with the president, spent a lot of time with him.
President, he's the chief of staff of the Field Marshal and Chief of Staff of the Pakistani Army, Armed Forces, and President Trump thinks very highly of him.
And I think that may be one of these paths that President Trump is pursuing.
Michael Kunzler, the founder of All Family Pharmacy.
So we had war, the rumor war, global oil markets, which ain't looking great.
Then the physical cliff, oh, that, by the way, we're driving off of with the pedal to the floor.
You're my upside, baby.
You're the sunlit uplands.
And the reason is, Michael, you know, we monitor the feedback of the warrant posse.
And once they go to your site and learn a little bit, but really talk to one of your customer service reps, the feedback's been tremendous.
So just walk us through the company.
What's the idea behind it?
And why should people go today and start to get involved and talk to your customer service reps, sir?
So All Family Pharmacy is a pharmacy here in Boca Tone, Florida, based on medical freedom, giving access to patients on medications that are essential to their needs, whether it be a cosmetic medication or emergency medication or just a traditional maintenance drug.
We're going to give you access to all of the different medications, a physician to guide you in that direction of safety and effectiveness, as well as a pharmacist to help you in that return as well.
So you could go directly to our pharmacy, allfamilypharmacy.com website backslash bannon.
And today we're going to have a 25% off coupon.
It's Bannon 25.
We're actually going to extend this to the end of March due to all this war talk, energy pricing going up, all the negative in the world.
We're going to try to bring a little bit of positive light to it.
If you want to stock up on essential medications because of your worried about this war in Iran, now is the time to do it.
25% off the entire order, whether it's ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, whether it's a thyroid drug, a maintenance medication, or maybe it's a weight loss drug or N80 plus or methylene blue, one of our anti-aging drugs.
We're going to give you access to it 25% off.
We'll give you access to the physicians and the pharmacists as well.
Please give us a call if you have questions or if you need assistance.
Our customer service reps are ready.
Stand by all day long to help you to walk you through the ordering process.
They can even take the order for you, submit it over to the physician on your behalf.
And you got physicians and pharmacists that approve this to make sure people get the medicines and drugs that they need.
When I first met you and we were doing due diligence, you told me something that stuck with me.
It was very powerful.
I want you to explain it to the audience.
You say, hey, look, Steve, as much as people, you know, bit you motivate big pharma and all this, you don't have true medical freedom until you have the ability to deal with a pharmacy that you can actually talk to people about what you need.
That the pharma, you know, the McKessons of the world, the big distribution companies, and then the individual pharmacies, all these big chains work against your medical freedom.
Explain that to me for a second, because I think as I talk to people and we talk to you, talk about all-family pharmacy during the week, it resonates with people.
Yeah, when you walk into your doctor's office, when you walk into one of these chain pharmacies, when's the last time you had an in-depth conversation with a medical professional that you're essentially paying for, right?
And so here at All Family Pharmacy, you have full access to what we have: pharmacists, customer service, pharmacy technicians, as well as medical providers or physicians who are licensed in every state here in the United States.
So we push medical freedom because we want you to come to us with questions, with concerns, because we want to guide you in the direction that's going to have your medication safe and effective.
It's not going to hurt you.
It's only going to help you.
So having access to a pharmacy that is willing to have a conversation.
I don't know when the last time people have been able to walk into a chain pharmacy and have a conversation outside of vaccines.
You go to Publix, you go to CVS, you go to Walgreens or Walmart.
90% of the conversations the pharmacists are going to bring up is, have you been vaccinated recently?
That should not be the topic of conversation.
The topic of conversation should be, how's your health?
What's going on?
What do you need?
How is this drug helping you?
Are you seeing side effects?
There are more questions that need to be asked other than, do you need updated vaccines?
It's kind of furiating to see that when you walk into a pharmacy.
Number one, in Virginia, the grassroots in Virginia are hammering.
I think it's 21 April, this special referendum.
We're going to have Jeff Ryer hopefully on in the next couple of days.
The grassroots there are hitting.
New poll out, Paxton up by eight in Texas.
That follows, I think, polls maybe internal 17, 18, but PAX now, there's a trend.
Ken Paxton's up.
Folks are fighting all over the place.
There's a lot of good news out there where people have been so grim about the midterms.
And guess what?
The midterms are going to be brutal and going to be tough and going to be a fight.
But in Georgia, Holly Kessler joins us.
Holly, you've been recommended by Caroline Jefferson and so many people as like somebody's got their hand on the pulse in Georgia.
We have a huge hearing on Friday on the evidence because, you know, the Abbey Lulls the World and the MSNBCs and the Mark Elias has got to get that evidence back.
So we're going to be covering that.
We're going to get all the experts on that.
But what is happening in Georgia?
It seems like are the Kemp guys not on board with this?
Because the situation down there is pretty dire, not just for the 2020 elections, but what happens going forward, ma'am?
And we do have the evidentiary hearing coming up on Friday in Fulton County.
That's in regards to the FBI raid.
We are in a very critical emergency situation because we had passed a bill back at, gosh, what was it, 2022, 2023?
It was making the QR codes illegal.
They're illegal.
And that was part of Burt Jones, you know, in the Senate that did that, Senate Bill 189.
And so now we're coming up to July 1st of 2026 and we still don't have a fix.
And so, yeah, you talk about Kemp, Raffensperger, AG Carr.
I mean, all of them.
It's the entire executive branch, minus the lieutenant governor.
He's the only one that's actually been fighting for it, you know, and trying to help on the election front.
But we have a big problem here.
And so now all they're wanting to do is continue to kick the can down the road.
And I don't know what it's going to take.
It's very frustrating.
You know, we had ESNS on the ground the other day and they were, you know, giving their little demo.
And of course, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, so we're getting rid of one and we're going to get another.
You know, the machines, really, they just, they got to go.
President Trump wants it.
You talk about the grassroots.
We have a very active grassroots group here in Georgia.
We've been pushing it.
We've shown them all the issues.
They've seen it complaint after complaint.
And again, the Secretary of State just acts like everything is wonderful.
And Chris Carr is all, you know, he's just silent and missing an action half the time.
So he doesn't really do anything when it comes to election integrity, but there are clear issues.
And one of the biggest concerns is Fulton County.
You know, we keep seeing what they're doing and they keep trying to hide information, cover up information, delay giving the state election board information.
And they've had problems forever.
You know, so they're pretty consistent in the clown show that they have going on.
But yeah, we have a problem, Mr. Steve.
And I don't know how we're getting out of this, but like you said, the midterms are coming up and we've got to get this thing figured out and figure it out quick.
But when it comes to those that are not willing to actually do something about it and stand up and fight for it, there's only one thing that I can think of at this point.
Because, you know, Mr. Steve, we've been doing this for how many years?
And so it's the cover-up.
It's part of the cover-up.
I think, you know, when you really start looking at things and tying it all in together and looking at it from a timeline perspective, it's very interesting to see.
And just like you said, they would not bring in the big dogs, you know, to fight this fight if there wasn't more to it.
So, and those guys, they're, I mean, they're good.
You know, we've got good, good counsel on our side too, but, you know, they're, they're crafty and creative.
Although I will say, Garrett Ziegler did beat Abby Lowell.
Okay, if you want to look at positive developments in politics, it's grassroots.
It's you, this audience, that are making things happen.
We got the Sharia law prop 10 passed overwhelmingly in Texas, and there's going to be so many more developments this week in CPAC.
Big part of CPAC is going to be talking about that, what's going on in Texas.
Ken Paxton's up, I don't know, eight points in the latest poll, 16 and 17, I think, in other polls.
So the grassroots making a difference there.
I cannot compliment enough the grassroots effort in Virginia and the Commonwealth, overwhelmed with money spent.
They've self-organized Jeff Ryer.
And I think it's just such a great thing to see where they get a grassroots guy into the chairmanship of a Republican Party and great things happen.
We're going to spend more time on that.
And of course, we're hurtling towards this evidential hearing.
Georgia, I think, is the key that picks the lock here.
You've had John Solomon on.
We know Tulsi's on it.
This thinks to high heaven.
This 2020 election was stolen.
There's no doubt about that.
Holly, we're going to have you back on.
I just once again want to give a shout out to the patriots that have been fighting this for six years now against threat of jail, bankruptcy, all of it.
You guys are the best.
And the reason we even have a fighting chance here is not the political class down in Georgia, that somehow something's fishy, why they haven't stepped in here, why they're avoiding this.
And I think when everything's revealed, there's going to be a lot of accountability that's going to have to happen.
Holly, your social media, where do people go and get you, ma'am?
The Chinese Communist Party, their active participation in the media's cover-up of their torment of Lao Beijing in China, but also in the United States.
Ying Chen joins us this morning and Levy Brody.
Ying, tell us first off, what is your position?
How do you fit in this story?
Because the New York Post, it was the lead for a while yesterday, kind of a shocking development of the Chinese Communist Party trying to shut down this classic kind of ballet, opera, dance that's gone throughout the nation with seven or eight troops that talks about China before communism, and the CCP can't handle that.
So they're taking active measures to torment you all and to shut it down.
I'm a conductor and vice president with Shenyun Performing Arts.
And Shen Yun is actually an American company created in New York in 2006.
And our mission is to revive our authentic traditional culture, which has been suppressed by the CCP for decades.
We want to really show the world the beauty and wisdom in this amazing culture.
At the same time, our performances always also present the human rights atrocities that are still ongoing in China.
Shenyun was actually created at the time when many of our family members, myself included, and our friends in the Falun Gong community were severely persecuted in China.
And actually, that persecution is still going on.
So for the last 20 years, this year, Sheng Yun is celebrating our 20th anniversary.
And we've grown tremendously from one troop to eight troops that are performing simultaneously in the major continents everywhere, basically in the world, seen by over a million people every year.
But because of what we talk about in the show, we are not subject to the CCP's censorship.
We definitely talk about the issues in today's China as well.
So we have been under attack for the last 20 years.
We have faced bomb threats for so long that we've almost gotten used to it, which is not right, right?
And this year, the last two years have been especially crazy.
I think recently, six states, heads of state, including Canada, Denmark, and Australia, have received bomb threats.
And basically, saying if you allow Sheng Yun to perform, we'll blow up your residence and something like that.
And as a result, the Australian prime minister was forced to evacuate, evacuate from his residence.
So, but these things have been, I feel like the Shenyun story is truly a coincidental story of how Beijing tries to dictate what stories are told here, what the narratives try to impose their narratives on the American people.
Hang on for one second, because if you look at the histories that have been written by a lot of fellow travelers about everything came out of the Chinese Communist Party, China was just a backward run by corrupt emperors for thousands of years.
The peasants were abused, that the reason you have this modern industrial middle class that's building every year is all because of the Chinese Communist Party.
In Shenyun, which has all this beautiful traditional dance and music, your tagline is China before communism.
What do you mean by that?
And how do you counter them by saying when they say, look, everybody was starving, it was oppressed, the emperors were the worst people on earth.
And we essentially gave freedom or chance for freedom to the Chinese people, to Lao Baijing, ma'am.
Yeah, because I think when the Communist Party wanted to impose communism on people, they had to do away systematically with all the real culture of China, all the spiritual foundations.
You're talking about Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism.
Those have been the pillars of Chinese civilization for thousands of years.
So in order for them to impose Marxism on people, they had to do away with all these.
Both of my parents were with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing for 30-some years.
So they were first-class musicians in China.
However, we knew firsthand that everything is censored.
And basically, even all these performing arts companies in China were propaganda tools for the CCP.
So it was not until I came to this country and gradually realized, wait a minute, this is not our true culture.
I grew up in China and I had no appreciation of the Chinese traditional values and culture when I was there until I came to this country and learned the truth about our true history and the spiritual foundation of all of that.
So with Shenyun, we're trying to revive all of those amazing heritage and share it with the world.
I mean, the cultural revolution was to destroy any connection with the Chinese people, was the five bads, to any connection to their traditional culture.
Levi, there's a film coming out tonight.
You guys are going to be part of the premiere.
You've got this story in the New York Post.
And it's by Chadwick Moore, who did the great biography of Tucker Carlson we had on the show a year or so ago, the story in the New York Post.
It also implies that American media companies, particularly some big American media companies, have not, because we do this story a lot and we know it has huge traction with the war imposse, particularly as they have these strong feelings for Lao Baijing or kind of the war imposse of mainland China.
But major media companies have actually gone out of their way to suppress this story.
And unfortunately, this goes back to the beginning of when Falun Gong was first persecuted.
Falangong, the Buddhist-based spiritual practice that Yingen mentioned, one history that people forget is it widely popular in China.
Tens of millions of people were practicing.
It was ubiquitous around the country.
It was sort of their renaissance in many ways, their spiritual and cultural renaissance.
And it wasn't until 1999 that the dictator at the time, John Zemin, ordered it eradicated.
And one of the really sad chapters of the last 26 years, aside from the atrocities, rampant detention, torture, death by torture, and of course, forced urban harvesting, one of the real tragedies has been American media and Western media by and large have really dropped the ball or in some cases seem to behave in a way that's complicit, taking Beijing's propaganda points and using that to frame the story, ignoring the forced organ harvesting atrocity almost entirely.
And so a lot of the problem of the world not understanding what has happened to Falun Gong and why that's very important for understanding the CCP really, I think, lies at the feet of Western media, unfortunately.
And the movie tonight, as you mentioned, is this very deep investigation.
I mean, it's both a human story, looking at the artists of Shenyun and how they go through going on tour, facing bomb threats, facing Chinese spies that have been put in jail by our government because they've tried to bribe U.S. officials to open up an investigation against them,
how they've faced all that on a human level, but then also looking at the failures or the really probably worse than failures on some of the major media, including the New York Times, and this entire campaign that now Xi Jinping, it appears, is behind, trying to sabotage and destroy Shenyun on the world stage.
Do you think the New York Times went out of their way with their Moscow correspondent back in the 1930s when in Ukraine, you had this massive thing called the Holodor, five million people starved to death in essentially what is Kansas of Europe?
Do you believe it's at that level the New York Times has gone out of their way with certain reporters to actually suppress the reality of the brutality of the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party, particularly against Falun Gong, but broadly against all of Lao Beijing, sir?
I mean, look, I'm not in the back rooms of the New York Times when I'm making these decisions, but what is crystal clear is that they have achieved, wittingly or not, the propaganda goals of Beijing.
And I think if I were at the New York Times and my newspaper had done that, I think there needs to be some real soul searching.
How did we get here?
How is that now the end result that we're having on the American readership and the global readership?
But if you look more broadly at the Times coverage, this wasn't just a Shenyun issue or in the last few years.
We did, my nonprofit did a huge study studying every single article from 1999 to the present on the New York Times coverage of human rights issues, Falun Gong issues, and the results are shocking.
They're shocking in terms of how many times they frame things in terms of from Beijing or standpoint on the victims, how they've just rewritten some basic facts of the Falun history, how they've completely swept under the rug the forced organ harvesting atrocity in the face of overwhelming evidence.
And so there is a systemic failure at the New York Times and to some extent some other medias, but particularly the New York Times when it comes to Falun Gong specifically.
Well, this goes back to the New York Times in the 1940s when the United States of America handed to this small group, the Chinese Communist Party, China when it didn't have to happen.
I mean, that's one of the great scandals of the 20th century.
I want to have you guys back on about the premier denial in a second, but Yang, just before, and I want you guys to hold through the break.
Everybody I've sent to Shen Yun comes out with kind of a glow.
It's a beautiful evening.
The music is beautiful.
The dance is unparalleled.
People just have a great feeling about it.
Why is the Chinese Communist Party so obsessed with destroying which really gives, I think, people a really good feeling about China overall and the Chinese people?
When people see this show, they're like, oh, I'm so proud of your culture and it's so amazing.
And we are too.
We just by sharing this with the world, it gives me so much joy and inspiration to be part of this process.
So it's unthinkable, you know, why somebody would hate this show.
But the pure fact that in the show that we are, we're not shy about telling people that people of faith are still being persecuted in China to the extent of taking organs from live people and to make money from it.
It's just unspeakable crime.
So we do talk about that.
And of course, it's not, you know, we've been on the side of the CCP for all these years as a result.
But we have, you know, continued undeterred.
And we really, I think it only strengthens our resolve to share these stories with the world's people.
And they need to see what the true nature of the CCP.
So just on that question of why the Chinese regime is going after Shenyun, it is not uncommon for us to get leaked documents, speeches, and such from the CCP, and they say in their own words, they call for specific strikes against Shenyun in the United States and around the world.
And so to them, it almost rises to the point of an existential threat, where you have this performing arts company that has become the fastest performing arts company in American history, going all over the world, showing what real Chinese culture looks like and what the real persecution of Falcon looks like.
That's a message that they consider a huge threat.
And so I think that's really typifies why they're going after Shenyun this much.
We'll make sure in our five and six o'clock hour we'll send people over there.
Levi, thank you.
Ying, where do people Shenyun is so beautiful and such a great evening of not just entertainment but cultural enrichment and you come out there with a great feeling.
I want to send as many people there as possible to go see it.
So if you're in the New York area, we're actually starting at performing at the David Coke Theater at the Lincoln Center for three weeks starting tomorrow.
But if you're in other places of the world, we're also performing in Sydney, UK, Spain, I think also California, Canada, France.
So go to shenyun.com, S-H-E-N-Y-U-N.com, and you can get the full schedule over there.
And I would definitely encourage you to go attend in person.
I mean, you get the Holly Kesslers, you got the grassroots in Georgia that served in the grassroots in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the grassroots in Texas.
It's upon you that all of it rests, right?
Right now, CNN and everybody, I'll do it this afternoon.
They're breaking big stories about what we talked about to start the show: the Pakistan, President Trump's relationship with the field marshal in Pakistan stepping up.
That looks like a thing course.
They're talking about 5,000 Marines heading to North Arabian Sea, Gulf of Oman for a potential assault.
Guess who those are the sons and daughters of?
That would be you, the patriotic infrastructure foundation of this nation.
Make sure to go call Patriot Mobile right now, 972-Patriot.
Talk to the team over there to support your values.
Going to be with us at CPAC, kind of a joint, got a Patriot Mobile booth that's part of the RAV studio and the RAV studio.
It's going to be incredible.
If you haven't gotten your ticket, go to cpac.org/slash worm, 17 bucks, and come and enjoy us.
It's going to be great.
All the RAV personality is going to be there.
It's going to be incredible, uplifting, full energy.
Mike Lindell, you're going to join us.
You're going to be there.
You're coming off the campaign trail to preach the gospel of my pillow, sir, and what you've done with that company and how that company's been under assault.
And you spent, I don't know, $50, $60, $70 million of your money to get to places like on Friday when we had this big fight over evidence because you knew the 2020 elections were stolen.
And that's why they have spent the last five or six years.
You see, Lindell, what was amazing is they never bothered you before you stood up and said, hey, this election was stolen.
And quite frankly, you didn't really have, I don't think, a big interest in politics.
But when you saw this happen to your country, you said, hey, I can't let this go.
We don't have a country if we do this.
You dedicate your life to that.
Now you're running for governor because you're trying to sort out the mess up in Minnesota.
But I think the reason people admire you, you were as bad as apolitical as you could get until you saw your country being stolen by very dangerous forces, part of that, the Chinese Communist Party.
Mike Lindell, what do you got for us coming to CPAC?
I just heard this morning I'll be speaking on Friday morning and CPAC is endorsing me as governor of Minnesota.
So, you know, I feel honored that they're going to be doing that.
And so I'm looking forward to getting there, Steve, with you all.
And you guys, this morning, Arctic Frost, they had a Senate hearing going on this morning about Arctic Frost.
They call it the modern day Watergate.
The number one attacked person and company on there was myself and my pillow.
So I would shut up about all the election platforms.
But I didn't, as you know, and my pillow is still here.
And it's all because of you and the grace of God, everybody, that you've supported us through this fight and with our own government turned on my pillow, besides all the lawfare.
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