Episode 5282: Heated Negotiations Happening With Iran As Deadline Looms
Stephen K. Bannon details impending U.S. military strikes on Iran, triggered by a Trump-deadline at 8 p.m. Eastern Time for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face potential civilization-ending actions. With the USS Ford resuming flight operations and the 82nd Airborne deploying to Kuwait, guests analyze Trump's rhetoric regarding tactical nuclear use against Iran's reported 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones. The episode also covers Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's DOJ press conference attacking social welfare fraud and a Texas Education Board hearing rejecting CAIR-curriculum materials as subversive, while ads for Birch Gold and Mike Lindell's pillows interrupt commentary on China's renewable energy dominance. Ultimately, these heated negotiations signal a potential geopolitical shift driven by American military readiness and ideological battles over domestic education and foreign policy. [Automatically generated summary]
We're going to structure the show a little differently tonight.
We're going to actually do, we got an amazing cold open.
We're going to do that in the B block.
Also, we're going to update you on Todd Blanche's gave a, uh, A press conference over at DOJ.
First one he's done as acting AG.
Frank Gaffney and others are down at the Texas Education Board, where they're lighting up some Muslim Brotherhood folks about trying to change the textbooks down there to preach how much the Muslims and Islam have done for the United States of America and the great state of Texas.
So we'll get all into that.
But of course, the deadline at eight o'clock.
Let's go to the White House.
I've got Damon Roberts from Studio 6B.
It'll happen on his watch tonight.
We're going to get Damon in here a second.
Let's go to the White House.
Our own Neil McCabe.
Neil, give me some updates on at least men and material, what's ready, what's on station, who's pouring into the area.
And I notice, I know we got more warships, more capital ships ready to roll for anything the commander in chief wants to do tonight, sir.
So, just the breaking news, make sure everybody's up to speed.
The Pakistanis put out a while ago.
Pakistan is seeking a two week pause to the Iran war after President Trump warns that Iran's whole civilization will die if there's no deal by 8 p.m. tonight.
I think they're saying that they've got Iranians on the other side that they're dealing with.
Something could be happening here.
Let me bring in Damon Roberts, Studio 6B.
Damon, in the 8 o'clock hour tonight, we kind of hit the tripwire.
What are your thoughts?
You're a long term observer.
Of our commander in chief, President Trump, and you know a lot about the region.
Well, I don't know if I know a lot about the region as much as you, Steve, or others who are commenting on this, but I do think that President Trump, we've kind of seen this a lot.
You know, he says he wants 100, he then he wants 100, he says he wants 1,000, and he's willing to settle for 200.
It seems like the kind of the same game we've seen from him.
I think he's a peacemaker at heart.
I don't think he likes any of this, but I think if you think that he's wiping Iran off the map tonight and using nuclear weapons or just Indiscriminately sending in missiles, even if civilians are.
I mean, I think at that point, you need to check yourself into a rubber room.
I think in 2016, Selena Zito famously said, Take Trump seriously, but not literally.
I mean, I think it's going to be some version of that tonight.
I think it's possible that we see strikes.
But there are many things I focused on in his tweet, Steve, that he put out.
And I'm interested in what you think.
When he said maybe something revolutionary and wonderful can happen tonight, I mean, I wonder if we're supposed to read into that.
Is Trump, what does he know that we don't know?
Is he.
Are there rational elements inside the regime, insiders who are ready to defect?
Is there a coup?
I mean, what do you think about that part of his tweet this morning?
One thing I think is, I believe you're hearing about the Pakistanis.
And I've been saying, until President Trump's in a room or his team's in a room looking across the table at the guys that not only can sit there and say, we can do a deal, but actually can execute on that deal.
So you're just not wasting your time.
I think he feels it's a game.
Now, my understanding is there are other sources other than the Pakistanis.
And he's very close to this Army Chief of Staff.
He's a very good Field Marshal, I think it's Munry.
He's very close to, he respects that guy.
So they're dealing with that.
I think there's some other elements that may come in play also.
But I don't think Persian civilization ends tonight.
But I think that when we hit the witching hour, I do believe, at least it looks right now, that something may be done, at least on a preliminary basis, to kind of get their attention.
So that's what I think.
When a revolution, I agree with you, all day long, I've got the wildest people blowing me up, coming to me.
Oh, he's getting ready to use a tactical nuclear weapon.
He's going tack nuke.
You know, it's a lot of crazy talk out there as people, I think, try to get worked up about trying to oppose President Trump.
There's also a very disturbing.
Which I'll deal with later.
Very disturbing story in the New York Times from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that really has, let's say this, way too many details about the situation room and some of the most important meetings that led up to this.
And I think that's something that's got to be dealt with and it will be dealt with forthwith, Damon.
I mean, a lot of the same people who tell you that, Steve, also told you this past weekend that he was at Walter Reed and he was on the precipice of death again, too.
So listen, I mean, I think we've grown so used to past administrations.
You know, with their terrorist pandering that we've seen, that it's maybe we miss the what we don't recognize what actual resolve looks like here.
I think that's what we have with President Trump.
I mean, listen, he's in it.
You can argue whether this, you know, claim you want a thousand and really be willing to settle for 200 is a great strategy on a night like tonight because it does back himself into a corner.
If he does nothing, it's, you know, Taco Tuesday memes all day.
If he sends him back to the Stone Age, he's an unhinged lunatic.
But maybe in the meantime, everybody's TDS is revealing things.
As a strategic advantage that they're looking for.
You know, he's keeping them off balance.
Maybe they're forcing him to move military assets, other assets into panic.
Who knows what they know?
Certainly nobody knows what's going to happen tonight.
I don't suspect we're ending civilization.
Maybe if there are strikes, we find out that they had some information, and all of this was to get them to move things around to find out where there was maybe still building missiles and under the guise of, you know, the people in the.
And the citizens, and maybe they're looking for something else.
But to your point on the Pakistani thing, and I don't know that this is the off ramp as possible, but what if that is packaged somehow and President Trump says we get this straight opened with some kind of agreement there if those two things are packaged together?
Is that something that we could look for as an off ramp tonight?
Look, I think if they got, it's one of the disturbing things about the New York Times story is that the Israelis and others kind of dismiss the ability of these.
Of these pirates, Bedouins, I don't think it's the Revolutionary Guard to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and monetize it, essentially monetize the toll booth.
Anything with the Strait of Hormuz, I think, will get us attention.
My understanding is that that is right now one of the things they're not even dealing with because they can't get, like I said, it's one thing to say, hey, I know a guy and we can make a deal.
It's another thing to actually have somebody that can make that deal.
I think President Trump's going to be very tough about that.
Exactly who are we talking to?
Because as you know, Damon, there's nobody in that region you can trust.
They're all double dealing us.
Every second of every day.
So, I mean, the United States has to kind of think this through for themselves.
I think that's what President Trump's doing.
I do, there's all this crazy talk about tactical nukes and, you know, he's going crazy and he's looking to bomb him into the Stone Age tonight.
I do think, in looking through his alternatives, right, one of these alternatives, one of the alternatives, I think, other people trying to insert themselves in some sort of dialogue that would lead to something that could be meaningful.
And I'm sure President Trump's going to listen to those guys.
But Like you said, we're just a couple hours away from your show and from this event tonight.
And I think it's right now, I think it's all systems go.
I mean, Steve, let's remember also this is a president who we've seen sit in the press briefings and in the White House and answer when press asks him questions.
He says, Why would I answer that to you?
Why would I tell you any of these questions?
And he's got everybody looking at every bridge and every power plant tonight.
When's the last time he actually told us something he actually was going to do?
So, I mean, in the end, nobody knows what's going to happen tonight.
Well, you know, Steve, that all the time you have senior administration officials or cabinet officers who are flowing in and out of meetings.
They're swinging by Pebble Beach to do their own hits on different news channels and networks.
And then they'll come over and do gaggles here in the driveway, like the.
Microphones that have set up are set up sort of behind me.
I don't know if it's in the shot, but there have been no gaggles today.
There's been nobody floating around.
It's been really subdued.
And of course, you know, there's hundreds of young people who work here at the White House, and they're always sort of traipsing around at different groups, floating to different places.
You're seeing none of that today.
And as I said to you this morning, we didn't see the Marine Guard out in front of the West Wing where he's behind me until about 11 30.
So he's, when the president is in the Oval, that guard is outside.
And so imagine, I imagine that the president was in the Situation Room or somewhere else.
He wasn't in the Oval until about 11 30 this morning.
If my crack team can pull the tweet I saw up where the Iranians, this is in response to the Pakistanis and others saying there may be a two week extension, that these guys are in discussions.
I think they gave this to the Wall Street Journal that, in fact, they are fully equipped with missiles, they're fully equipped with drones.
They've been producing these things forever, and they've got them in these caves, and you have no earthly idea what we've got.
And we're not interested in talking and not going to talk.
At least in some of the regime, because remember, it's been shattered in its kind of concentrated central command, both militarily and through the Mula network to the Ayatollah.
So it's decentralized, let's call it, maybe not by choice.
You have to figure out what faction's really in charge, what faction can really speak for the nation, and which faction can actually deliver on a deal.
I think it's one of the most difficult.
Things that President Trump and his team have going on.
As I said the other day, President Trump, if it's still through intermediaries and, hey, I know a guy and we'll pass him a note, he'll do that for a while.
But after a while, he just says, no games.
We got to try something else.
He's warned these guys.
Remember, yesterday he was very specific.
They asked for seven days.
I gave them seven.
I added another three to kind of get through the Easter holiday.
And then I added another day so I didn't have to do this with the Easter bunny out there and the kids rolling eggs.
On Easter Monday.
I didn't think it was appropriate.
I gave him one more day.
That's 11 days.
He seemed, when he said that, that that was enough.
Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break.
We're going to come back and we're going to do a cold open.
It's been a wild day today, a cold open.
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The question now is whether there's a connection to those Karg Island strikes that we saw and President Trump's threats.
There's long been discussion of potential U.S. forces going on the ground and capturing Karg Island.
That could be potentially an option on the table.
But regardless, all of the people in this region right now are certainly on edge awaiting this real possibility for significant escalation in this region.
That continued negotiations through intermediaries between the United States and Tehran will be effective, and that hopefully a diplomatic solution could be found to one, either delay this escalation of military attacks that the president has been threatening.
Of course, we saw that aggressive post this morning where he warned that a whole civilization will die tonight, or they say, at a minimum, try to see perhaps some minimized attacks or reduce the severity of. the attacks that the president has been warning against.
Now, I will say the statics of negotiations between the United States and Iran, whether indirect or direct, is very much unclear.
We've seen that the Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had cut off direct diplomacy.
We saw the New York Times report that even indirect talks are no longer happening.
Tehran has denied both of those reports.
And I will say that the United States, at least U.S. sources here, have said that they are still eager, the Trump administration, to find some sort of diplomatic Off ramp here.
So we really are waiting to see exactly whether something like that could actually materialize by the 8 p.m. deadline that the president had set for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Our colleague David Rode has also been hearing from some diplomats inside the Gulf who've said that the chances of a deal for a ceasefire are incredibly low.
But then let's look at what's happening inside Iran and this region tonight.
Well, this is a region on tenterhooks.
It's on the complete edge because over the next few hours, well, that's when. the fate will be decided.
What the president decides to do, whether he decides to obliterate these power plants and bridges inside Iran, would obviously impact millions and millions of people inside that country.
And then you've got Iranians, everyday Iranians now being told to go out and essentially be part of a human shield in front of some of these power plants and bridges.
We've seen some images released by Iranian state TV of everyday men, women, children as well, going and standing in front of these facilities to try and prevent from the US and Israel.
targeting them.
Tonight as well, Antonio, in the last hour or so, the IRGC Missile Command has said this.
They said we will strike infrastructure in a manner that will deprive the United States and regional countries of oil and gas resources for years to come.
Orders have been transmitted to local missile bases and operations will begin immediately.
Already this evening, I've heard a roaring of fighter jets above me here in the UAE, suggesting that maybe there is some military repositioning going on.
to await any Iranian retaliation of some US and Israeli strikes tonight, because we know full well that this isn't just inside Iran where they'll feel any impacts.
It will be the wider region because Iran will strike the likes of the energy facilities in the Gulf, which again, they have also been doing today, hitting a petrochemical site in Saudi Arabia, hitting sites in Bahrain and Kuwait, Qatar and here in the UAE.
The president is still very much committed to following through on those threats.
All to say, it is still very much clear at this point in time what exactly the president is going to decide and whether or not negotiations could actually lead to a substantial enough.
Compromise to stave off the attacks that he has been warning about.
I do want to read for you what we heard, though, from the White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, trying to just sum all of this up.
She told me, The Iranian regime has until 8 p.m. Eastern Time to meet the moment and make a deal with the United States.
Only the president knows where things stand and what he will do.
So, of course, we're still standing by to learn any more we can about whether this is moving ahead full force.
Really doesn't matter as far as getting him to stop or reining him in unless elected Republicans are the ones who come out and say enough is enough.
Where is the courage?
Where is the character?
Where is the outrage?
Where are they?
They're the ones that can make the difference here.
The influencers, okay, that's fine.
That's the base.
Those are people who have begun to realize that Donald Trump is a laned up president.
They've begun to see his mental decline and the fact that he's emotionally unstable.
It's no longer politically viable for them.
But where are the elected Republicans who are in a position to tell him, Mr. President, this is completely unacceptable.
This is un American.
What are we doing here?
You are unfit to be president of the United States.
They should have done that a long time ago.
But now we're.
We're having worldly, deadly potential consequences here for this man, letting his retribution for go beyond anything most people could have imagined.
But they were warned.
But now's the time for them to step up.
It's significant to watch this fracture begin to happen is significant, but it doesn't matter unless Republicans in positions of power step up and tell him, stop it.
Axios was reporting this week that he is really looking to show him up.
You know, our campaign here.
He's not looking to wind it down.
Now, there may be a time limit.
You know, how many more weeks is this going to last?
I met with a senior intelligence official yesterday, and I proposed the following scenario.
Let's say we meet the three military objectives that General Kane laid out destroy the missile program, which hasn't been completely destroyed, as we were led to believe, eliminate the entirety of the nuclear program, also a bit of a heavy lift at this point, and, you know, keep the Navy out, destroyed, whatever.
What then?
What is the political endgame here?
The scenario that I laid out, which was confirmed to me, is most likely the Israelis are going to go back in periodically every few months and mow the lawn, as they put it, meaning they're going to have to continue to destroy whatever the Iranians rebuild.
Because right now you have a wounded tiger, and a wounded tiger getting back up on all fours is going to lash out.
And now the United States is party to this, right?
We are going to help the Israelis continue to do this.
And whether it's Donald Trump in the White House or the next administration, ensuring that Iran does not have the ability to retaliate or to.
Take this war back at us is going to be a matter of national security priority.
So we're kind of locked in here.
And the Israelis might have thought this was going to be a quick and easy thing, but they have now basically got the United States involved in this thing in perpetuity.
China dominates renewable energy supply chains, producing a vast majority of the world's solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electric vehicles.
Experts of these technologies were already climbing to new heights in the first two months of 2026.
Now, volatility in the supply of fossil fuels is set to give sales.
Another big boost.
This is all as the U.S. under the Trump administration is not engaging in the renewable energy market.
So, how does this war realign the global views around energy?
China is definitely positioned as a winner here, not just because they think so far ahead with five and 10 year, 15 year plans, but because they have such a robust electric vehicles market.
They have renewables across the board that allows them to diversify.
But even more than that, they've negotiated directly with Iran to allow for their ships and their goods to come through the Strait of Hormuz while the rest of us are shut out.
And that is the situation that gives China potentially real sway in having a conversation about when and if the U.S. and Iran ever reach a ceasefire.
China's probably going to be a prominent player there.
And then you think that President Trump is going to meet with President Xi in May to continue what he started in 2025, which is a massive trade war.
And we're having a situation where China is on the ascent and becoming a much more dominant global player, while the United States continues to struggle with its NATO allies and EU allies, Japan, South Korea, being pressed to look away from the United States and towards China.
Mowing the lawn in Iran for the Israelis is a much more complex situation.
Endeavor than what they were able to do in Syria and Lebanon over the past several decades.
This is a much farther distance they're going to have to retravel.
They're going to need refueling rights.
They're going to need bases.
Perhaps the Gulf Arab states will, you know, help them in some way because they're now quite incensed at how Iran has retaliated against civilian infrastructure in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
But I don't see this being wrapped up so quickly.
You know, Donald Trump is very fond of doing his own mission accomplished pageantry.
And when you think about it, our best case scenario right now is that our president is a belligerent liar who threatens genocide and war crimes to get his way.
I mean, that is the most optimistic reading of the situation.
And that's why, you know, on the other hand, I am heartened that people are speaking out.
And to be clear, you know, I do want to put Alex Jones in an entirely different category because he isn't reliable on things.
But I do think it helps tremendously that people like, Major General Manner on this program are speaking out.
Members of the military who have the credibility, who have been in these situations where they have to evaluate what they are truly being asked to do and what their obligation is as Americans upholding the Constitution.
I mean, this is extraordinarily difficult for people who are in the military right now to try to maneuver in some way to stop terrible damage from being done.
And so, I think it's just really important to remember.
That even though we have an out of control autocrat in the White House, we all have agency.
We all can do something.
And I do think it helps tremendously, again, that former members of the military are speaking about this because it was not that long ago that Trump was threatening Democratic senators with military experience for talking about why troops may need to resist illegal orders.
We are in that scenario today.
And a lot of people thought they're hysterical, couldn't believe they were issuing those warnings at the time.
But not one of the things people are reading into this is the markets, particularly the oil market, is not as turbulent if they felt President Trump was really going to hit and hit with the ferocity that he had signaled.
Not saying he won't.
I'm just saying that the markets are, particularly the oil markets, a lot calmer than one would believe in the equity markets around the world and the bond markets around the world.
People are reading that is that the markets think it's Taco Tuesday.
We'll see.
But right now, they're not very volatile, or as volatile as you would be given the stakes involved here, and particularly the rhetoric around the stakes.
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Birch Gold, it was a number of years ago that I walked in and said, Look, the dollar.
Is the central backbone of the global financial system since Bretton Woods after World War II?
And that dollar is under tremendous pressure, not just from the elites in this country, in this deficit spending that's led to now $39 trillion.
And if you look at the current budget put forward, a lot more trillion dollars to come.
Of course, the folks over at the Wharton Budget Agency, Budget Group, were pretty good.
They actually say, Steve, you're wrong.
It's not really $39 trillion or $40 trillion.
It's actually closer to $100 trillion.
That rests upon the shoulders of the dollar, and that's why it's got to support.
Anyway, the BRICS nations seeing the drop in purchasing power of the dollar during the Biden regime, the illegitimate Biden regime years, have kind of teamed up on the dollar, and that's why we decided to write the end of the dollar empire.
Not that we want that.
You have to make, I think every nation should make a conscious decision whether they want to be the prime reserve currency, but there are tremendous benefits that go with it.
There are also tremendous responsibilities, and there's the rub.
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Okay, we have a couple things.
I want to definitely get up this because you see this response that came, and I want this response.
I want to read the response first.
If Denver could put this up.
Headline This is the Wall Street Journal.
And the Wall Street Journal, look, I think he's done a very good job of trying to cover this.
The New York Times, they have huge teams on this.
Financial Times of London, because so much of this affects capital markets and investors.
Wall Street Journal, and this is from a couple of hours ago.
Headline Iran told mediators weapons arsenal nowhere near depleted.
Even before Iran cut off direct diplomacy, remember early in the day, Iran said, you know, and there were some beginning talks, I guess, with JD and some other people.
They said, we're not doing that.
We're going through intermediaries, and who knows how much progress was even made on that.
But even before Rykov direct diplomacy with the U.S., it was sticking to a hardline position in negotiations and showed no signs of backing down.
Tehran told Pakistan, which is mediating talks, that it believed it was winning and that it retained 15,000 missiles and 45,000 drones in its arsenal.
According to mediators and a person familiar, With the matter.
Mediators said the numbers were likely exaggerated but reflected Iran's unflinching negotiation position.
The U.S. and Israel are continuing to strike Iran with force as President Trump's ultimatum deadline nears.
Iran has threatened to retaliate with large scale strikes on Gulf countries and Israeli power and energy infrastructure, according to mediators in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard.
Now, also, Fox News got a bit of a scoop.
Can we go ahead and play that clip and then I will.
Pull this article up and read from it.
Let's go ahead and play the clip about President Trump and what he was referring to as heated negotiations.
With that deadline just four hours away, and he said, I really can't tell you how we're feeling right now because we're in the middle of heated negotiations.
I said, So the conversation is happening then.
He said, Yes, of course.
Why wouldn't they be talking, given the circumstances, basically?
I asked him his view on this request from Pakistan's prime minister for a two week deadline.
He said that he was about to be fully briefed on it in about five minutes and said, I can tell you this that.
This man, the prime minister, I know him very well.
He's a highly respected man all over.
This is what the prime minister had asked in that post that you referenced earlier.
Diplomatic efforts for a peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly, and powerfully, with the potential to lead to substantive results in the near future.
To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.
Pakistan, in all sincerity, requests the Iranian brothers to open the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding period of time as a goodwill gesture.
Now, as Caroline Levitt said, the president has been made aware of this, and the White House will be sending its response.
But of course, the deadline is just a few hours away.
We are also aware of a call he had with another outlet where he commented on what Iran has been doing in the interim.
So, right there, you said President Trump said they're engaged in heated negotiations.
The Pakistanis saying, hey, we need two weeks.
Let's have a two week pause.
And through in, I think I can get the Iranians to stand down and maybe open up the Strait or Hormuz for that time period.
Anyway, a lot of back and forth, as you can tell.
And a lot of different chefs in the kitchen now.
We understand that there are other intermediaries and mediators who are claiming they have better relationships with who's really making decisions in Iran.
And that is all.
People are in active discussions about that.
So, look, there's an eight o'clock deadline.
Who knows?
You would assume that President Trump, the Israelis are already starting to do the prep work.
They're preparing the battlefield by hitting.
I got Frank Gaffney, I got other things, but I want to go to Neil McCabe before I lose Neil.
Neil, talk to me about there was a presser, and I think we have a short.
Do we have a clip on the Todd?
Do we have that?
Just let me know if we can play that after Neil.
Neil, you were over the Justice Department for a while.
You know Todd Blanch, you know the team over there.
He gave a press, he's the acting attorney general, pretty aggressive coming out with a press conference right out of the box.
And they're very focused on, I guess I would call it the Somalian problem in Minnesota as a national effort, of which they're really committing to get behind this and to hold people accountable and also get our money back.
But most importantly, stop this spending on these social programs that turn out are just completely ripoffs and the money's going to the worst people in the country.
That are funneling a lot of it back into anti Trump and anti DHS and anti ICE demonstrations.
You know, when you're talking about those social welfare scams, he called the hospice care scams the purest form of stealing.
And he spoke with great detail about it.
And he said that this new National Fraud Enforcement Division is going to be prosecutor led by Colin McDonald.
The new assistant attorney general who's leading that division.
But the idea that it's prosecutor led, they're basically going to be doing the job that the local federal prosecutors won't do, especially in those blue states, Steve.
And he was, as you said, very competitive.
He called out the reporters because he told the reporters for four years during Biden's DOJ, they sat and watched as that DOJ was weaponized against regular Americans.
He called out as a myth, probably the biggest myth, he said, that the DOJ is somehow independent from the president of the United States.
The idea that Past presidents have had nothing to do with the running of the Justice Department, he said was garbage.
It was a very strong, strong performance by Blanche, Steve.
Something you know, having worked over at Justice with Ed Martin, is that one of the problems here, we just don't have enough manpower.
And particularly, like in Minnesota, I think there were a dozen prosecutors that quit when Pam Bondi and Bovino and others were trying to bring charges.
And the word came back and says, look, with jury nullification, how radical the people are up there, and the woke nature of not just the local government, but even the federal officials that are there.
It's almost impossible to bring charges against these people.
You've seen it firsthand all over the country.
Is this one of the biggest things that Todd, Blanche, and President Trump are up against?
In fact, that you've got, you know, you have 92 U.S. attorneys' offices.
I think we've only got 14 or 15 of our own people running 14 or 15 of the offices because of the blue slip situation and just lack of manpower.
Tell the audience, how big a deal is this?
And really getting to the bottom of it and perp walking like these Somalians.
Neil, the morale over there, because it's been under siege, you're doing, you know, they've fought at the federal judiciary level, the first level with these judges because they try to stop or get stays on everything President Trump tried to do.
What do you think needs to happen to kind of get morale back up?
Is it bringing in more people?
Is it changing out some of the people there?
Give me a minute on that before I know you got to bounce.
So, JMD, the Justice Management Division, is run by a Biden holdover.
Her name is Jolene Lauria.
And so, it's been my experience when I was at the pardon office that, you know, that just you have these career people who are in charge of vetting all the applicants, and that's putting sand in the gears.
So, obviously, that has to be affected.
But I think Blanche is now taking the reins, and he's going to get stuff done.
I think that.
This division is going to take on a lot of the stuff that just was ignored or basically dismissed by these local prosecutors.
But again, I can't believe when people say that people don't want to work for the Justice Department, it just doesn't make sense.
There are plenty, plenty of people who want to work for the Justice Department.
I also want to point out, Steve, in the minute I have left, that the Marine Guard has now left outside.
The fruits of the efforts of the posse were much in evidence.
And I apologize, I'm bouncing around in an Uber at the moment, but the up to the minute report is there was a very substantial turnout of freedom loving Americans.
It didn't turn out to be what it was in the past few runnings of this exercise, where they had overwhelmingly jihadists.
In the room.
They had Christians, they had patriots, they had people who love our constitutional republic and are committed to it that came together and just beat the hell out of a fellow by the name of Will Hickman, who is a Republican who has taken the position in the State Board of Education of championing the care curriculum, as I call it.
It's In fairness, something that the left is implicated in.
It's a red green axis operation, but it's primarily driven by the designated terrorist organization in the state of Texas known as the Council on American Islamic Relations.
So I call it the CARE curriculum.
And what went on, Steve, is people made it absolutely clear that's not the curriculum they want their children.
And by the way, it's as we've talked about on the show a lot.
It's not just their children.
It's the children across a country from K through 12.
We're talking about their social studies curriculum.
It will be largely driven in many school systems across our nation by whatever the Texas folks approve of.
So this has a generational impact.
I think it was Brandon Hall, one of the members of the State Board of Education in Texas, who said on your show that, you know, they don't do these things every couple of days.
This is a 10%.
Year proposition.
So we're talking about inculcating or indoctrinating in kids across America what the Council on American Islamic Relations wants them to know about our history or a fictitious history like all about the wonderful contributions Islam made to the founding of this republic and other nonsense.
Unfortunately, if it were just nonsense, it wouldn't be so bad.
It's mendacious and it is misleading and it is divisive.
And it is subversive of our freedoms because that generation of Americans is going to be brought up thinking that, you know, this is a horrible country.
It's been terrible to lots of people and we shouldn't defend it.
Well, Pam Little, of course, was the deciding vote, we think, on whether the care curriculum would be adopted or a pro American curriculum, which was what the school, the State Board of Education approved.
I hear.
She came to me immediately after I testified.
I said more or less what I've just said to you.
You know, are you going to choose to support freedom and equip our kids to do what Ronald Reagan always said, which is to prepare to Defeat existential threats to freedom?
Or are you going to compound the problem by discouraging them from doing all of that?
She came up to me afterwards and she was visibly agitated.
And she basically gave me a hard time about the fact that I hadn't spoken to her about what her position was going to be and so on.
And she's taken a lot of incomings.
It was pretty clear to me that was the fact from the posse.
But she basically said, look, You need to let people know that I am not going to support a care curriculum.
I am not going to support Will Hickman's amendments.
And I think she has indicated very strongly that that's because she came under enormous pressure from our team.
And praise God for helping her that happened.
And you're playing a rather substantial role in it too, Steve.