WarRoom Battleground EP 988: Financial Markets Shaken Since The War; Stopping The Steal Of 2026
Stephen K. Bannon and Philip Patrick dissect a naval blockade against Iran, warning it accelerates de-dollarization while triggering hyperinflation. They critique Democratic fiscal policies as unsustainable "guns and butter" schemes destined for currency collapse, comparing U.S. debt risks to the British pound's decline. Neil McCabe reports on a strategic U.S.-Indonesia MOU for Strait of Malacca overflight rights and President Trump's meeting with David Perdue regarding China. Finally, Bannon supports deploying ICE agents at polling stations to combat alleged illegal voter fraud in the 2026 midterms, framing these measures as essential election integrity safeguards against a rigged system. [Automatically generated summary]
It's Tuesday, 14 April in the year of our Lord, 2026.
We know that David Perdue, who's a friend of the show, ran for U.S. Senator, longtime U.S. Senator, and a, I shouldn't say longtime, U.S. Senator from Georgia, ran for governor.
But a guy that spent his business career, I think, with Puma Arditas in China, in Hong Kong, knows China very, very well.
He's actually in the Oval Office with the president.
A lot of discussion on the Chinese Communist Party and the impact of this.
They are not happy at all.
They've issued a bunch of statements.
Dan would caves at the White House.
We're going to go there momentarily and get up to speed on everything that's happening there.
And maybe the president will call people in and have a chat about this.
But I do not believe you're going to see any climb down from the president about this blockade.
Which we know already, and the media reported incorrectly.
We've, I think, turned back four or five ships.
Basically, every ship that was eligible to be turned back got turned back according to criteria that we have laid out.
I've asked Philip Patrick to join us this afternoon.
One was about Scott Besant's comments last night at this gathering of the semaphore folks with all the top financial people, really, in the world, because I think the IMF meetings are here also this week.
Also, Philip Patrick, about the blockade, Fortune magazine head analyst Jason Ma did an analysis of the current economic environment and took the reports of IMF and others talking about GDP going forward.
His headline in the article is quite concerning.
US naval blockade on Iran will trigger a currency devaluation spiral and hyperinflation, potentially ending the war more quickly.
Now, this is specifically about what he says is going to happen to the Persians and to the Iranian economy.
Scott Besson was already pretty far down the road of trying to do this without an instrument of like three carrier battle groups to basically choke off any oil coming out and any cash going in.
Walk us through because one of the implications here is that.
If you use economic warfare on the Persians, number one, the world gets skittish that, hey, the Europeans and kind of with the Americans backing did this to the Russians in Ukraine, and now they're doing it to the Persians.
Why do I keep my assets in Western banks, and why do I keep it in dollar denominated assets?
Maybe I've got to get into a gold asset.
That's why the IMF report for the first quarter this year, for the first time since the IMF.
Has been keeping score for 30 years, showed that there's more gold related assets in these banks, these central banks, than there are dollar denominated assets.
Also, the second implication is that the world economy is still very skittish right now.
A lot of growth rates are being cut because of the dramatic increase in oil and the inflation that's popping up and showing up in the inflation categories.
We had EJ and Tony on this morning, and there's not a bigger supporter of the president.
And EJ was nominated to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he was the one that got it correct about all these recalibrations and how they were phony, how the Biden administration was showing millions of jobs, of new jobs created that just didn't happen.
And he was correct.
He's very concerned about the economy.
He's particularly concerned about oil getting back down to a $50 barrel instead of standing at a $90 to $100 barrel.
The implication of this article is you take Iran down, you don't know, it's the law of unintended consequences.
It's a country with 92 or 93 million people.
It's one of the reasons that we've never been able to really implement full sanctions because the UAE is banking them.
Other countries are trying to sell for them because they're a sophisticated consumer and it's 92 million people.
Your thoughts about this article, particularly the implications that we can destroy and are destroying their economy with hyperinflation, devaluation, all that.
What is that going to mean for the dollar and what is it going to mean for gold in the intermediate and long term, sir?
Yeah, look, the missiles have paused for now, but this is the more interesting, at least for me, the more interesting fight.
And that's the behind the scenes currency war.
Look, we ended up in a quagmire.
This was a very tough situation.
We've talked before about the Iranians' asymmetric strategy.
They understood their leverage being the Strait of Hormuz.
And in the short term, it gave them leverage over global trade.
I don't think Trump had a choice.
The US response, short term, the naval blockade, I think was smart because it ultimately removes the leverage the Iranians have.
And it puts the pressure right back on them.
And it was done at a good time.
Cutting off their oil revenue could trigger, as you rightly point out in the article you're referencing, a currency collapse in the country and potentially hyperinflation.
We're already seeing early signs that prices in Tehran are just skyrocketing, reportedly up 40% in just a few weeks.
As you mentioned, that was already on top of the pressure Treasury Secretary Besant did during the Rialde evaluation last year.
So, In the short term, I think the strategy is working and it's forced the Iranians back to the table.
Their economy was already disastrous.
They cannot suffer, I think, more damage there.
It's encouraging, though, to see the administration playing them at their own game.
This is clear sort of Trump policy, and I think it was necessary.
The Iranians' leverage over the Strait of Hormuz long term, though, I don't think really existed.
It doesn't benefit the world to create.
Problems there long term, China and India included in that.
Asian economies are very dependent on oil flowing through the straits.
So, long term, I think that was going to get wrapped up.
What does that mean for the bigger picture, right?
De dollarization.
I don't think a huge amount has changed.
We were talking about this long before the Iran war.
China, for example, have been building alternative payment systems since 2013.
That is a completely independent financial network.
It is out there and available today.
So, when countries like Iran or Russia can't or won't use dollars, there's an alternative waiting for them.
And that's the pattern that we're seeing.
So, yes, I think the US will win this round of economic warfare.
But, longer term, as you pointed out earlier, every one of these conflicts, sanctions, blockades, they chip away at the same thing, which is global trust in a dollar based system.
What's been interesting over the last few years is to see how effective.
Economic warfare can be.
In many ways, it can be more effective than military warfare.
But that is both a good and a bad thing, right?
The reason sanctions and tariffs are so effective is because the dollar is still dominant.
But that is also what's driving the long term shift.
Listen, if you're on the receiving end, Russia, Iran, or even China, you can't negotiate within the system.
So you're stuck looking for ways around it.
And I think that's what's happening.
I don't think anything's really changed longer term.
And we're seeing it with the trends, right?
Central bank gold buying is increasing, US dollar holdings broadly are reducing.
And I think that trend will continue.
And things like this just reinforce the idea longer term.
David Perdue, and this is an interesting thing is that Perdue's not a politician.
He's a businessman.
He came from the consumer market.
I think it was Puma and Adidas that he ran out of Hong Kong and had all of Asia, which is a huge, huge responsibility.
Trump is also not a politician.
He's a businessman.
And I think they're looking at, when they look at China and the CCP, they look at it through the eyes of a businessman and how you complete deals.
It was interesting this morning.
We had EJ on.
And you know, he's one of the.
Biggest supporters of Trump's economic program, although he is, and to be blunt, and he said it, he says, Look, I'm really getting afraid given everything we've done, everything we've done to turn around this Biden fiasco.
The big, beautiful bill is all starting to click the longer this drags on, because he's like me, he says, Hey, the Trump economic plan soars when you have full spectrum energy dominance and oil's $50 a barrel.
It soars a lot less when you're at $95 to $105 a barrel just over time.
And so he's very concerned about it.
But what I found interesting.
He was so concerned as an economist to open up Hormuz, whether you have a blockade now and then open it up or you go in and start doing safe passage for the ships.
He said, Look, I don't really.
He says, I'm not into geopolitics.
I don't understand it.
But I'm not that concerned with free navigation.
I'm particularly not concerned if they're charging a $2 million toll per vessel and it's paid in Chinese yuan or crypto.
He said, In the overall scheme, I don't have a problem with that.
Whereas I think you or I would say, That's the worst indicator I've seen in this entire situation where the CCP is making a statement with their Iranian proxy that they're prepared in the Gulf to challenge the petrodollar.
Now, it's not a huge amount of money, but for the Arabs, it's incredibly symbolic, is it not, sir?
Listen, you know, the petrodollar agreement was built on the idea that we would.
Protect Arab nations, and in return, they would have a place to sell their oil.
They'd reinvest dollars back into the U.S. economy, and it was a system that worked very well.
But that system is fracturing around us.
First of all, we're energy independent today.
The biggest buyers of oil from Saudi Arabia are Asian countries, and you can see them now kowtowing to China and others.
But ultimately, like you said, it's precedent, right?
We never thought that tomorrow the world would dump U.S. dollars and buy gold or buy Chinese yuan.
It's this chipping away at Dollar dominance and every bilateral trade agreement, every toll paid outside of US dollars creates a very dangerous precedent.
And I think it's reflecting weakness.
And the Arab nations don't want to see that.
They're already starting to slowly cozy towards China.
These precedents, I think, escalate what is ultimately, I believe, an inevitability longer term.
Russ Vogt, one of our colleagues here, is going to be, I think it's the House Budget Committee on Thursday.
So I want to give the other pressure to the dollar.
Because right now, President Trump has put up a guns and let's cut the butter budget.
But the Democrats have already said that's DOA.
So that budget increases up to 1.5 trillion, the defense budget.
There's still some confusion about the 200 billion, or maybe it's a lot lesser amount because this war seems like the kinetic part is winding down, although we still have a blockade and all of our troops are there.
But 200 billion for that, it's kind of uncertain.
Where that's going to come from, although as I say, everything's going to be paid for, but the Democrats haven't agreed to that.
He's going to get lit up like a Christmas tree on Thursday because they're going to be the Democrats who have never concerned about deficits, debt, interest payments, are going to harp all over these interest payments being as high as they are and the deficits being as high as they are.
Tell me, what does that mean?
Is, you know, and because President Trump was going to cut the budget, unfortunately, he found himself.
With an economic mess with Biden, then he found himself with a war.
Now you have deficits because if the Democrats don't agree with his spending cuts and they've given every indication they're not even prepared to address it, you're going to have a guns and butter situation with pretty massive, potentially massive deficits.
One, do you buy my theory of the case of what's basically happening right now?
I think it's pretty obvious.
Number two, how is that going to impact the dollar?
And what do you think that means long term for gold, the physical gold as an investment opportunity?
If we're amassing deficits, printing money, servicing, it has only ever gone one way in history.
Curbing the spending is going to be the most important thing.
I've always believed that if President Trump just took over and rightfully got the election he should have won, his policies would have been much easier to implement.
But the damage that was done under the Biden administration.
In four years, made this an almost impossible job.
And we're seeing it play out.
Even for an administration whose number one focus was getting control of the budget, it's proving an almost impossible task to achieve.
Then you get black swan events like Iran wars and other things, the hangover from the Biden administration, and it's a disaster.
But what I tell people is this these people cannot get a handle on spending.
What chance do we have that anybody else does it?
This is the most important fight that we have, Republican, Democrat, I don't care.
We need to get a handle on this.
So the Democrats are going to use this to their political advantage.
But anybody who's been watching for a long time understands that is just nonsense.
But the reality is, we need to curb spending, whether it's Republicans, Democrats.
I don't care.
But until we get a handle on that, the problem's not going away.
If you had to ask me what was a more imminent threat, their ability over a number of years with fairly high hurdles to get to a nuclear weapon versus the ticking time, the so many inside the wire crises we have, and this one's big, and it seems like no one can address it because as soon as you start to address it, you get smeared, right?
You don't care about kids.
You don't care about.
This is one of the reasons the 25 million illegal alien invaders have to go.
We can't afford them.
They have to go.
One of the ways you cut is you cut the social programs.
You're going to have to do it.
One way to do that is make sure that only people here that are American citizens say, Oh, well, Steve, that's ridiculous.
Only American citizens get it.
That's not true.
You saw it in the situation in Minnesota.
It's rife in California.
The whole thing is a con and a fraud.
And yet, Philip, it shocks me that because we know where the math goes and it's not sustainable, it impacts the purchasing power of the dollar and therefore gold.
In pattern recognition, is one of the reasons that people are trying to get away from, to the degree they can, dollar denominated assets.
And the reason central banks are buying gold at record rates because they continue to look at the budgets here in the United States.
And now they see with President Trump having a fairly dramatic increase in defense spending, plus the operational tempo of these operations and what they're talking about $200 billion, it's just going to continue on because the Democrats will never give up the social programs and the Republicans aren't tough enough and strong enough.
To force them because you're going to have to force big government shutdowns to get there, you're going to be locked into this situation where you continue on this unsustainable path every day.
In that case, what should people be thinking about, sir?
It's the reason we did the end of the dollar empire.
The last thing I want to bring up, birchgold.com, promo code Bannon.
Go there today.
You can back order our magnificent hard copy, or you can get the free seven installments today plus the eighth.
You mentioned something.
I do not want to bury the lead.
One of the reasons I thought Scott Besson would be a great Secretary of the Treasury, and I think the consensus is he is.
So thank you, Mr. Bannon, for taking on Elon Musk, who wanted Howard Lutton.
Good God Almighty.
I think what a disaster that would have been.
Great judgment on Elon's part.
A man of the world, no doubt.
Because, and as you know, I agree with Paul Ryan on almost nothing.
But Paul Ryan said something in an interview a couple of months ago.
And they go, Well, look, the spending's unsustainable.
How does it come to a crisis?
He says, Look, I think how it comes to a crisis, you have a busted Treasury auction.
Scott Besson essentially has to refinance one third, let's say 25% to one third of our federal debt every year.
That is now $39 trillion.
Scott's out there having auctions all the time.
Why do people, he said, well, countries, other countries can't do that.
Why can we do it?
Because, as I said, there's lots of responsibilities for being the dollar empire, for being the prime reserve currency.
The British knew this.
It's one of the reasons they were shattered, not just militarily and, quite frankly, socially and spiritually, but they were shattered economically because they had the burden of the pound being the prime reserve currency to keep it up.
They're just, they're grasped.
Was their reach bigger than their grasp, right?
It just was too much for them.
Here's the same thing because right now people still need dollars.
That's where they buy our debt.
That's where we can have these successful auctions.
There's going to come a point in time, Philip Patrick, you know this, I know this, that the world's going to say, you're going to come for one of these treasury auctions and go, well, you know what?
I'm kind of topped off, right?
Maybe I want to dump some of this.
Maybe I've got too much.
Maybe the Americans can grab mine too quickly.
The SWIFT system in this.
And this is the complexity of what we're dealing with, and the reason we try to talk geopolitics, national security, and capital markets with you, because you are going to be a big decision maker in this.
We just want to make sure you're not whipsawed, because we're going to have a national conversation about this.
Regardless of the revenue and the spending, it's going to become quite evident that there is some point in time where the world's just going to say, hey, look, guys, we just can't take it.
We're just not comfortable continuing to buy this at the rates we're buying it.
Is that essentially the argument of why people are concerned about?
When you talk about the dollar empire and Bretton Woods, and people need our currency to transact, whether you're doing a drug trade in Thailand or you're helping give a donation to a convent in sub Saharan Africa or an orphanage in sub Saharan Africa, you've got to convert it into dollars, sir.
And that's why we're able to sell a massive amount of it, and Scott Besson is able to refinance this annually.
I don't see a busted treasury auction on the horizon very shortly.
Term, but what I do see and what we are seeing is higher costs to borrow.
And, you know, as we've said many times, this trend I think is set to continue.
We have over years done significant amounts of damage.
And, you know, I have to be honest, it is just less attractive for a foreign central bank to hold dollars today.
They need them, they have to transact.
But, like I said, as the world continues to head in the direction we are, chipping away at the dollar's dominance, there will be a time when that's happened.
And listen, We're sometimes paid to be sensationalists, but this is the history of currencies, right?
The history of currency is devaluation and decimation.
The average length one nation ever holds global reserve currency status is 90 years.
From the Spanish to the Dutch to the British to the Americans.
Philip Patrick, where do people go?
I want them to have full access to you, particularly in times of turbulence.
It's always, we saw this in the Treasury Department.
That's why Scott Besson's been such a godsend.
Let's face it, he's been such a safe pair of hands.
I couldn't be prouder of the guy.
And remember, he was one of the big voices that said, hey, look, if we're going to get real here, let's think about a naval blockade, let's have a forcing function to.
Flush out the Chinese and see where they stand on this.
Philip, I want people to get access to you.
You are a safe pair of hands in times of turbulence.
Neil, I want to put, we're going to go to break and we'll come back and get the whole story from you on the other side.
But I want to put people kind of in the West Wing and what you guys do that cover us for Real America's Voice.
Upper Press and Lower Press.
You and I were texting.
There was a little bit of confusion who was going to be in this meeting.
Some of the foreign press had some names that might not be correct.
We know David Perdue is in there with the president.
But you say, hey, I went to Lower Press to check.
Tell the audience.
We've got about two minutes here.
When you're doing your job during the day, you and Brian Glenn and the other folks we have there on a day to day basis, upper press versus lower press, what does that mean and why is that important for the audience?
But avail yourself to talking to Philip Patrick and his team over at Virtual.
break back to the white house with neil mccabe in a moment
here's your host stephen k van take it please Please take advantage of this offer you have from the Tax Network people to figure out what your IRS position is right now, okay?
Because don't believe the rumors he's going to get rid of income taxes, and that's aspirational, and that there are not enough people who are IRS, so they're not going to look at your return.
So you don't have to file, or you can file late.
That's not going to happen.
So, Tax Network USA, TNUSA.com, go take care of that.
All family pharmacies also, because of potential supply chain problems they're already seeing because of this.
Remember, the Chinese Communist Party controls 100% of active pharmaceutical ingredients.
Remember that from our pandemic days, going through that, what's real?
Even the generics and others made in India, all the active pharmaceutical ingredients all come from the Chinese Communist Party from China.
So make sure that you're on top of this.
How do you do it?
Go to All Family Pharmacy.
Michael Kunzler set up this company just for this online pharmaceutical.
You have doctors, physicians, all of it.
That go through with you and make sure you get the medicines and the drugs you need.
AllFamilyPharmacy.com Bannon30.
There's an offer.
Certain things are 30% off, including this whole new biohacking peptides, but talk to their consultants.
Do it today.
You don't have your medical freedom until you have the freedom of not having to go to one of these big drugstore chains.
So, this is another alternative, and they're giving you 30% off.
So, go check it out today.
AllFamilyPharmacy.com, promo code Bannon.
Also, Chapter, another free consultation.
On your Medicare.
Nothing could be more mind numbingly complicated than these Medicare programs.
It's actually set up that way.
But Chapter is a data driven company that breaks a problem.
Just call 845 War Room.
Special number just for you.
845 War Room.
I think they told me the average savings for a War Room posse member is like $1,100.
Neil McCabe, the biggest story in the world is the blockade.
I think they're saying after early reports trying to mock the Navy and mock Trump and he's off the rails and et cetera, et cetera.
I think five ships were kind of notified and five ships turned it back around.
So, or five or five of a couple of those had OFAC warnings.
This is the official kind of treasury when you're sanctioned and you're not supposed to move kind of the gray fleet.
In my understanding, that our great ally UAE filled them up in, let's say they were filled up in Arab ports, not in Persian ports, and they're trying to head to the high seas when they got.
Turned around your sense of how it's going as a former military person, also the vibe in the White House about this as we go into the second day of the blockade, sir.
Yeah, the White House is very confident about the way things are going.
They feel like they've flipped the script.
There is some talk that Pakistan wants to reboot negotiations, and there hasn't been any final word on that.
But the president did say that he wouldn't be surprised if negotiations started up again.
Certainly, Vance said that the Iranians had moved towards the administration in their position.
The administration has proposed a 20 year ban on their nuclear program.
The Iranians are at five, and so that's basically.
Our gap right now, but as for the blockade, I've seen reports that it was six ships around that have been turned around, and that's all been done you know, bridge to bridge on channel 16.
There's been no boardings, there's been you know, no hostility, no shots across the bow.
Everybody's sort of playing it calm and loose.
And that brigade that blockade is very effective, and it's especially effective when you consider that the Iranians send out about two million barrels of oil a day through the straits.
And 90% of that is going to go to China.
And the other big customers of that oil is going to be India and to a lesser extent, Indonesia.
Not so much for the use of Indonesia, but because Indonesia has tremendous, their state oil company, Patamina, they have tremendous storage and refinery facilities there.
And then that oil can be shipped out to other places or then further on to Northeast Asia, Steve.
So you bring up interesting, you know, David Zier was all over it.
We just were so jammed yesterday.
We couldn't cut to it, but David Zier was at the Pentagon, and Zier, who's got a great nose for news over there and what's important, was saying, Hey, look, this Indonesia thing is just not some, you know, because they all have these type of honorary meetings that the heads of the military go, they shake hands, they review some troops, have a cup of coffee, and get some photo op.
This was not that.
They were actually signing an MOU.
People should understand if you've got the Strait of Hormuz where all the oil and natural gas in the Persian Gulf comes out, and you've got the The gates of fire down there by the Houthis in what the Gulf of Aden, I think, leading into the Red Sea.
You have the Strait of Malacca, which all of it from the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea, and before you get to the Persian Gulf and before you get to the Red Sea, you've got that, and everything going to China, everything going to East Asia, everything going to Japan, Taiwan has to go through Malacca.
That borders Indonesia.
So this was actually very strategic yesterday, and I think it shows how.
The team of Rubio and Hegseth and Besant and the president are thinking strategically because all of a sudden we've never really been that close militarily to Indonesia, although Indonesia from the 60s has a great hatred of the Chinese Communist Party, given what happened in Indonesia when Mao Zedong was trying to flip Indonesia and turn it into a totally Marxist country.
How big a deal is this, Neil?
This MOU that looks like it could be some sort of potential partnership between Indonesia and the United States.
It looks like, with your eye on the Straits of Malacca, sir.
Post Sukarno, who of course was one of the leaders of the Third World Movement, post Sukarno, of the institutions inside Indonesia, the Indonesian military has been extremely close to the American military.
They may participate in maybe 100, 150 different training exercises and events with the U.S. military every year.
You always have the Indonesian generals and officers who are training here in the U.S., and so it's a very close relationship.
So, what Hegseth was doing yesterday was just amping that up.
And so, there's going to be enhanced cooperation for special operations.
There's going to be enhanced training.
But most importantly, there was a letter of intent which would grant the United States overflight permission to go over Indonesian territory with our airframes.
And that is highly significant because, you know, Indonesia is very jealous of its sovereignty, Steve.
But they're in the process of basically allowing the United States to overfly their country.
And I think that's really the kicker that came out of that meeting yesterday, Steve.
Mao Tse Tung realized, and remember, there's no love lost between the Chinese and the Vietnamese.
There was less love lost between Chinese and the Indonesians.
But Mao realized for his revolution really to take, to get traction, he had to export it to the countries of Southeast Asia down.
And Indonesia is when he always had the target, had very bloody, many years of bloody confrontation with the Chinese.
So there's no love.
That military has no love for the Chinese Communist Party and kind of knows them, I think, as the butchers they are, right?
Probably better than anybody.
Neil, We're talking about the inside the wire issues.
I know that you, particularly when you were there as Ed Martin's wingman, worked on a lot of election integrity, particularly when you guys were over when Ed, before the confirmation issue, over as the U.S. Attorney in D.C., and also as Ed came back and head of weaponization in DOJ.
I think we got a clip.
Let's go and play that, and we'll bring Neil McCabe in.
So Donald Trump can't get past his 2020 election loss now, with less than seven months to go until the midterms, if you can believe it.
Some of the same people who spread election denial conspiracies in 2020 are currently in place to oversee election security and infrastructure with the power to.
Intervene or interfere.
As the director of the nonpartisan campaign Legal Center tells ProPublica, quote, the election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government and they are working together toward a shared goal of reshaping elections.
As you know, you know, we wanted to really take a deep look at what was happening inside the federal government.
A lot of these guardrails, they held in 2020.
They really bent, they bent almost to the breaking point.
But Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, they failed.
But in the last year or so, the Trump administration has had a lot of time and a lot of opportunity to try to, you know, overhaul the federal system to get ready for the midterms.
And we wanted to take a very deep look behind the scenes to see what was happening as they get ready for the midterms.
Now, one of those key teams, as you mentioned, is a group of people at the Department of Homeland Security.
They've called themselves in the past Team America internally.
And some of their members come out of an Group called the Election Integrity Network, which is led by a lawyer who tried to help overturn the 2020 election.
Well, so, you know, the Constitution dictates that states actually, you know, run elections.
And one of the things we found as we looked at how the Trump administration was changing things behind the scenes was that a lot of both Republican state officials as well as Democratic state officials are really trying to stand up counter efforts by the Trump administration to impose their way of running elections on them.
You know, that can be Republican officials refusing, To hand over voter rolls, which the Trump administration has sued them for.
That can be Democratic state secretaries of states hiring more lawyers to try and fight what they believe is going to be a coming attempt to overturn potential results in the midterms.
The Constitution is very clear that states have the responsibility to run their elections.
What the federal government is doing, this administration is doing, is tearing apart that infrastructure because they want to influence and intimidate us into compliance with what they think is the appropriate thing to do.
You know, so one thing that the Trump administration has really tried to do is they released a new executive order at the end of last month, which would have a, which would create sort of a master list of sorts of who could be eligible to vote.
You know, there's a lot of worries about, you know, what the Trump administration might do to control about who could show up at the polls, who would be able to do this.
There's talk of ICE agents or other people showing up at the polls.
The Trump administration has said that the election is going to be free and fair.
That's what they told us.
But as we were looking behind the scenes, we found a lot of things that really broke down the old guardrails that prevented partisan influence on elections.
A really key moment that we found was when the Trump White House hired this lawyer named Kurt Olson.
Kurt Olson tried to help Trump overturn the 20 election in court, and Trump has hired him to reinvestigate the results of that election.
Around the end of this year, Kurt Olson flew down to Georgia ahead of the raid to seize Georgia election materials.
And Olson met with the special agent in charge, the FBI special agent in charge there, and said, I have this report.
We've got to go and try and get these ballots.
But the special agent in charge did not.
You know, go along with exactly what he wanted and was eventually asked to retire.
Now, that's really a key moment.
You know, back after Watergate, we established norms, we established rules that tried to prevent the White House from leaning on law enforcement.
And, you know, this seems to be a possible instance where that guardrail has broken down and is really an indication of what might be happening in the future as we get closer to the midterms.
Well, first of all, Kurt Olson is a great, great patriot, and it's absolutely crazy to me.
That an FBI agent would decide on his own that he wasn't going to follow orders.
But that tells you how deeply ingrained this sort of election twist, this election stolen, or whatever you want to call it.
I think that Todd Blanch, as the acting attorney general, is really sending out signals that he's more open to what you might consider MAGA agenda items, certainly with the FACE Act report that came out yesterday.
You know, it's my experience that when I was inside Maine Justice, members of Todd Blanch's staff, not Todd Blanch himself, but members of his staff, were hostile to any idea of reopening 2020 or looking into 2020.
There was one attorney there, a retired JAG officer, and he was an elected official who was then working for Maine Justice.
And he was told at the end of December that he was going to be transferred to a mail room somewhere, and he decided to just resign.
But that guy was in the midst of signing a contract for forensic examination of that Fulton County ballots.
My first of many reprimands at DOJ was when I was working with this man to try to figure out how to get those Fulton County ballots.
But I think now there's a sort of a different mood over there at Maine Justice.
And I have every confidence that Blanche and his staff, and frankly, he has a lot of new staff, a lot of staff that he had was handed to him by the transition team.
I think there's no doubt, Neil, there's been a sea change.
And I'm not saying it was because of this person or that, but there's definitely a sea change at Maine Justice.
And you're right.
When I get more time, I'm going to do that and get some of the folks at Danbury I was in prison with because of this fate about these incredible people that pray the rosary in front of these abortion centers.
This report the DOJ put out is shocking about how the Biden administration, who's supposed to be a good Catholic, went out of their way, Neil, to torment these people and double their sentences.
These men in this prison were absolutely in a place that was a little short of saints.
These men were holy men.
I mean, they were saints.
They had no money, no resources, but the way they carried themselves, the way you could see the spiritual energy coming out of them, how centered their beings were, was just inspirational to everybody.
And these people had the longest terms for literally playing the rosary is outrageous.
So, Maine Justice, I agree with you.
I think you're seeing a sea change.
One of the things I think you're seeing a sea change, Neil. Is on voter integrity and election.
What happened in 2020?
This is all part of that conspiracy.
John Salm was on this morning.
It's got to be dealt with.
We're not going to sweep it under the rug.
And people are demanding more and more.
But also going forward, particularly this fall, Neil, as you know, this is going to be hotly contested.
And I don't care if the left likes hearing it or not, we're not going to have another election stolen by illegal alien voters.
And if ICE has got to be at the polling place, then ICE is going to be at the polling place.
And Todd Blanch, the acting attorney general, already said that.
Neil, we got to bounce.
Where do people go to get your.
Content, particularly overnight.
There's a lot happening, particularly with the blockade, everything that's happening with the Chinese Communist Party in this war.
Can we put up one more time in Hanover County on everybody, war room posse, even if you're not part of the door knockers, once you're there and to meet these incredible people that have gone door to door with what we call voter contact?
In this modern age, there's nothing more powerful.
Obama showed you that in the primary against Hillary Clinton when he took her out, Obama showed you that when he won.
The first time, second time, not so much.
He had become already totally corrupted.
Not that he wasn't corrupted before, but they did have a massive grassroots effort.
You see this from Mamdani.
The difference in modern politics is voter contact from people who actually believe what they're knocking on the door for.
It's just absolutely, absolutely the most powerful thing.
And these folks in Virginia have taken their own time in a very long 45 days because the Democrats always want to stretch it out.
And we know, I don't know, $60, $70, $80 million of TV ads every second of television.
All the white noise just to bombard it, but these amazing Patriots have stood up.
And so this Sunday from 4 to 7, we want to have a thank you.
We're going to have food, lots of good speakers, a lot of camaraderie, interaction, get to know each other, and get ready.
Take a breath at the end of early voting and get ready for Tuesday game day when folks have to deliver in the Commonwealth.
Or the 2026 midterms could be a very tough uphill struggle.
Going to leave you with Natasha Owens.
We're going to be back in the morning.
Actually, it looks like I'm back in D.C. for a reason.
May have a meeting tomorrow.
If that's the case, we don't know.
We're trying to figure it all out.
That will be Natalie and Joe Allen, and I'll be back for the afternoon.
If I don't have the meeting in the morning, I'll be here.
And Harnwell and Joe will be taking over in the afternoon.
We'll figure it all out.
Just join us in the morning.
Worst case, I'll call in from my meeting.
Back here at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow morning when you'll be back.