All Episodes Plain Text
April 22, 2026 - Bannon's War Room
48:56
Episode 5319: Taking Down The SPLC

Stephen K. Bass, Tyler O'Neill, and Blake Neff dismantle the Southern Poverty Law Center following its DOJ indictment for an 11-count wire fraud scheme involving paid informants and shell companies that funneled over $70,000 to white supremacists. While Jim Rickards and Jack Posobic analyze the Strait of Hormuz blockade as a strategic choke point forcing China's hand in the Iran conflict, the core narrative exposes how the SPLC weaponized exaggerated hate threats to solicit donations, suggesting their influence relies on manufactured fear rather than genuine legal authority. [Automatically generated summary]

Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Participants
Main
j
jack posobiec
r 11:05
j
james rickards
06:12
s
steve bannon
r 14:58
Appearances
b
blake neff
04:12
b
brendan ballou
01:11
c
chris hoar
01:18
m
michael steele
01:25
t
tyler oneil
04:35
Clips
j
jake tapper
cnn 00:09
s
symone sanders-townsend
msnow 00:25
|

Speaker Time Text
Indictment Funding And Fake Flags 00:14:47
steve bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies, because we're going to medieval on these people.
You're just not going to free shot all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
It's going to happen.
jake tapper
And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
MAGA Media.
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
steve bannon
Ask yourself.
What is my task and what is my purpose?
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
unidentified
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bass.
steve bannon
Okay, Wednesday, 22 April, year of valor 2026.
Yesterday, with everything going on, one of the most important items, and we played this in the six o'clock hours, able to play the press conference, was the Southern Poverty Law Center.
One, this is a demonic organization, but number two, it also shows you that there's been a pivot and we are going on offense because it's the railhead of a lot of darkness.
We've got a short cold open.
Let's go and play it.
I've got Tyler O'Neill from the Daily Signal and Blake Neff from the Charlie Kirk. Show.
The co host is going to join me here momentarily with Pasobic.
Let's go ahead and play the cold.
symone sanders-townsend
Lines of that.
I mean, right before the show just started, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a 55 year old civil rights organization, was just indicted by this Department of Justice over alleged use of paid informants and extremist groups.
It was an 11 count indictment.
Basically, they were indicted, I guess, for paying informants to infiltrate groups like the KKK.
Are we not supposed to pay the informants?
Help me understand what's going on here.
brendan ballou
Yeah, it's not entirely clear because, you know, in order to have a wire fraud investigation or a wire fraud indictment, you actually need a false statement.
It's not obvious to me what the false statement is here.
It seems like they're above board and paying these informants.
Even if they were unsavory characters, that's how you get information.
You know, the main thing that the Department of Justice benefited from in bringing this case is that they were able to do so in the Middle District of Alabama, you know, where you were able to get a friendly grand jury.
When you see similar kinds of investigations and prosecutions happening in D.C., here, in the Eastern District of Virginia, They've really struggled.
And so I think this is one of the rare cases where one of these political prosecutions might have some legs, unfortunately.
unidentified
It is.
michael steele
The side of racists and people who are undermining the very principles of the country.
And they have been from the very beginning because that's where Donald Trump has always nurtured himself.
Bottom line.
Here's the thing, though.
While all that's happening, where they're bringing all these charges, you have this government claiming, as it did coming in, as it left the last time, coming in this time, about the weaponization, how Joe Biden had weaponized the government against.
Those pole little Republicans out there, those pole, pole Republicans who got weaponized by all these bad, bad Democrats.
And then you had, you know, what might have been if Kamala Harris had gotten elected, oh, there'd been more weaponization.
Well, the DOJ released a weaponization report.
And that report, reported by The Atlantic, says the weaponization report takes from the form of a classic Trump two step.
First, claim that normal law enforcement work, when directed against you or your friends, is illegitimate.
Then use that supposed illegitimacy as justification for your own revenge.
We've seen this before.
The bulk of the 800 page document consists of anodyne emails among career attorneys.
That is, people who serve across multiple administrations, which you know them very well, of both parties, which it spins into an unsubstantiated narrative of bias.
That's where we end up.
800 pages that tell us that this was a load of crap by the Trump administration.
steve bannon
Tonya, Tonya, Tonya, Tonya.
Tyler O'Neill, you've written a great piece of Daily Signal.
Talk to me about it because they're trying to dismiss it all last night and then this morning.
Of this, really, it's starting to hold the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a totally demonic organization, accountable, sir.
tyler oneil
Yeah, no, hearing MS Now come out and say that there's no smoke, that there's no fire to this smoke, is hilarious.
I mean, they clearly haven't actually read the indictment because the indictment clearly states that there were false statements, that the SPLC created show companies through which to fund these white supremacists.
So, yes, perhaps there isn't anything technically illegal.
There's something very, very stinky about going to your donors and saying, oh, we're fighting.
Hate were fighting white supremacy and then funding the KKK under the table.
I mean, some of these claims, and you know, maybe that overall thing is not illegal, but what is illegal is setting up the shell companies to hide it and then conspiring to hide it further, which is another charge in the indictment.
And the other thing is, even if it isn't illegal, it still stinks to high heaven.
I mean, the SPLC was funding and directing one of the leaders of the Charlottesville.
White nationalist activity.
I mean, this is like talk about funding and fake false flags here.
The SPLC funded this person to bring more people to the white nationalist side on Charlottesville.
You know, I think of how much crap President Trump got for saying there were fine people on both sides.
Both sides, by the way, of the argument about removing statues of Robert E. Lee, that's what he was talking about.
But here, you know, we have the SPLC funding one particular side, and it's not the side.
That they claim to be supporting.
steve bannon
Tyler, hang on.
I want everybody to read the piece that Tyler O'Neill's got about the Daily Signal.
Blake, let me bring you in.
Blake Neff, explain to the audience exactly what we are talking about.
I say it's demonic.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, and Tyler goes into the specifics of what's in the indictment of what they did.
Why is that so shocking to people?
What is the Southern Poverty Law Center holding itself out to be, and what really are they?
blake neff
Well, I would definitely contest that it's shocking.
I don't think any of us who followed it a long time think that it is.
But of course, the SPLC, they have presented themselves as a very different organization for a very long time.
Honestly, it doesn't hurt to go back all the way to the start.
They were founded in 1970 or 71.
They have this name that's clearly intended to invoke other more famous civil rights organizations the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC.
Oh, here's the SPLC.
Sounds very similar.
They've founded by Morris Dees, a master of direct mail.
So the SPLC's entire business model has been to send hysterical letters to left wing people in their homes and say, Hate's on the rise.
The Klan is coming back.
There's national socialists on the march.
White nationalists on the march.
They're going to take over.
They're going to do horrible atrocities.
Please send us your money to track them.
And obviously, during the Trump years, especially, it was just a bonanza for them.
There's a ton of hysteric people on the left ready to pony up a ton of money.
And what's remarkable is the way that this indictment shows that they were sort of playing both sides of it.
I think my favorite part of the indictment, they have a whole list of their secret informants, and one of them is F 30.
And it describes F 30 led the National Socialist Party of America, was a former director of a faction of the Aryan nations, was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
And the SPLC secretly was paying this person at least $70,000.
While they had a page on their website in their extremist file, this is one of the people we're fighting against.
Please donate money to us so we can fight this person when they were paying him the entire time.
And of course, the SPLC is shady in a million other ways.
In 2018 or 2019, Morris Dees had to step down because people brought sexual misconduct claims against him.
And they promised, oh, we're going to bring in a big team, we're going to investigate this, we're going to release a big report.
Nothing has ever been mentioned about that since then.
There's a lot of former SPLC staff who've said this organization is shady.
So, whatever happens with this indictment, I think the golden opportunity to look at every single thing that goes on in this organization, you will find a lot of things that stink and look very, very bad.
steve bannon
Well, I also think there's a lot of whistleblowers, a lot of people that maybe went down there, think it was going to, or went there and thought it was going to be altruistic on the left and turned out it's just a group of scumbags.
But just for clarity, Is the center of gravity of the indictment basically saying, because every night on MSNBC, hate is on the rise, white nationalism is on the rise, white Christian nationalism is on the rise.
It's because in their business model, they wanted to make sure they juiced it to make sure it was on the rise.
And that's why they're funding guys in the KKK, guys in the American Nazi Party, guys in these white nationalist organizations to basically do that so they've got something to raise money off of?
blake neff
I think there's a bit of that for sure.
There's also this bit.
I mean, you see a defense, USA Today published an article saying they used this, they were paying informants.
That's a well known tactic of federal law enforcement.
Well, the SPLC is not a federal law enforcement organization, they're a nonprofit.
In the indictment, we see someone they were paying, someone they paid over a million dollars, in fact.
They apparently paid him to apparently commit a crime.
He stole many boxes of documents from a building owned by one of these groups.
And then supplied them to the SPLC.
So it's a mixture of things where we also see them described as telling someone what to post before the Unite the Right rally.
It appears this person was making extremist statements with the SPLC's knowledge, perhaps their approval or suggestion.
And they were also acting like this quasi law enforcement organization, which so many groups on the left have gotten away with, and the SPLC got away with.
Until the first Trump administration, we had this official relationship between the SPLC and the FBI.
They would bring them in.
To train their agents in fighting extremism.
Obviously, the real purpose of this is it allows this radical left wing group to define what an extremist group is.
And they're always going to define it.
So the right is extreme, the left is not extreme.
They've always had massively more hate groups on the right on any of their trackers than on the left.
A very sinister organization in that regard.
I think a very fair way to characterize the SPLC is they themselves are America's leading hate group.
Because their entire business model is based on ginning up hatred against other people.
steve bannon
Tyler, your observations on this, sir.
tyler oneil
Yeah, so I think Blake hit on a lot of important points.
The only real reason I say that this is shocking is because I did not expect to see the Southern Poverty Law Center itself cop to funding the KKK and the Aryan nations.
I mean, this is, you know, you would not expect them ever to admit this.
And yet, but the SPLC, you know, I've covered for years, I wrote the book.
Making hate pay the corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And I've long focused on how the SPLC exaggerates hate.
They go to their donors and say that they're fighting hate.
And then when it turns out that America actually isn't that hateful, they have to meet that artificial demand that they've created.
So they have to increase the supply.
And for a long time, the most obvious way they increased that supply was by demonizing conservative and Christian groups.
And this was a weapon that they could use not only to say, hey, you need to give us more money.
But also to silence people, also to bully people, also to terrify people and get companies to debank them, get social media platforms to de boost them.
And then now we're seeing that not only did they do that, which is egregious and evil and quite frankly fits every definition of defamation in my book, but also they were funding the very people that they put up as extremists on their website.
And then, of course, the Biden administration.
Comes in immediately.
I mean, Margaret Wong was bragging about how many different agencies brought in the SBLC to train them on the domestic terrorism threat.
And then later, we hear that DOJ prosecutors were even studying with members of the SPLC.
And of course, there's that anti Catholic memo that the FBI's Richmond office put out directly citing the SPLC.
So if you want to find anything when it comes to the weaponization of government, the demonization of conservatives, the worst excesses of the left, the Southern Poverty Law Center is ground zero.
And there are so many more investigations.
That should come of this.
And I'm still hoping that one of these defamation lawsuits will finally open the books and reveal exactly how corrupt their whole hate map really is.
steve bannon
Tyler, where do people get the book?
Where do they get your writings at the Daily Signal?
And how do they follow you on social media?
tyler oneil
Thanks.
Yeah, you can follow me at Tyler2, the number two O'Neill on X is where I'm most prolific.
But I'm also on Truth Social, also on some other platforms.
And you can find the book.
Making Hate Pay, The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center on Amazon and other places, and The Woke to Puss, The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government, which builds on that and talks about the SPLC's impact in the Biden administration.
Also on Amazon, I recorded the audio of it myself, but it's out there.
Just search Woke to Puss, Woke Octopus.
steve bannon
Blake Neff, you follow us every day.
Where do people go on social media to track you down, sir?
blake neff
You can find me on X at Blake S. Neff.
And you can watch us, of course, on The Charlie Kirk Show, which we're continuing.
Opening Salvo For More Charges 00:08:17
blake neff
We're carrying on his legacy as best we can.
steve bannon
And you follow us every day right here in Royal America's voice.
Blake, fantastic job.
unidentified
Tyler, unbelievable.
steve bannon
Okay, the president of these United States, even as we speak, is meeting with the head of the IRS.
About changing the IRS, et cetera.
But he's also saying, Where's my money?
These deficits can't get too big.
866 513 5516.
Write this down.
866 513 5516, Tax Network USA.
You get a free consultation, folks, because of Cameron Kinsey from the first administration, from Trump 45, who's over there now looking after the war imposter.
You get a free consultation.
Call that number, 866 513 5516.
Even if tax days, if you haven't filed or if you got issues, you got a letter, don't let it sit there.
It's only going to metastasize and don't believe all the hype that President Trump's doing with taxes.
That's an aspiration.
That's many decades away, reality.
And don't think because there's been cuts, et cetera, that they're not going to get to you.
The IRS is going to come and they're going to get their money.
What they think they're owed, you need to get somebody on your side to tell you what you actually owe and prepare to fight for it because there's a big gap, I'm sure.
866 513.
Let me get this right.
866 513 5516.
Jack Posovic, I got you doing dual duty today.
Jim Rickers is going to join us in a moment.
We're going to talk about geopolitics in our strategy over in the war in Iran.
But you know the Southern Poverty Law Center very well, sir.
And Blake Neff and Tyler had it both right.
Folks, this is an opening salvo.
As Todd Blanch said, and as Kash Patel said, And thank God for the U.S. attorneys down in Alabama that did this, did the work, and brought it.
This is just an opening salvo.
There are a whole lot more.
They're going to find out a lot more indictments, a lot more of these demons going to prison.
Jack Basovic, thoughts, sir?
jack posobiec
Well, well, well, Steve, I suppose you could say today is a day that we're going to be focusing on enemies, foreign and domestic.
And so when we look at those extremists like the SPLC, we need to start asking a few questions here.
Because when I see that there was $270,000 that was paid to a leader of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, not someone, by the way, who is some podunk, oh, I'm just giving some reports.
No, Steve.
That's not the kind of money that you give to someone who's writing reports, all right.
And I'm saying this as a guy who knows a couple things or two about running intelligence operations.
That is for tasks.
There was tasking that was given to these informants, there was tasking that they were used for, by the way.
And Blake mentioned the one earlier here.
There was a leader of the Aryan nation they had up in an extremist file that they were raising money off of his extremist profile while they were paying him.
So that's fraud.
That is exact wire fraud right there, direct.
Take it literally to the bank in this case.
There's also money laundering issues here because we see all these shell companies, and that's going to be an issue for the Treasury Department to have to go and look at when it comes to fines.
But, Steve, we need to dig in a little deeper here.
This means every night when you go up on MSNBC and they say, MSNOW, oh, extremism is on the rise, extremism on the rise.
Well, who was actually behind that extremism on the rise?
It was the SPLC.
steve bannon
In the Trump movement, the extremism, this is because we united working class Hispanics, African Americans.
They had to gin it up.
That's what this whole thing's about.
And that's why there are many more indictments going to come.
Let me play.
We didn't play the end of that clip about the Catholics in abortion.
Let's go in and play this.
brendan ballou
You know, this is a real problem.
There are, I believe, over 200 attacks of arson against abortion clinics over 50 years.
That averages one to about one every three months.
You know, and so this wasn't just an attack on the general approach of the Department of Justice, it was an attack.
On a specific law and a specific law intended to protect women.
So that's that report specifically, but you're exactly right about the general thing.
You know, the strategy here is to say, look, the last guys were overtly political and going after our enemies, and we're going to go after our enemies too.
And they're trying to legitimize that, especially in the advance of elections.
steve bannon
The Southern Poverty Law Center did all the initial analysis.
Now we know it was all cooked to go on the abortion.
The holiest guys I've ever met happened to be in prison with me that were sent there for praying the rosary in front of these abortion clinics.
Also, the parish that my parents helped start, that is a Latin Mass, a Tridentine Catholic right church, is what the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
These were extremists.
These are white nationalist extremists, the most humble.
Folks in the world, every family with eight and nine kids, and two or three of them in the Army or the Marine Corps or the Navy, just most patriotic, the salt of the earth.
Jack, you see right there, this is a demonic organization.
And this is just the first of many investigations to indict them all, indict their donors, indict all of it, Jack Vasobic.
jack posobiec
And Steve, there's going to be two pieces of that because over on Human Events Daily today, we're going to be going through chapter and verse and naming the board of directors.
Of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And I'll give this out for the War Room audience because I saw that the amazing first hour here, the energy there was so phenomenal.
And I just point out that wouldn't it be surprising to the War Room audience to find out that there is a member, one of the co founders of Bain Capital is currently on the board of directors of the SPLC.
Now, how does that make Bain Capital?
Wait a minute, is that Mitt Romney?
Wait a minute, Mitt Romney's front.
Well, hold on a second.
What's going on?
I thought that was Republican, conservative, out of Boston.
I thought that was.
Capitalism, what's going on here?
That's Wall Street.
I don't understand.
So, we're going to be going through and understanding how all the money flowed here because there's going to be a lot of problems about who knew what when.
But, Steve, I want to go back and I want to kind of take a page.
You know, we don't have Darren Beatty right now because he's serving, right?
He's serving the country and go and look at what he would talk about.
He would talk about how organizations like the SPLC during the Biden regime and during the Uniparty were used as Cutouts for the intelligence agencies.
When we talk about this relationship between the FBI, the previous FBI, right, and the SPLC, we really need to start asking questions.
Do we really think, Steve, that they just found out about these informants today?
Or was this something that was done at the behest of the previous FBI so that they could launch these organizations, so they could stage these things?
And oh, by the way, then you have Chris Wray going up in front of Congress and saying, wait a minute, these guys aren't on the federal payroll.
We don't have any informants in there at all.
And he can do so with a straight face because they're not federal informants.
They're SPLC informants working hand in glove with the feds.
That's what it is.
This is a cutout operation.
steve bannon
So, Real America's Voice, you got the worm in the morning, then you got the Charlie Kirk show.
Blake Neff, one of the experts in this area, and then you got Poso, the expert.
So, you're going to get five hours in this Southern Poverty Law Center, which is the key that picks the locks so much.
That's why I'm so glad Todd and Cash are finally on offense.
jack posobiec
One last quick word, if I can, Steve, on this.
It's amazing, though.
You think the left would give him credit for this because, wow, Kash Patel and Tab Blanche, what did they find?
We actually found evidence of systemic racism for once, the real systemic racism, and it was being funded by the SPLC.
steve bannon
Unbelievable.
Criminally, criminally funded.
Jim Rickards, I want to pivot.
Ceasefire Is Just Noise 00:08:40
steve bannon
I want to go because the president's saying now, I think he's extending the ceasefire for a couple of days.
Where in the hell are we, sir, in this war in Iran?
Jim Rickards.
james rickards
Well, Steve, you know, one of the techniques in intelligence analysis, you know, I always say if you had all the information, a high school kid could solve the problem, but intelligence analysts work in a world where you don't have all the information.
So there's certain techniques that you can use.
One of them is separating signal from noise.
A lot of information is coming in, but a lot of it's garbage or can be disinformation, propaganda, or just irrelevant.
But there's something there that's really critical.
And you have to do that in this case.
So just for the benefit of the war room audience, JD Vance's peace mission, or Rykoff and Kushner going to Islamabad, that's noise.
Iran skipping the peace mission, basically not going there, not going to the talks, that's noise.
Iranian threats of retaliation if Trump resumes the bombing is noise.
The ceasefire itself is noise.
Sorry, yeah, sorry, noise.
This is all noise.
There's only one signal that matters.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed, period.
It's been closed for 56 days.
It's going to be closed for the foreseeable future.
We can spend hours talking about why or whom or You know, double blockade, et cetera.
I mean, yeah, those are all important tactical points, but it's closed.
And we all know it's 20% of the world's energy.
The energy in transit, the floating pipeline, I call it, has unloaded.
The last vessel that left the Gulf before the blockade has made it to South Korea or Japan or Malaysia or India, wherever it's going.
There's no more behind it.
You know, the odd vessel here and there that gets, they say, this vessel got out.
Yeah, and it got turned around by the US Navy, you know, half a day later.
So, That's the reality.
That's the signal.
That's what matters.
And you're talking about shutting down large parts of the industrialized economy.
So, yeah, we can talk about the war in Pakistan.
But hang on.
It's closed.
steve bannon
Your thing about the signal, it's closed by a bunch of pirates who don't even report to Tehran on the Persian side or the Iran side of the strait.
It's also closed by our magnificent United States Navy that's out in the Gulf of Oman in the North Arabian Sea.
That is closing except to people that we want to go through.
Which of those two closures are the most?
I mean, how do you get some sort of rapprochement between those two closures, sir?
james rickards
Well, the first thing I would say is it doesn't, great question.
I would say it doesn't matter.
Closed is closed.
So let's start there.
Having said that, Trump has said even if Iran were to reopen the strait, which they're not, the U.S. Navy would continue to interdict and seize vessels coming from Iranian ports, Iranian cargoes, Iranian cargoes going to China, et cetera, would do that anyway, which Raises the question Does Trump want the straight close?
That's the thing.
Everyone's like, well, we're, you know, tip for tap with Iran.
We have to be there also.
Yeah, the Navy's there.
Trump may want the straight close because it basically gives Russia and the United States a duopoly on global energy supplies.
steve bannon
Okay, let's take a short commercial break.
We're going to come back.
We had Jim Rickards with us.
Jack Basobic is also going to stick around, a naval intelligence officer.
Rickardswarroom.com.
That's a landing page you can go to get access to Jim Rickards.
Newsletter, Strategic Intelligence.
It's based upon predictive analytics.
That's why Jim has been kind of legendary of how right he's been on so many different topics.
It's what CEOs and chairmen, what we call the C suite throughout the world, just not the United States, read every month.
Now you've got access to it.
And he throws in a free book, Money GPT, which will keep you up at night about fiat currency.
unidentified
And here's your host, Stephen K. Bath.
steve bannon
So, Jim Rickertz, we've been making the case that the two principles here are the Chinese Communist Party and the United States of America.
And Xi actually said something for the first time.
He said, Hey, we need normal rules of the road.
We need free navigation.
We got to open that thing up because they're getting choked down right now.
Isn't the way for us to end it?
Does President Trump just deal directly with Xi and say, Hey, look, we don't need to get your product?
Because as Postman and I have been talking on the show, and we talked to you about it a week ago, there's not.
Just simply not anybody to get in the room with.
There's nobody really getting in the room with now because we kind of shattered their chain of command that can make a deal and execute on a deal.
And particularly down in Hormuz, I'm of the opinion, having been down there as a naval officer, that's a group of just pirates that don't feel they report to Tehran, and particularly now, and they're making real cash money.
And they're like, screw the Revolutionary Guard.
We got a good deal here, and screw the Americans, sir.
james rickards
Well, Steve, I agree with you that the Chinese Communist Party is very powerful in the United States, more on the Democratic side.
But, you know, I think they've got their tentacles everywhere.
And I agree with that.
And I think that a dialogue between Trump and Xi would be highly constructive.
So all in favor of that and talking.
But I really question, and sort of to your point, you know, Trump says the Iranian leadership is fractured.
I'm not sure what that means.
The idea that it's at this point a little bit decentralized, that the Guard Corps go their own way, the domestic politicians, Parliament speaker, et cetera, may disagree with that.
They get ignored.
And the mosaic defense, where each battalion commander, brigade commander can do its own thing.
That's all true, but that doesn't mean that Iran's impotent.
It means that they're working off a different model of command and control.
But they had 30,000 missiles.
We probably launched 10,000.
We probably disabled another 10,000, but they still have 10,000 left.
They're making drones in there.
Well, they've got factories underground, but you can make them in basements and garages.
I don't see Iran.
Being out of this fight at all.
They can't launch a missile at the United States, but they can really up the ante in the Persian Gulf.
So the ceasefire has been extended.
That's a good thing.
But for how long?
Again, I come back to, I'm sounding like a broken record, but the straits are closed, period.
And until that's changed, and I don't see it changing, you know, and I talked about shutting down industrial economies, yes.
But again, the nitrates, fertilizer, it's planting season.
And, you know, in poor areas, people are going to starve over this.
unidentified
Hang on.
steve bannon
And I'm going to get Pasobic here in a second.
Hang on.
unidentified
Hang on.
steve bannon
You're implying, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're implying that it shut down.
And until that part of it's over, are you implying that President Trump's got to send the Navy and the Marine Corps and others in strategic bombing and dig them out?
Whoever is controlling the Strait of Hormuz from those cliffs, right down near Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, that you're just going to have to, at some point in time, if you want to open it, you just got to go dig them out?
james rickards
I think that's the only way to do it.
Now, I'm not predicting that that's going to happen.
I don't think it will, but I do agree that that's the only way to do it.
You know, the bombing campaign, you know, I think Hagseth and Trump should study the seizure of Sarajevo in 1992 and 93.
The city, I've been there, it's a long river valley, it's kind of strung out, beautiful old city, but surrounded by hills and mountains.
The Serbian Chetniks controlled the mountains.
The people in Sarajevo were defenseless.
There was no food, they didn't get any weapons.
They put up a kind of defense, innocent people being shot in the streets on their way to get a cup of coffee or whatever.
Totally besieged.
A little bit of humanitarian relief from the UN, but not much more than that.
But they didn't surrender.
They refused to give up.
They came together.
And by the way, they were Orthodox Catholics and Muslims who didn't really put religion first.
They were Sarajevans.
And in the middle of all that, they actually had continued a beauty contest.
They picked a Miss Sarajevo.
I mean, Bona wrote a song about it.
My point is, When a population comes together and they're united and they view themselves as one person, they can hold out against anything.
That's what Trump has done to Iran.
Trump has united Iran in ways they didn't expect.
Now, yeah, I do think you're going to need boots on the ground, but now we're back to Vietnam.
And again, it's a little bit of a tired analogy, but I think it's a good one.
I say, Rolla, McNamara had Rolling Thunder, that was the bombing campaign.
Blockade Forces At Play 00:10:55
james rickards
Trump looks more like Rolling Blunder.
There's no way out of this except escalation.
steve bannon
Jim, where do people go to the landing page now?
We're going to be back on because obviously you leave us with a quite fascinating conundrum.
Where do people go to get your newsletter?
Because chairman, major investors, CEOs throughout the world read this.
You've got access to it.
The War Room audience has access to it via one of the audience's favorite contributors to the show, Jim Rickards.
Where do they go, sir?
james rickards
Thanks, Steve.
We have a landing page.
It's rickardswarroom.com.
Rickardswarroom.com.
You can subscribe to our flagship newsletter, Strategic Intelligence, which has literally the best predictive analytic track record.
We have a long string of getting things right.
We've got great models that use different inputs and different modeling techniques to do that.
We also have a copy of my book, Money GPT.
And by the way, Steve, I want to shout out your comment the other day, a semaphore about anthropic, Claude, AI not being used in the kill chain.
That is the right way to think about it.
And I have it, there's a chapter in my book.
On nuclear war fighting that goes into that, what happens when you put AI in the kill chain?
You'll go straight to nuclear war.
So, hope people enjoy the book and the newsletter.
steve bannon
I think it's chapter four.
This is what I tell people if you read Money GPT, it's not all about money.
You get a chapter in there at the front that you can't sleep at night.
And you understand why the anthropic guys are saying, hey, maybe we don't want to turn this over to Pete Hegseth quite yet.
Jim Rickards, thank you.
Jim Rickards, RickardsWarroom.com.
You get access to strategic intelligence.
Get up to speed like chairman, CEOs, major hedge fund investors throughout the world.
You got access to it from one of the audience's favorite contributors, Jim Rickards.
Thank you, brother.
unidentified
Thanks.
steve bannon
Jack, that's a fine way to start a Wednesday.
I guess we're going to have to go dig them out.
Let me ask you are Kushner, Witkoff, and JD getting on a plane anytime soon?
Is there anybody really on the other side?
Is there any counterparty we can negotiate with that has any ability to deliver not simply the nuclear part, which I realize is big, but I think there's a lot of different ways of that, but particularly the Strait of Hormuz, where these pirates and brigands got a pretty good thing going?
jack posobiec
Well, Steve, you and I were chatting behind the scenes about this, I think about a week or two ago.
And one of the emerging developments that we've seen, not only publicly, but now we see it here on the ground, is does the new civilian leadership of Iran have control over the IRGC, or is it the other way around?
And what it looks like, the administration is now trying to figure out are we talking to the right people at all?
Because if the people we're talking to don't have the ability to stop the gunfire of these gunboats and these small boats, In the Strait of Hormuz, then guess what?
The negotiations don't matter at all.
So, why would you get on a plane to begin with if they don't have the ability to actually control the IRGC?
But I'll tell you, Steve, there is someone who has control over all of this.
And it's so clear that someone is exactly who I asked President Trump about when I was at the White House last week, right outside the Oval Office.
And that's Xi Jinping.
This is all about the May 14th meeting in Beijing.
Because, Steve, look, you got two forces at play here.
We have the military force, right?
We've seen that, and they've performed just exceptionally.
United States, Navy, et cetera.
And Secretary Hagseth is up there.
But we also have the market force.
The market force of the entire world economy, which flows, its key artery is the Strait of Hormuz.
And where does that head?
Predominantly from Iran to China.
So that's why the blockade is President Trump's strongest card.
That's why the naval blockade has been the best.
Move in this situation because it cuts them off from the revenue.
It cuts the Chinese off from 15 to 20% of their oil supplies.
And that's why they're the ones who are now going to have to come to the table.
And of course, they're going to do it carefully.
They're going to use their proxies in Pakistan.
But ultimately, it gives the president leverage over not just the Iranian regime itself, but also China.
And that's what all of these moves have been about from the start.
When you go back to Venezuela, when you look at Cuba and the delegations that are meeting over there in Havana.
And now you go to the meeting that's coming up with Xi Jinping.
It's all about those leverage points.
steve bannon
How about if you're sitting in Beijing and you see all of a sudden the Indonesians showing up to sign a memorandum of understanding with Pete?
That, yeah, the Americans can go to the Strait of Malacca.
The Strait of Malacca.
You got the Singaporeans down there saying, hey, we may want to jump in here and help out.
You've got, I guess, Monaco, we're talking about now.
Gibraltar, Morocco, we're talking about Gibraltar.
President Trump is going full Admiral Mahan on this, is he not, sir?
jack posobiec
This is full Admiral Mahan.
I've tried to explain this, and you've done such an amazing job here on the war room on human events.
We call it the sea powers versus the land powers.
So the sea powers versus the land powers.
You got the UK, then the United States, and Mahan, of course, even though he was British, he understood the power of the sea and the power of the strategic lines of communication, these key choke points around the world.
This is why, by the way, Greenland is so important and the Panama Canal, which will come up when we talk about that hemispheric defense later.
But President Trump is working to put the United States on that incredibly competitive footing with the entire world.
Where up until now, we've just been handing it off to the Chinese.
We've been handing off all of this to the Chinese.
This is how the British Empire was built.
And by the way, it's how the Dutch Empire was built because they controlled the Strait of Hormuz even before the British.
And so when you look at that, it's the land powers on the other side, right?
China, Russia, Persia, India, right?
These are your land powers.
These are, that's Mackinder, that's the world island.
That's, by the way, what the Ukraine war is about.
And of course, we've looked at all of this.
That's Russia trying to expand.
Their natural borders with Europe, put themselves in a better position, but also to give themselves access to the sea, Odessa, the port there, which we've talked about at length.
President Trump gets this.
The war room has talked about this forever.
You got a couple of Navy officers.
I think we know a thing or two above what we're talking about when it comes to sea power.
That's why the blockade is key.
And I've had some people try to explain to me that, oh, blockade, what's that going to do?
Is that just a line of ships?
No, it's about shutting down their oil revenues.
And that regime can only stand for what?
Four weeks, six weeks, how long can they go without getting revenue?
How long can they actually stay in place before?
And they came out what today?
They said 2 million people in Iran are without work because of this.
2 million people out of work.
And eventually, those people are going to turn around at some point and say, you know what?
Maybe I don't like this regime just as much.
Maybe I'm not fans of Donald Trump and the Americans, but maybe I'm not a fan of this regime as well.
steve bannon
Jack, I want to hold you through the break because I want to spend some more time with you on Southern Poverty Law Center for your bounce in your two o'clock show.
But my question here is when she.
He's talking to the guys that he's getting the arms to and the cash to, the mullahs and the, because the Ayatollah probably can't talk given his disfigurement.
But he's talking to those guys.
He says, Look, you got to get rid of this Hormuz thing, and I'm dealing with Trump on the blockade.
And they say, Yo, we don't control the pirates down there.
We don't control the brigands.
You guys have had this problem down the Strait of Taiwan on your side forever in Fuzhan province with pirates.
What's Xi's response, sir?
Give me 45 seconds on that.
jack posobiec
Well, Xi's response is that if anyone's in the problem, it basically, I would say it's a Xinjiangian response where if you got Uyghurs in the way, you get them out of the way.
And that's why Xinjiang and the Uyghurs are so important to them.
They're trying to build that.
They're trying to build a railroad between China and Iran.
That's why they're so focused on Xinjiang.
steve bannon
Xinjiang.
But by the way, you're absolutely correct.
unidentified
He's going, what?
steve bannon
Hang on, hang on, man.
I co opted the pirate standard Fuzhan, right?
unidentified
What do you mean?
steve bannon
You take care of your problems.
Don't whine to me.
You don't go back to the boss and say, I can't take care of it.
That's not an appropriate response.
When they call Beijing, they say, hey, that's not a problem.
That's why those guys are so demonic.
Geopolitics in the United States Navy.
Much more on that later today on the 5 o'clock show.
Short commercial break.
Postal is going to be the other side.
I just want to hit him up one more time for this amazing show he's going to have at 2 o'clock on the Southern Poverty Law Center here on Real America's Voice.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
steve bannon
You got the Chinese Communist Party trying to force people to use the yuan and crush the petrodollar.
Find out what that's about, what it means for you, your family, your country, and your personal financial life.
End of the dollar empire.
Birchgold.com, promo code Bannon.
The hard copy is back ordered because so many have been requested by our audience, but you get free, all eight free installments, the original seven plus the new eighth.
Immerse yourself in that and then talk to Philip Patrick and the team.
What does it mean for gold, physical gold, as a hedge against times of financial turbulence?
Make sure you check that out today.
Talk to Philip Patrick.
Birchgold.com, promo code Bannon.
End of the dollar empire.
We don't want it to end.
Not right away.
It's got a lot of obligations to it, including that's what they're talking about that credit facility to UAE.
It's got so many people upset, including yours, Troy.
HometitleLock.com, promo code Steve.
Now, with artificial intelligence, cyber, all of it combined, the rudimentary system that protects your title and your home, which remember, every dream you've ever had is there.
Ensure it does not become a nightmare that sucks up all your time, focus, and energy.
Stop the angst for pennies a day.
You can talk to Natalie Dominguez and the team.
HometitleLock.com, promo code Steve.
You get a free, as they want to do for the Warren Posse, 14 days, $1 million triple lock protection.
But talk to Natalie Dominguez and the team.
This is what we do when we get our sponsors, make sure they have full access.
Sobic, I have many more questions about China and the geopolitics.
I'll get to those later this afternoon.
I'll deal with them and tomorrow.
But I want you one more time because what happened yesterday has been a long time in coming.
Digging Into Financial Backers 00:02:58
steve bannon
This demonic organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, is now in the barrel, as we say.
It's their turn in the barrel.
Jack Vosobic, what are you going to do at 2 o'clock today?
And why, why, why should the war in posse make sure they tune in?
jack posobiec
Well, it's a long time coming, Steve.
And we're going to be going through the financial backers of the SPLC.
We're going to talk about their ties to Bain Capital.
We're going to talk about their ties to, oh, I don't know, how about the widow of Steve Jobs, the widow of Apple, which, funny enough, didn't the Atlantic, who she is directly behind, just run a huge hit piece on Kash Patel just ahead of these charges being dropped?
I wonder why the Atlantic was doing that when their backer, who's also the backer of the SPLC, Lorraine Powell Jobs, was coming out, Steve, so much of the left's Infrastructure has been run through here.
So many of their highest profile donors and backers are tied into this.
We know for years that they have been infiltrating and creating and causing the hate that they then go and report about on MSNBC, that they go talk about in the FBI.
And this is how, by the way, they can be used as a government cutout so that Chris Ray and all the others can go up there and say, Oh, that wasn't a federal informant.
No, That person was never on our payroll.
Yeah, because they're on SPLC's payroll.
And Steve, If it took us almost a decade to learn the truth about Charlottesville, what's going to happen when we start digging in to other paid informants from January 6th?
That's what this comes to.
steve bannon
But this is the Southern Poverty Law Center.
What you're going to start to explore is we're going to get Blake Neff back on here from the Charlie Kirk Show that follows this immediately.
Blake's an expert on this.
Tyler O'Neill at Davis Signal wrote the book about it.
The reality is that they're a hate group.
In fact, they're one of the biggest drivers of hate in this country, are they not, sir?
jack posobiec
Steve, this is what they were doing.
It's almost like they were paying the head of the area nation a commission so that every time he would go out and do something, they would raise money off of it.
And by the way, even Fox, I got to give him credit, Fox is giving reports on how much money the SPLC raised after Charlottesville.
And now it's come out that it was the SPLC that was behind Charlottesville in the first place.
They were on the leadership there.
And Steve, how many times have we seen the FBI run these type of entrapment operations where they say, oh, we're going to go get the governor of?
Of Michigan, or oh, we're going to go do this, oh, we're going to go do that, and then you bring people forward to create the problem, create the conspiracy, and then be the ones to go after it.
And Steve, I'm just telling you, my phone lit up like a Christmas tree of government contacts, guys I know in the intel community, and said, This entire thing was a government cutout, the whole thing from soup to this.
Free Gear And Chris Hoare 00:03:14
steve bannon
Listen to Jack Vasoba, government cutout.
This is why this is going to start.
It's going to be so overwhelming.
So many people are going to go to prison.
It's going to be so great.
Jack, we got Charlie Kirk and Blake Neff up next.
You're at two o'clock.
Your social media, because you're like the Associated Press of the MAGA movement, sir.
jack posobiec
Well, thank you, Steve.
I appreciate that so much.
We're at Jack Posobic.
And then, of course, Human Events Daily is the show.
Apple, Spotify, a couple other places we're going to be just signed a couple deals.
We're going to be actually syndicated in a few other places soon.
That is yet to be announced, but really, really excited to see the interest there.
And it's all thanks to the War Room posse.
And again, just a huge shout out, Kash Patel over at the FBI, Todd Blanch, interim AG.
I don't know, Steve.
We may have to drop that interim title after seeing something like this for Todd Blanch because this is just phenomenal.
Phenomenal.
steve bannon
Keep doing this.
We got to put more scalps up, more points on the scoreboard.
Jack Basobic, thank you so much.
jack posobiec
God bless.
steve bannon
Todd Blanchard, those guys at DOJ, you're grinding and Kash Patel.
Don't let him run you out of there, Cash.
Hunker down.
You were great.
You were magnificent at that press conference yesterday.
Chris Hoare, satellite phone store.
You're always on to give the Warren posse a deal.
What do you got for us today?
chris hoar
Well, Steve, whilst there may be a ceasefire with Iran, there is no cyber ceasefire.
Cyber attacks on the U.S. continue.
At a pace that we don't think we've ever seen in our history in this country.
And these guys, the Iranians, the North Koreans, and others are going after our infrastructure, and that includes our utilities.
So this is just a stark reminder that we need to be prepared.
And one of the ways we can be prepared is by having independent communications, which a satellite phone is the only thing that really truly represents that.
And at sat123.com forward slash Bannon, today we have a very limited deal.
We've got a free satellite phone with activation.
And with that, we're including a free.
Dual pocket Faraday bag that both has the regular Faraday material in it and the EMF material.
So your phone can ring, but you're still protected from those electronic pollution waves of EMF.
And we're also throwing in a free wrist protector to protect you from EMF from your smartwatch.
So, Steve, that's a free SAP phone, a free Faraday bag, and a free wrist protector, all at sat123.com forward slash Bannon.
Or you can call us at 941 841 0844.
941 841 0844.
But, Steve, Very important that people understand this war.
We may be in a ceasefire, but we're not in a cyber ceasefire, Steve.
steve bannon
One more time.
Give me 20 seconds on.
There's more cyber attacks now daily in the United States than ever in history, correct?
chris hoar
Yes, that's correct.
And chat123.com forward slash Bannon.
Get your satellite phone.
unidentified
Be prepared.
steve bannon
They run out, so do it right now.
They always put these are limited run offers.
Chris Hoare comes in when he's got something for us.
Take advantage of it, folks.
Chris Orr, thank you, brother.
unidentified
Appreciate you.
steve bannon
Warren Zevon, The Werewolves of London.
Remember Warren Zevon?
What a giant.
Seated back here at 5 o'clock tonight.
Export Selection