Bannon's War Room·May 8, 2026·Episode 5357: Huge Victory In Virginia, Judge Strikes Down Dems Redistricting Efforts; Building Back America's Economy As A World Superpower·
Steve Bannon and his team celebrate a massive legal victory as the Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democratic redistricting maps, arguing they enforce white supremacy through racial gerrymandering. While urging grassroots mobilization for November elections, the discussion pivots to global threats: Iran's potential Strait of Hormuz blockade, China-Brazil BRICS efforts to undermine the petrodollar, and AI's impact on jobs. Despite economic shortfalls and high gas prices, the episode concludes that reclaiming Congress requires relentless legal battles in states like Alabama and Mississippi to secure America's path to world superpower status. [Automatically generated summary]
It's going to require that we remember we are the United States of America.
And so we have to sit what Tennessee is doing next to the fight that's coming out of Louisiana, next to the fight that will follow in Mississippi and likely in South Carolina.
We are watching in real time the restoration of the very laws that pretended racial neutrality. but were intended to deny black and brown voters the right to participate in democracy, which is one of the principal goals of authoritarianism.
They do not want the people who may disagree with them to be heard.
And right now in the United States, race is the strongest predictor of political leanings.
And so it's a lucky twofer.
They get the partisanship, but they also get the white supremacy that they seek.
And I sat in a hearing yesterday in Nashville, Tennessee, when the author of the legislation said, well, this is a conservative state.
We should only have conservatives.
And they intentionally erased the only black district, one of nine districts, the only one that allowed black Tennesseans to have some voice because they've already cracked Nashville.
But we have to remember this is happening around the country, and it is part of an intentional nationwide pattern of behavior.
We can be angry about Tennessee, and we can laud the Tennesseans who have fought back so ably, but we've got to remember they started in the South, but they're coming for everyone.
Then Trump came up with this idea no, we're going to block the Strait so that no ships can go through, not even your own.
And then Trump thought that would be enough pressure to get the Iranians to make massive concessions.
It didn't work.
So then he decided three days ago okay, I'm going to try and break this blockade by calling it a humanitarian convoy, humanitarian corridor.
The Iranians fired back.
That didn't work.
Now he's tried again in various ways.
The basic dynamic is this, Anderson.
Trump is trying to see what can put pressure on the Iranians to come to the table and make concessions fast.
The Iranians know that and are willing to take the pain as long as the pain is distributed to everybody.
So when they fire, it's not like they're getting ships out.
What they're making sure is the strait is closed to everyone.
Because by just a certain amount of violence, you know, some drones, some fast productivity, insurance companies are not going to be willing to insure.
oil tankers passing through the Gulf.
So effectively, it shuts down this very important pipe of the global economy.
And the Iranians, in a sense, have an advantage because all they're trying to do is raise the insurance price.
Trump is trying to open up the strait for everyone, a much harder task.
You got to start sending your resources, your support, and your intentions to the states that need your help.
Do not abandon the South.
They incubate evil here, but they farm it out everywhere.
But we also incubate the solutions here.
And we know we can win this fight.
But yes, we've got to win in November.
But that means showing up for primaries.
That means showing up for the general.
And then it means making sure we're paying attention in 27, in 28, and in 2030 when the census happens, because that's when they start this all over again.
We can pull this off, but we've got to start fighting now because we're already behind, but we can catch up.
I also think that, I mean, so this ballroom that he's building, when after the revolution in Ukraine, when they chased out their Russian aligned districts, They turned his estate into a museum of corruption and they preserved everything as it was so that people could walk through and see how he had lived at their expense.
I am delighted to be here in the sunshine outside Havering Town Hall, which I can now say is under.
New management.
And it's significant.
It's our first win of a borough in London.
And that, in some ways, goes against the trend.
Because the pattern that's emerging over the country is that Labour are being wiped out by reform in many of their most traditional areas.
And what you're going to see later on today is the Conservative Party being wiped out in their heartlands like Essex.
So London goes a bit against the trend in that the Conservatives and Labour have held up in some of the other.
boroughs.
But I think overall what's happened is a truly historic shift in British politics.
We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, and yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been conservative, but equally we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War I. At the moment we're winning one in three of all the seats that are up, but I genuinely think the best is yet to come.
I'm very excited about the North East results, the Yorkshire results, some more to come in the West Midlands.
Essex, we're feeling supremely confident, and that's significant given that half the Shedder Cabinet have seats in Essex.
So it's a big, big day.
It's a big, big day, not just for our party, but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way.
And it all goes to show that over the course of the last two years, since we made that breakthrough, In the general election, we have professionalized the party.
We've done it at a very, very rapid rate.
I'm thrilled and delighted.
unidentified
Yesterday morning at 2.41 a.m. at General Eisenhower's headquarters, General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command and of Grand Admiral Dernitz, the designated head of the German state, signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land,
sea and air forces in Europe to the Allied Expeditionary Forces and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command.
Hostilities will end officially at one minute after midnight tonight, Tuesday, the 8th of May.
We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing.
Today is Victory in Europe Day.
Tomorrow will also be Victory in Europe Day.
Supreme Court Ruled In Favor00:04:29
unidentified
We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our tasks, both at home and abroad.
Of course, we're commemorating the end of the war in Europe back in 1945.
Also, a massive win.
By our colleague Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom.
Blockbuster news: as we came on air, the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Virginia has nixed the phony referendum by the left-wing radical Democrats.
Those four seats are not going to Democrats.
Jeff Ryan is going to join us by phone in a moment, but I want to start with Caroline Wren.
Caroline, Tennessee, South Carolina, now Virginia.
And that does not even account for, by the way, the fact that we've removed 3.5 million at minimum illegal immigrants from this country who will no longer be voting this time around.
A lot of those Supreme Court judges were actually put in under Republican governors.
They serve 10 year terms and they are reelected by the legislature.
And so I think the argument someone made to me as to why they thought the Supreme Court would do the right thing is look, if you're one of these Supreme Court judges who's going to be coming up for a renomination by this legislature and you were nominated by a Republican, they're not going to care how you ruled on this case.
They're throwing you out anyway.
The Dems are radical.
Governor Spamberger is absolutely radical.
They want one of their radical judges in there.
And so there will be no reward for you to, you know, to.
Basically, violate all of what you know is right in the Constitution and say, yes, this is fine.
This illegal process is fine.
And someone told me that two days ago, and it was fairly convincing.
And now we're seeing it play out in real time right now.
And did so rather emphatically and explained in its ruling that what the General Assembly had done was, in fact, unconstitutional, which was our contention from the outset.
And it took a tremendous amount of courage for these justices to do this.
unidentified
And doing the right thing isn't always easy.
And we are obviously very, very grateful that the court ruled in favor of the Virginia Constitution and in favor of the voters of Virginia, frankly.
It is part of their DNA at this point that their end goal.
Uh, doesn't matter as far as what the means are, they will just go ahead and plow forward regardless.
And if it were not for a brave judiciary that's willing to actually look at the constitution, and a lot of credit here goes to uh, Judge Hurley and Taswell for uh, pointing out the flaws and what they had done, uh, just a tremendous amount because that took a lot of guts.
But we need the feckless Republicans in these other states, particularly Georgia, South Carolina, to understand that this is about the constitutional order and the grassroots are prepared to go into battle to defend this, ma'am.
They are in hearings this morning, and those are the debates right now.
So one is to move the primary to August 11th, and then the other one would be debating the actual map.
Then they have to go over to the state senate, which is much more of a problem.
We have several problem senators in the GOP, the South Carolina state senate.
You know, a lot of these just like they're similar to Indiana to where they are, you know, they either want things out of it or they don't watch the national news unless NPR is talking about it.
They are unaware of, you know, the grassroots support of this.
And so they need to understand that they will, every single one of them that votes against this will have a primary challenger.
I will personally see to it.
I've done a lot of South Carolina politics in my life and I have no problem coming and camping out there and running a primary against every single person that votes against redistricting in South Carolina.
We're going to have a call to action for the posse.
Just stick right there.
Jeff Ryder, the grassroots, I wanted you to see what happened in Tennessee.
And people, it's like a five minute clip that I played twice last night because people are so outraged about it.
Because that's the difference.
That's what we're talking about.
It's either ruled by the savage mob or ruled by a constitutional order.
Jeff, the amazing grassroots effort led by you and the Commonwealth of Virginia clearly influenced Judge Hurley and the Supreme Court.
That's why these grassroots efforts are so important so people know, and particularly people in power know, that the basic working man and woman, the middle class man and woman out there, Are absolutely repulsed by these unconstitutional districts and will fight like hell to make sure it doesn't go down, sir.
And in our case, they were integral to the effort.
At the beginning of this, there was an assumption that we were going to, that the forces that were against this were going to get wiped off the map by double digits and an overwhelming spending campaign on the part of the Democrats.
But our grassroots rose to the challenge in a big way.
And despite the out.
Despite being heavily outspent, it brought it to our best performance in the state since 2001.
We took it right to them.
And actually, the election results showed why these districts were bad.
Because what ended up happening, the only place where the yes votes carried were places where Democratic votes were heavily concentrated in dense urban areas, disenfranchising half of the state.
And I like to think that it helped to steal the resolve of.
Of the judges along the way to do the right thing.
And they did.
And we're grateful to them.
But boy, we are very grateful to the effort that our grassroots put in.
And also to the help of the War Room posse, which was integral to our success.
They were with us before anybody else was helping.
Well, you can read the whole decision because we have posted it already on our X account.
It's at capital D, capital A, underscore, capital G, capital O, capital P.
And we've already posted it there.
We'll be doing more on our website, which is Virginia, spell it out, dot GOP.
And we will still be collecting donations to help defray the costs of this effort.
Because we were represented, although we got a tremendous amount of assistance from the Republican National Committee for the legal effort, we still have expenses left over from our very valiant effort in the referendum.
So you click the big donate button in the upper right hand corner, and we appreciate all the help we can get.
But this is a great day for Virginia and for constitutional government, period.
Let me break it down this way about national elections or electoral process.
There are three things I think one should, and you should take your number two pronouns for this one is structural, two is process, and three is content.
Or maybe contents too structural content and process.
Process is the grassroots effort of voter engagement.
We know that we can do that when people are motivated, they're motivated by content.
The structural issues we're taking care of.
That's what you're finding.
This is what this whole redistricting wars and everything about the voter integrity and, you know, making sure illegal aliens don't vote, all of that.
Those are structural issues.
And right now, we are running the tables on them on the structural side.
We are close.
We're in hollering distance of the magic number 218.
Because in this situation, the only, you know, victory is everything.
The issues we have is content right now.
We've got a big content issue.
And we have to be realistic about this.
Bowling's going to join me in a second.
I think it's pretty obvious.
The foreign minister.
Of the Persians of Iran was in Beijing the other day.
What in the hell are they having a meeting with him 10 days or a week before, two weeks before President Trump shows up for a meeting?
It's obvious that Beijing, and unless we put the screws to them, which we're not right now totally, that Beijing and the Persians want to drag out this war in some aspect until the summer or fall to make it a major part of the 2026 midterm.
Bowling's going to be in a moment to talk about.
What's transpired in the last 24 hours and what it looks like going forward?
David Malpass, former head of the World Bank, former number three in the Trump 45 Treasury Department, talked to me about.
We just had jobs numbers.
And to me, the key they talk about affordability.
You have to solve for the equation of growth in the economy, growth per individual, and of course, wage growth ahead of inflation.
If people have discretionary income or have income higher than the inflation rate, at least you've got an argument with them.
How things are getting better.
Are we accomplishing those tasks right now in this jobs report that came out this morning?
And I think that's what people feel in terms of the wages, the affordability issues.
We need lots more jobs and we need to be the party of job growth.
In Britain, you know, they labor under this idea that there's the labor party versus the conservative party.
They need to change the names.
Because if you get a free government going, you get more jobs.
President Trump, of course, is the standard bearer for that.
The construction jobs, the manufacturing jobs, he built big chunks of New York City.
Four of my kids were born there, and they benefited from each of the things that he did in terms of creating construction and manufacturing jobs.
And we need that times 10 for the nation as a whole.
So I think that the number this morning was good, but we can do a lot better.
That you know, Steve, there's two surveys they do out of the Department of Labor.
These are technical issues, but they're really important.
They go to companies, especially big companies, and ask how many jobs, and they're creating jobs.
But then they also go to small businesses, the household survey, and ask people, Do you have enough work?
And the answer came back this morning, No, not enough.
I want to work more.
There was a minus 226,000 on the household survey this morning.
So, what my message is, we need this whole of government effort to have.
More training.
And, you know, we need to start in grade school and junior high and high school, junior colleges, teaching people that they can have a really good wage by making America great.
And that's a message I think that we've got to double down, triple down going into the midterms.
We had this program, a program like this started a couple of decades ago, in which we're going to change the entire elementary school system, all the grammar schools, everything to STEM.
We're going to have to teach people math and technology and science.
And, you know, you had to dump art, you had to dump a part of history, you had to dump after school programs because everybody had to be STEM.
Now, yesterday, another massive company in Silicon Valley, I think, had what, 7% of their workforce, they bottom blew because of artificial intelligence.
How do we handle the artificial intelligence jobs apocalypse at the same time that we're trying to focus on actually building a workforce that has the skill sets you need for today and tomorrow, sir?
What you were talking about 20 years ago, that was the No Child Left Behind program, and it went through the teachers' union.
They never overcame that problem.
So, what's happening right now is we're trying to push back on China, but there's not nearly enough.
China is still growing in its use of international organizations, which one thing that we've talked about here, the IMF and the World Bank, still getting bigger and bigger, which gives China an advantage.
As far as the skills, then, children will gravitate to where they can be successful.
They have to be allowed to in the system.
And we need programs coming out every month that are aligned with what President Trump wants to create the workers of the future.
He did it with no tax on tips.
Remember, that's very important because people were getting heavily taxed, the elderly.
Are getting taxed when they take social security, so they don't work.
And so, we want all those people in the labor force looking for jobs.
And then, I have no doubt they'll learn how to do AI and use it every day in their jobs.
I'm going to come back to you talking about China in a second, international debt.
So, stick there.
Eric Bowling, enlighten us, Brother Bowling, on what are the markets telling us, particularly the number of ships going through?
What is happening?
We have a ceasefire.
I guess the program of Operation Freedom kicked back in last night.
We're going to do more convoy service, although Navy ships were fired upon, I think.
President Trump struck back, but he said the ceasefire is not over.
The Iranians have been doing nothing but smack talking us on social media.
And they sent their foreign minister over to meet with the Chinese Communist Party, which is, I think, a direct slap in the face to the United States government and to President Trump.
I do understand that President Trump.
Heard enough nonsense at a Lula yesterday.
They shut that whole thing down, which is a good start.
That's a good pregame warm up for the Beijing meeting.
And I was just texting my guy who has one of my biggest oil traders who has access to that proprietary information, those Bloomberg terminals.
And I asked them while you were saying this, because I forgot to ask them the vessel count.
Remember, Steve, four days ago it was 11.
Three days ago it was Four, I'm sorry, two.
Yesterday it was exactly zero, and now today it's seven.
So seven vessels have transited the Gulf in 24 hours.
Noteworthy that both the U.S. has fired on Iranian ships, and the Iranian ships have actually fired on a U.S., I believe it's destroyer.
I'm not sure what they hit.
But President Trump this morning outside the White House, I guess in the North Lawn, waiting to board Marine One, it looked like, said that, oh, it was a love tap by the Iranians, and then we pounded them into the bottom of the sea.
All right, so the market opened $2 higher.
Crude oil.
And it was very, very nervously trading, very quiet trading.
It now slipped to lower.
While I was on break with you, I'm going to do this for you, Steve.
Only Stephen K. Bannon in the war room.
I added to, I put in a very large bearish position expecting oil to come down, maybe not in the next week or two, but a long term bet for oil to come substantially lower while I was waiting to come on the show.
No one else is going to give you that, my friend.
But talking to these guys, remember yesterday we spoke, I believe at the four o'clock handoff, I said, you know, these are the smartest people in the room in energy, in geopolitics, everything is because there's so much money on the line for these conglomerate oil companies.
And they had shifted from a very bullish stance when we were at CPAC in Dallas to now telling me they're giving me this indication that maybe this thing has played out to the upside so far.
And it may be retreating.
I will tell you one thing about that economic number that got released today, the jobs report.
Combine that with the 2% GDP growth, I do believe it was last week or so.
You have two very, very strong numbers.
Now, David Malpass makes a great point it's job growth.
They're expecting 60,000.
We got 113,000 ballpark.
And that's good, but he would like to see a more broader growth.
Because a lot of the growth happened in the AI space.
And this is a very important little asterisk right here.
The growth is in capital expenditure in the AI space in the midst of an Iranian war where oil prices are going up, which should put a damper on anything AI, because AI just sucks in energy almost as much as transportation does.
It'll get to the point where it may almost compete with transportation as the normal pull for crude oil, natural gas, and liquefied propane gases and others.
Because I don't believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think we got the one pager yet, their draft or their markup.
Their strategy right now seems to me that they think it's to their advantage to drag this out as long as possible and to take this into the summer, into the midterm elections and try to force the American people to turn on President Trump and the Republican Party.
Because there's, even with the Persians being very careful, close to the vest negotiators, This is, we're not seeing a lot of momentum on this, correct?
I'll tell you one thing also that they, late last night, the CIA, the CIA put out a report that said the Iranians are able to withstand the blockade for several months, not weeks, several months.
They have enough defensive firepower to withstand the blockade.
So that tells me that they're not going to relent unless there's a deal.
But, Steve, at this point, I mean, you're right up against the ability.
To turn the energy price market down, not just crude oil, you can get that down fast.
The actual pump prices for gasoline, right now we're pushing 30, 40 days ahead.
Even if crude starts coming down now, you're going to have high pump prices at least midsummer.
If this lasts another two months, you're going to have a $4 or higher pump price first number into September, October.
At this point, I have just come around to believe that now Trump should probably keep the blockade on, continue the The choking the Iranians out of their money, choking the Chinese out of their oil, and suck it up, Buttercup, on midterms, because that's what you talked to us about with Caroline Wren is wildly, wildly.
It's just euphoric almost to think that in the midst of all this stuff going on and the high gas price, that there's a chance we can still recapture or maintain the House and the Senate.
That's fantastic.
And you're right, the structural part of that is the way to do it.
And we're getting it done.
I don't know if Caroline mentioned the Florida four or five that they could pick up.
Make sure you take your phone out now more than ever with markets and capital markets, particularly on fire.
Commodity markets on fire.
Text Bannon, B A N N O N, at 989898.
Get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metal.
This is a totally free guide.
It is no obligation.
You get to talk to Philip, Patrick, and the team.
First question you ask them is Hey, Philip, why are the central banks still buying gold at record rates through the end of the first quarter of 2026?
What's going on?
What's happening?
We thought that taper up by now.
And what does that mean structurally for the market and physical gold?
Ask them that question, get the answer.
That could change your financial future.
So it's upon you.
Go there right now.
Get to Philip Patrick.
Ask him the question What is this continual, I think we're in the third year of it, record rates of buying by central banks of physical gold?
What does that have to do with me?
So check it out BirchGold.com, promo code BANN, end of the dollar empire, or BANN, B A N N O N, at 989898 for the ultimate guide.
Two separate documents, all free.
All the information from BirchGold is free.
And you want to talk to Philip Patrick's team.
David Malpass, Lula comes to the White House yesterday, and you know he's the one trying to lead the BRICS nations and destroying the petrodollar.
They have a change normally, and we were all set up for it.
I was not happy.
I'm not a Lula fan.
My understanding is the vice president, JD Vance, was not happy about it.
Marco was not happy about it.
A lot of folks around the president don't know how this got set up, but not happy about Lula coming.
I think the president, when Lula got there, sized the matter up and said, hey, ma'am, I'm not going to bring in the press right now.
For a traditional bilatin, let me have this thing play out.
And it was decided they wouldn't do a joint effort.
I think part of that is the president understands that Lula is a bad guy.
And you got to see, besides all the flattery and the way he's working you all the time, when the president sees that up close in person, particularly Lula's partnership with the Chinese Communist Party.
So you've had Lula come to the White House, try to work the president.
You had the foreign minister of the Persians go to Beijing 10 days before the meeting.
You couldn't have a bigger slap in the face.
So, David, what's your assessment?
You were head of international finance in the Treasury Department for President Trump.
What do you think is going on and what can we accomplish, particularly regarding this war in the Persian Gulf in Beijing, sir?
You've been saying for years, That we institutionally, the United States of America allows China to be treated institutionally like a developing nation.
And we've got to stop that.
But I want to go to the heart of this because we've been making this argument about the end of the dollar empire.
I don't want to see the end of the dollar empire unless people have a national conversation that we shouldn't be the prime reserve currency because things would change if we're not.
And maybe people think some of us were the better.
But the BRICS nation, Lula and the Chinese Communist Party, are maniacally focused on destroying the petrodollar in the Persian Gulf.
We have to have a national effort, like a Manhattan Project.
To have job skills coming up through our school system all the way up.
It's not this no child left behind stuff that came out of the 2000s.
We've got to have actual skills training that is tested and available for machine tool operators, electricians, people that can build the grid with American products rather than Chinese products.
That's going to take time, but President Trump is the right one to launch that.
He's the jobs president, the construction president, and the manufacturing president.
And I think we need to remember that every day and go forward.
On hopefully another day, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, about this New York Times article about the national debt and how nobody seems to care except for David Malpass and the crossing.
Where do people go to get, particularly, you're writing, they're allowing you to write some great op eds in the Wall Street Journal.