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May 14, 2026 - Bannon's War Room
48:54
Episode 5371: XI And President Trump Continue China Summit; The Ruthlessness Of The Chinese Communist Party

President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump navigate the China summit, where Xi invokes the "Thucydides trap" as a veiled threat regarding Taiwan reunification. Guests Captain James Fennell and Jack Posobic analyze this rhetoric alongside the 15th five-year plan, contrasting Xi's imperial consolidation with Reagan's "evil empire" stance against the Soviets. They condemn globalist supplicants to Chinese mercantilism, likening current tactics to British opium trade, while advocating a Machiavellian strategy leveraging U.S. energy dominance to counter Beijing's unfinished civil war ambitions without falling for strategic ambiguity. [Automatically generated summary]

Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Participants
Main
jack posobiec
r 10:23
j
jim fanell
06:30
steve bannon
r 18:02
Appearances
donald j trump
admin 01:39
marco rubio
admin 01:33
scott bessent
admin 00:36
Clips
t
tom llamas
nbc 00:11

Speaker Time Text
Historic Visit and Global Ambitions 00:08:43
unidentified
This is a historic visit.
This year marks the start of China's 15th five-year plan for economic and social development.
The over 1.4 billion people of China, drawing on the rich heritage of our over 5,000-year civilization, are advancing Chinese modernization on all fronts through high-quality development.
This year is also the 250th anniversary of American independence.
The over 300 million American people are reinvigorating the spirit of patriotism, innovation and enterprise, and ushering in a new journey for the development of the United States.
The people of China and the United States are both great peoples.
Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand.
We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world.
Today, President Trump and I had in-depth exchanges on China-U.S. relations and international and regional dynamics.
We both believe that the China-U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world.
We must make it work and never mess it up.
Both China and the United States stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation.
Our two countries should be partners rather than rivals.
President Trump and I also agreed to build a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability to promote the steady, sound, and sustainable development of China-U.S. relations and bring more peace, prosperity, and progress to the world.
donald j trump
Well, thank you very much.
This is a great honor.
It was a fantastic day.
And in particular, I want to thank President Xi, my friend, for this magnificent welcome.
And it really was a magnificent welcome like none other.
And for so graciously hosting us on this very historic state visit.
We had extremely positive and productive conversations and meetings today with the Chinese delegation earlier.
And this evening is another cherished opportunity to discuss among friends some of the things that we discussed today, all good for the United States and for China.
And it was a great honor to be with you.
unidentified
Please.
donald j trump
And across the centuries, this mutual esteem grew into a relationship that reflected the tremendous talent and potential of our two people.
Chinese workers helped lay the railroad tracks that connected our Atlantic coast to the Pacific.
American travelers to China helped spread literacy and modern medicine.
And at the request of China's ambassador, it was President Theodore Roosevelt who provided the funds to establish President Xi's alma mater.
Tsinghua University.
marco rubio
Congress appropriates, and as Congress decides what to do with those topics, we will respond accordingly.
tom llamas
But nothing has changed in the way the U.S. views the relationship with Taiwan.
It will defend Taiwan, as has been.
marco rubio
U.S. policy on the issue of Taiwan is unchanged as of today and as of the meeting that we had here today.
It was raised.
They always raise it on their side.
We always make clear our position, and we move on to the other topics.
We know where they stand, and I think they know where we stand.
To the other topics.
We know where they stand, and I think they know where we stand.
tom llamas
Do you think China wants to invade Taiwan?
marco rubio
Well, I think China's preference is probably to have Taiwan willingly, voluntarily join them.
In a perfect world, what they would want is some vote or a referendum in Taiwan that agrees to fold in.
I think that's what they would prefer.
Ultimately, it's featured prominently in President Xi's mandate in the time he's been in office.
He's made clear that what they call reunification, that's what they call it, is something that has to happen at some point.
We think it would be a terrible mistake to force that through force or anything of that nature.
There would be repercussions for that globally, not just from the United States.
And we kind of leave it there.
That sort of ambiguity is what I think has defined the way we characterize this issue, and the reason being strategic ambiguities.
We don't want to see conflict.
We don't want to see something disruptive happen because I think it would be very disruptive for the world and for both countries.
unidentified
Honorable President Donald J. Trump, ladies and gentlemen, friends, looking back at the course of China-U.S. relations, whether or not we could have mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation is the key to whether the relationship can advance steadily.
The world today is changing and turbulent.
China-US relations concern the well-being of the over 1.7 billion people of both countries and affect the interests of the over 8 billion people of the world.
Both sides should rise up to this historic responsibility and steer the giant ship of China-US relations forward, steadily and in the right direction.
scott bessent
The Vice Premier and I, who have a very good working relationship, I think we've seen each other.
This was either our eighth or ninth meeting.
We worked on the agenda for today's meeting in terms of the economics, the deliverables.
And so we talked about purchases.
We talked about some issues that the Chinese side had.
And we're going to talk about forming a board of trade for the bilateral trade between the U.S. and China.
And we're going to talk about a board of investment.
That will be responsible for investment in non sensitive areas.
unidentified
Now, please join me in a toast to the development and prosperity of China and the United States and the well being of our people, to the bright future of China US relations and the friendship between the two peoples, and to the health of President Trump and all the friends present.
Cheers.
Come be.
Cheers.
tom llamas
I know you're watching China.
You don't think they're ramping up their military to do something in Taiwan?
marco rubio
Well, I think they're ramping up their military in general.
I mean, the pace of growth in the Chinese military over the last 10 years has no precedent, none.
I mean, just what they've done with their Navy alone over the last, they put billions and billions and billions of dollars in their system.
So it's, you know, you look at it, I mean, it's hard to ignore how fast and how big.
So I don't think it's just limited to Taiwan.
I think they have ambitions to ultimately be able to project power globally the way the U.S. does now.
They're still behind us in that regard.
But there's nonetheless, they are investing a lot of money.
Right now, the world's second most powerful military, without a doubt.
donald j trump
Thank you again, President Xi, for this beautiful welcome.
And tonight, it is my honor to extend an invitation to you and Madam Peng to visit us at the White House this September 24th.
And we look forward to it.
Raise a glass and propose a toast to the rich and enduring ties between the American and Chinese people.
It's a very special relationship.
And I want to thank you again.
This has been an amazing period of time.
Thank you, President Xi.
unidentified
Thank you, Mr. President.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to thank you for your support in 9 years 22.
I want to thank you for your support.
I want to thank you for the support of the EU.
I want to thank you for the support of the EU.
We want to take the support of the EU.
This is a very important part of the EU.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you, everybody, very much.
Thank you.
The whole world is watching our meeting.
Rising Power Meets Declining Power 00:07:21
unidentified
Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent.
The world has come to a new crossroads.
Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations?
Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world?
Can we, in the interests of the well being of our two peoples and the future of humanity, build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?
These are the questions vital to history, to the world, and to the people.
They are the questions. of our times that you and I need to answer as leaders of major countries.
jack posobiec
Also seeing some reports now coming out from the Chinese side.
One of the spokesmen, spokeswomen actually for the Chinese party, making reference to something called the Thucydides trap and saying that Xi Jinping spoke with President Trump about the potential of avoiding the Thucydides trap.
And this, of course, is a reference to the Peloponnesian Wars, Sparta was challenged by the rising state of Athens, and the idea that this is a cycle that goes on throughout geopolitics where the current superpower will always be challenged militarily, and then it will end into a war with the rising power.
This, of course, has been something that a lot of people have used to describe China and the United States over the years.
Very interesting and striking to hear that type of language from Xi Jinping's side.
steve bannon
Okay, Thursday, 14 May, year of our Lord.
2026.
I want to thank Real America's Voice, everybody that made last night's live coverage possible, the entire team here at the War Room and RAV, the folks out in Denver.
Great job, magnificent.
And of course, all of our analysts.
I want to get to Jack Posobic.
Let's go to the signal, not the noise.
Jack, we have taught, as you know.
In fact, you were the first guest we had back, I think it was January 20th of 2020, when we shifted the show.
To become Warren Pandemic.
We were still doing Warren Impeachment.
We took an hour in the morning, in fact, the 11 to 12 hour, I think, initially.
You were the very first guest.
The reason is because of your deep understanding as a naval intelligence officer about the Chinese and your ability to both understand and speak Mandarin.
And you ended it by saying, I asked you, I said, does this issue with the pandemic mean that Xi may have lost the mandate of heaven?
And you went in and talked to a lot about what that means.
This concept of the Thucydides trap, which is among people who are China hands or follow this, this is from Graham Allison and Dr. Henry Kissinger.
This construct that they really had and they started about the Soviet Union in the United States in the 60s and the 70s, but they transplanted that framing to actually the United States and China now, is for Xi to say that.
And remember, those were his opening remarks.
That's not the remarks later at the dinner and the toast and all that.
To mention Thucydides' trap in the opening couple of minutes is about as in your grill as you can get because people say this about the rising power and the existing power, but really the implication and even what Kissinger's theory was back in the 60s and 70s, it's the rising power versus the declining power, the power that was the hegemon that is now declining.
Jack Basoba, give me a minute or so on that.
We're going to go to break, keep you around for this morning.
jack posobiec
Yeah, Steve, and you could see that's my real reaction on that clip you just played last night on Fox when I was getting the readout from Beijing, where hearing that Xi Jinping, the chairman,
the state chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, brought up the Thucydides trap in the presence of Donald Trump, the president of the United States, or any president of the United States, and did so as his top line remark, pairing it with Taiwan, saying very bluntly that Taiwan will be ours.
One way or the other, the easy way or the hard way, and that we would like to, we would prefer to avoid the Thucydides trap.
He's referring to the United States as the fading hegemon and China as the rising power.
Now, typically, Steve, this isn't the first time, by the way, that you've seen Chinese diplomats do that, particularly since COVID, since back when, when you're right, when I was the first guest on War Room Pandemic in the opening days of COVID 19, you saw lower level functionaries or Party outlets like People's Daily would use this type of language.
They called it wolf warrior diplomacy.
And they started to become more and more aggressive towards the United States and towards farm powers in general.
But to see the state leader of China do that with the president of the United States in the room is just something that I never thought would happen.
Typically, the Chinese, again, they were the technocratic leaders, Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin.
Xi Jinping is someone very, very different.
unidentified
Okay, this is what we got.
steve bannon
We got Captain Fennell and Jack Basobic, two naval intelligence officers.
We're going to get into all of this because Marco Rubio's response to NBC News strains credulity.
Oh, they mentioned it in passing, and then we kind of moved on to other topics.
Ain't buying that, brother.
Not a chance.
Short break.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann.
steve bannon
So make sure when you hear it, the city's trap in the opening minutes.
When President Trump's sitting there in the opening minutes to bring up Thucydides' trap, uh, is a because it is about a declining power and a rising power.
Graham Allison actually came to the Breitbart Embassy, uh, I think in 18, maybe 19, and we had a lunch and then we had, uh, we met for several hours.
I went through the book.
The book is called, if you haven't read it, Destined for War is where they put the book up.
Fennell and, and, and, um, Fennell particularly remembered this, Jack.
He's a little older than you.
He's still a kid to me.
But when I took the course, I didn't have time to go to the Naval War College.
I went back to the Pentagon to work as an aide to the CNO.
So I took the correspondence course.
I knew we were going to have a shot.
So I took the correspondence courses of the Naval War College.
And when I was at sea, the first thing you get is the Peloponnesian War.
And I go, you know, this is interesting.
I love history.
Long-Term Thinking in Geopolitics 00:13:27
steve bannon
I love reading Thucydides.
It's all great.
But, you know, we're in the 20th century and we got, you know, the Russians all there.
What are we doing here?
And they said, no, no, you don't understand.
This is about a rising power and about a declining power.
It's about sea power versus land power.
I go, okay, I got it.
Back in those days, and this draws directly to today, Henry Kissinger at Harvard and Graham Allison were the two big nuclear strategists, right, with Herman Kahn and other guys.
He was separate, but, and they had a theory at the time.
The theory was the United States of America was a declining power, the Soviet Union was the ascendant power, and we had to accommodate, we had to do all kinds of treaties with them, we needed detente.
We needed arms limitations.
That whole construct was based around this theory that they're the right, they have a command economy, they got all this military.
And there was one guy out there, one guy, one, and it starts with one, one guy that said, you know, I don't know if I buy that.
And that guy was President Ronald Reagan.
They set up a B team.
And I remember they did an analysis when President Reagan, because he said they're an evil empire.
When President Reagan came into the commander in chief and beat Carter, who was kind of, you know, these guys were all captured.
By that construct that we were a declining power, they did an analysis.
This is what they did an analysis.
I think Bill Casey, when he took over the CIA, did an analysis.
And they came back and they said, you know, we made some miscalculations back in the 50s and 60s.
And the CIA has just been extrapolating those basic mistakes.
And it turns out their command economy, it's actually not as powerful as we think.
And Ray, what do you mean by that?
Well, it's actually, no, we kind of went off the bad assumption and we just kind of kept the math going.
You know, it's not nearly as big.
And they go, What do you talk about?
And so they finally gave it to Reagan, and he looks at the economy and he says, Well, how big is this economy?
And they gave him a number and he says, That's smaller than California.
I was governor of a place that had a bigger economy than the Soviet Union.
How big can these guys be?
How tough can they be?
We're going to build a 600 ship navy.
I'm going to hammer down on, we're going to rebuild the military.
We're going to do Star Wars.
Our technology is greater than theirs.
We will bury these guys and we won't have to fire a shot, maybe some marginal.
You know, conflicts on the side, but we're going to bury him, we're going to destroy the evil empire.
This is why, when you go back to the KGB files, they said, and Kissinger was saying, the most dangerous man in the United States was Ronald Reagan.
Why was that?
Reagan did not go along with what the conventional wisdom was.
And that conventional wisdom was a couple of professors at Harvard, Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison.
All they've done is take the exact thing they were dead wrong on.
In the 1970s and led us to all those arms control agreements and all that crap.
The same guys just took that template and put it into the city's trap today.
And so I asked Graham Allison, I said, Hey, brother, you have 16 times in world history this has happened a declining power or a hegemon that's declining or has peaked versus ascended power.
12 times, if they didn't work out their agreements, they've led to these catastrophic wars.
I said, But can you show me one time where the elites, In the declining power, made more money and accumulated more wealth on the way down and the way up.
He goes, What are you talking about?
I said, The business community now is feasting on China.
They're one of the biggest problems we've got.
They don't care about the Chinese Communist Party and all this whining about what the Persians do, what the Mullahs do to their people.
That is nothing.
That pales in comparison.
It's not one 100th.
Anybody belly aching?
Oh, this is so terrible.
The Mullahs are doing the Persian people.
It's 1,000th.
What these murderers have done to the Chinese people.
Hell, they've got 450 forced abortions, 80% of little girls.
See those kids jumping around last night on command?
By the way, the future Red Guard andor Harvard class of 2040, take your pick, maybe both, right?
Little automatons that, boom, you know, jump up and down, wave the flag, cheer.
This is about the 450, 80% of little girls.
They have murdered, I think, what, 250 million, we can count Lao Beijing they've murdered between fourth collectivization, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward.
This is a murderous dictatorship, every bit as bad as the Nazis and anybody in business with them are equivalent to financing Hitler.
unidentified
Full stop.
steve bannon
They are a hundred times, a thousand times worse than the mullahs in Tehran, and the mullahs are pretty damn bad.
And this thing, and Graham Allison said, What are you, uh, uh, uh, uh, I said, Bro, you're putting this thing out as like, and everybody's going to fall into it, and they did.
And she and these guys love it.
And don't forget the love tap they gave us right before that.
We're celebrating our 5,000th year of civilization, underlying civilization.
Oh, and happy birthday on your 250.
Hope it works out for you.
Jack Vasobick, your thoughts, sir.
jack posobiec
You know, Steve, there's a lot here, but I think it needs to just be stated over and over that this was remarkably blunt from the head of the country, the head of China.
Meeting with President Trump.
And we were told that this was going to be a friendly meeting.
And certainly they showed the warm embrace, the public pageantry.
But you're right.
The jibes, like 250 versus 5,000, which of course isn't true.
The Chinese Communist Party's only been there since 1949, the PRC, and other points that's immaterial to the point is the way that they spoke to the President of the United States and the way they talked about Taiwan in particular, not as an agenda item, not as something that was down the list and they mention it and move on.
unidentified
No.
jack posobiec
He said, number one, this is our top issue.
So, Steve.
Let me be blunt.
I will go back to my original conversation with you, my very first interview on War Room, when I said that she needs to describe COVID 19 as a demon from hell because he is fighting that demon to prevent him from losing the mandate of heaven.
Steve, what is another way to show that you have the mandate of heaven?
The reclamation of lost territory.
The reclamation of lost territory for the empire.
The reuniting of lost territory.
Now, we talked, by the way, this is a huge driver for Putin when it comes to Ukraine and not just the four oblasts that were annexed, but also all the way up through Odessa.
They view Odessa as a city of Catherine the Great.
Taiwan is viewed by China as theirs.
They view, and I'm not going to get into the situation.
I sat down with the Taiwan ambassador yesterday.
I'm talking about the view from the Chinese side, from the CCP side.
They view it as theirs and they view it as a lingering piece.
Of unfinished business from the Chinese Civil War and the Communist Revolution.
That's what this is about, Steve.
And Chairman Mao famously, and I just keep thinking about this line, one of Chairman Mao's famous lines This is a revolution, not a dinner party.
unidentified
Amen.
Fabulous.
steve bannon
Captain Fanell, we got a couple minutes before you go to break.
Your thoughts, sir?
jim fanell
I think you guys are on it.
I think what Zhi did and the fact that he used this, you know, the book that you put up from Allison was written in 2015.
So, for the last 11 years, American China hands, academics have been pushing this thesis that, oh, this is going to end up in a conflict.
So, we, the United States, have to, as you said, accommodate, appease, make treaties, have people to people engagements, government to government engagements.
And that's what we have done in our governments until the Trump administrations.
And now we come into this event, and Xi tells Trump, hey, Taiwan is our core denominator between the two countries.
That's important.
unidentified
Core.
Core.
jim fanell
Yeah, he said it was a common denominator.
And he said, if we handle this properly, we'll have a great relationship.
And then he said, otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.
That's an open threat.
So the use of the Thucydides trap vernacular, then this outright threat that if you don't do it our way, we're going to have a problem, we're going to have a clash, that's a threat of war.
And so I think it's very, very telling to Americans to really understand that this isn't just some kind of diplomatic rhetoric.
This is a declaration from Xi.
steve bannon
In the media, the major media are too dumb to even pick up on it.
I'll guarantee you, virtually none of them knew what the Thucydides trap was, right?
This is something Jack and I, and you, we've talked about this for years, talked to people about the book.
Also, remember go to break.
It failed the first time they sold it, they didn't sell it for China.
Graham Allison and Henry Kissinger this is how Kissinger became the great strategic thinker that Nixon needed.
They sold this.
This is why we went through years of kissing the ass of the Soviet Union before a guy named Ronald Reagan showed up and said, You know what?
How about this?
We win, they lose.
That famous scene when he was interviewing his future national security advisor, Richard V. Allen.
I'll tell the story on the other side.
This failed the first time.
It took Reagan to sit there and look and say, No way, they're an evil empire.
We're going to take them down.
And here's how we're going to take them down.
President Trump in the first administration, he's the only president ever to confront these guys.
The Chinese like to be subtle.
That was, if you're a China hand and you follow this, this was as in your grill as you could possibly get.
They threatened us.
They threatened us and they threatened the commander in chief of the United States in the opening couple of minutes of the meeting yesterday.
And no, Marco Rubio, I ain't buying.
Oh, yeah, they talked about time while we just moved on to the Board of Trade.
Screw the Board of Trade and screw the Board of Investments.
Short break, back in a moment.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann.
steve bannon
Okay, we have Captain James Fennell and Jack Rasova, two of the, I think, smartest people in this area.
And I know them all.
So these are two of the best and have been given very blunt advice.
I want to go back because I want to make sure the Chinese do think in long periods of time.
Jack, the one thing I do disagree with you about them running it.
For 100 years.
I got it.
But they're just another, they think they're in the line of succession of the emperors.
In fact, there's that one emperor that she believes he is.
jack posobiec
No, no, we say that in the China files.
We said he is the red emperor.
unidentified
Yes.
steve bannon
But they think in long periods of time.
And that's why the love tap they gave us, we're kind of commemorating our shy shy season of civilization.
jack posobiec
Mao never established a dynasty.
His son, of course, died in the Korean War.
Taiwan wasn't set up.
Mao actually was a communist.
But this is about dynasty building.
steve bannon
After Mao sent his son up to Korea to die in the Korean War, I might give a footnote to.
They've tried this before.
They think in long periods of time.
And of course, we think about the last news conference.
And so the United States, particularly our elites, don't particularly understand history enough to look.
And they used to in the revolutionary generation.
We've lost that.
And you can see this kowtowing, all these business leaders going over to kowtow to bring tribute as supplicants.
To Xi, they're a huge part of the problem.
When President Reagan took over, the one thing he didn't want to do, you guys remember this for the audience.
jack posobiec
Steve, if I can go ahead, if I can.
And the business leaders were the first ones out of the room.
The bit that this happened, we're watching on Twitter and everything last.
He threw out the money changers.
steve bannon
He threw out the money changers because business guys in Chinese society don't mean anything, they're just merchants, right?
jack posobiec
These guys are about you're just the merchants, you're the mercantilists.
So we're watching to see.
What happens with the readout and what's going on behind the Great Hall of People?
And who do we see walk out?
It's all the CEOs.
They're the first to leave.
steve bannon
Elon Musk, throw them out.
This is what, when the British ambassador came to the emperor about all the goods they wanted to do and having all types of trade and everything like that, they said, hang on, we're going to think about it.
Let's see what you got, et cetera.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they had to wait like 90 days.
In fact, the ambassador got a notice.
jack posobiec
It was the Qing emperor.
Projecting Power Globally 00:15:48
steve bannon
Nothing's happened.
You have to come back.
You can't stay there forever.
He put them, says, Hey, you got to give us an answer.
And they said, Okay, upon further review, we've looked at everything you've got.
We don't want any of it.
Okay, we think it's all mediocre crap.
We don't need it.
We're China.
We're the middle kingdom.
Get the hell out of here.
And that's when, of course, the British and the British East India Company said, Let's go to plan B. Let's give them something that people are going to want opium.
Okay, that was the beginning of the opium.
That's the way the Brits rolled.
jack posobiec
But I want to go back to the point there was it was driven by mercantile policy.
It was driven by the merchants.
It was not driven by state interest.
It was driven by economic mercantile interest.
And that is the single biggest issue in our China policy and has always been our biggest issue in China policy because it's all about, oh, can we open it up and could we sell widgets to the 1.5, 1.6 billion in China?
And it never works.
Even after we got the treaty ports, we, I say the West, got the treaty ports in the opium wars, they still didn't fully open up the interior of China.
So the best that they were able to come up with.
Along the way, was this system of globalization whereby we're exploiting the slave labor of the Lao Beijing, and our 1% is getting rich, their 1% is getting rich, but everybody else is getting screwed.
It's always the merchants.
steve bannon
Always.
So when they ran this playbook, Kissinger and these guys ran this playbook the first time.
The United States and Nixon's part of it, all of them kowtow to them.
The Democrats worse than Nixon.
Every kowtow to them, we got to have treaties and detente, we got to do all this.
Instead of dealing with the simple thing that they were doing was Vietnam, you know, squeeze them on that, didn't do that.
Let kids die in Vietnam as we went along this path that they're the rising power, we're the declining power.
Finally, Reagan comes up and he says, The one thing I don't want is no Kissingers.
We're not going to have any Kissingers or any Zygmunt Brzezinski's.
I don't need any grand strategists with a foreign accent.
Okay?
I can't stand that.
We're not going to do that.
And so, and they were looking at people who weren't household names or going to be big media stars.
And Richard V. Allen was the guy.
And they told me before they go in, they said, Whatever you do, don't use the phrase geopolitics.
Just stick to the basics.
Okay.
So this guy's so nervous and he goes in there and he's babbling, right?
He's babbling because he understands this is my interview.
I'm going to get the biggest job I could ever get in my entire life national security advisor to replace Brzezinski and Kissinger for Ronald Reagan.
He gets so nervous and he catches himself saying geopolitics.
And he says, I got to shut up.
He shuts up.
He says, Mr. President elect, I apologize.
I'm very nervous.
I'm talking too much.
Really, what is your strategy?
I'm here to serve you.
What is your strategy?
He goes, Dick, how about this?
We win, they lose.
That cut through everything.
That changed everything.
We were not a declining power.
Bill Casey came back and said, the CIA has blown the assessment of the economies.
Their command structure economy is failing.
Their military is all made with junk.
Okay, they got a strong military and very brave people, right?
The Red Army.
But Captain Fennell, that's what it took to break this trap we had been set in by the intellectuals in the country of how we had to think of the Soviet Union.
President Reagan said, Hey, what about this?
You're an evil empire.
You're an evil empire.
And we're going to do everything we can and we must to bring you to your knees.
And they destroyed it, what, 10 years later, it was destroyed?
The same thing has happened here.
We've been set up, and you're right.
They're a mercantilist power.
They're not a free market, but the lords of easy money, the globalist corporate leaders, and the tech bros, Elon Musk and his crowd, who would all sell out and they have sold out the United States every day of the week, they're the ones over there as the supplicants.
Captain Fennell, your thoughts.
jim fanell
Yeah, I agree.
And I think that the story about what Ronald Reagan said, we win, you die, is.
It transformed the relationship with the Soviet Union and brought them down.
And I think President Trump, in his own way, is actually doing the same thing.
Two days ago, when we were on here talking about the visit coming up, and Sam Faddis is on, and we were saying that the president shouldn't go in as a supplicant.
And I think so far, from what I've seen from the president's statements and from Secretary of State Rubio's statements, we're not acting as supplicants, and Secretary of Treasury Besson's as well.
I would like to point out one other thing.
Xi, we pointed out, came in with this very tough language, this Thucydides trap threat, the open threat of using conflict if we don't get the Taiwan problem straight.
The Chinese are very subtle too.
They use another soft sell.
And they did this hey, you know, our 15th five year plan is just like your 250th anniversary.
They did another thing that people aren't talking about.
Xi yesterday said the great rejuvenation of China and the make America great again agenda can go hand in hand.
We can help each other.
Succeed and advance the well being of the whole world.
So they're going to play that card as well, which is to say, hey, we're just the same.
We're just equals.
And so I think we're kind of saying we'd like to see a Reagan esque approach, which is to say, hey, no, you're evil and we have nothing in common.
I think what President Trump does is he's more like Machiavelli.
He's going to go and meet with you and have dinner with you and say nice things about you, but then he's going to take your oil from Venezuela.
He's going to take your oil from the Strait of Hormuz.
He's going to put tariffs on you.
He's going to sign you up to a board of investment, and we're going to play around with low end stuff, and we're going to do to them what they've been doing to us economically for 40 plus years.
And so I know it's really hard right now.
A lot of us don't like engagement.
I wrote a book with Brad Thayer saying engagement with communist China was our greatest strategic failure.
I don't like it because when senior leaders like the president go over there, then the rest of our government starts to engage.
And we're already seeing reports from different departments about this event and that event, and we're going over.
So I hope the president.
I'm trusting the president will hold the line tomorrow when he goes and speaks with Xi and Zhong and Hai, their CCP's compound there in Beijing, and they'll have this one on one talks.
I'm confident President Trump's not going to get bamboozled or buffaloed or sell America out.
But I do worry about the whole of government approach, and we got to make sure that we don't allow our government to do what we did in all those last 40 years where Republicans and Democrats appeased and tried to make nice.
And do people of people exchanges and mill to mill exchanges with the PRC, thinking that they're going to change their spots.
They're not.
They don't like us.
They want to destroy us.
They want to globally project power.
They want to take Taiwan.
They prefer not to use force, but they're ready to use it.
And their sophistries by saying that MAGA is the same as the great rejuvenation of China are not moral equivalents in any way, shape, or form, just as the 15th five year communist economic plan has nothing in common with 250 years of freedom and liberty that we're going to celebrate this year.
Based upon our declaration and our constitution and what we demonstrated to the world about putting faith and trust in individual liberty and the ability to allow people to live freely as opposed to living collectively in a prison system.
steve bannon
Jack, build on that for a second, particularly about the importance of reunification of their territory.
When they talk about his rejuvenation plan, which is essentially make China great again, this is what Xi has been pushing.
Forever?
How central to them is the concept of reunification of their territory?
jack posobiec
Well, Steve, you know, I always try to explain it to Americans like this.
It's, you know, we look at it as perspective from the history, Taiwan being the democracy, China, of course, being the communist authoritarian power.
And we say, well, of course, we side with the Western style democracy there on the island Taiwan.
But the way I always try to explain it is imagine if it were a country like, I don't know, like, say it was Texas.
Say Texas.
Had broken away from the United States and had been separated for a long time, and there were foreign powers that were meddling to keep Texas out of the United States.
There would be a lot of people who would look at that and say, you know what?
We need Texas back into the fold.
And I just mean, obviously, like most analogies, it doesn't always fit one to one.
But the point is, they view it as a sign of weakness that Taiwan is still separate from them.
They view it as Unfinished business.
They look at it and say that is unacceptable.
And the only reason they couldn't do it, by the way, was because in 1950, the Soviets said, no, you can't get Taiwan.
You can't go after Chiang Kai shek after he looted the treasury in Beijing and head on down to Taipei.
You've got to go and fight the Americans up in Korea and do that instead, because that was also 1950, the outbreak of the war there.
And so that's the reason.
Plus, China didn't have any Navy to speak of back then.
So that's the reason that Taiwan was.
Basically, able to get away with it.
Truman parks a couple of aircraft carriers in the Strait, and that's really what set off the current situation.
And so they view it as not that it's essential in terms of their overall rise, though, of course, obviously they do want the chips, but they view it as a sign of weakness that they aren't able to reclaim that territory.
And if she is able to do so, then his power, his influence, his rule over China will be complete.
steve bannon
Just want to mention, by the way, Sam, I mean, Captain Fennell and Jack are in a hole with us for the last block.
We're going to go on this a little bit more.
The power that Xi has, though.
He's, I think, since Mao, and I'm not even sure Mao had it, he's got, he's chairman of the Communist Party, he's the head of state, he's also the head of the military.
I don't think technically, Captain Fennell, we got 30 seconds.
I don't think technically, was Mao ever head of the PLA as Xi is?
I think he was symbolically, but Xi actually has all three power positions in the Chinese entity, correct?
jim fanell
Yes, Xi has all of them.
Mao had them as well.
Even Zhang Zemin had them.
But he didn't give them up to Hu Jintao.
So they do play around with that.
But Xi has consolidated all the power and he's obviously broken their constitution, which was supposedly you only get two five year terms.
He's now into his third five year term.
And so he is emperor for life in his mind and he has made no indication of a successor.
So that's, I think Jack said it earlier this is an empire.
It's not a communist party that has normal rule of order.
steve bannon
Hang on for a second.
Captain Fanel Jackson.
unidentified
Episode of the day this morning.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann.
steve bannon
Okay, we are going to be live again tonight at 10 o'clock.
Captain Fennell, give us your thoughts about day one and looking forward.
Now, day two is going to be different.
They're not going to be in the Great Hall.
They're going to go to the compound that essentially, I guess, Mao set up where all the senior leaders of the Chinese Communist Party essentially live, right?
It's their like exclusive area.
Your thoughts, sir?
jim fanell
Yeah, Zhong and Hai is the exclusive compound of the Chinese Communist Party, and it'll be one on one talks.
It's traditional.
This is how other paramount leaders of China have operated with American leaders.
I expected from today and what I saw today was what we had hoped for, which is a president that was, you know, polite, diplomatic.
But Secretary of State Rubio's statement about there's been no change to the Taiwan policy is refreshing for me to hear.
And he said there was unlikely that that policy would be changed.
So I think while They probably brought it up much more than he indicated, and they'll probably bring it up again tomorrow.
I don't see us caving in on that.
So I'm very encouraged by that.
The president, as we said a couple of days ago, he is in the power position.
He controls the world's oil today, energy supply, and that's something of very great importance to China.
They want foreign direct investment.
President Trump brought all the capability to bring foreign direct investment to China, but they're going to have to give up something to get that.
And so I think the president is playing them very well.
And we'll just have to see how the results come out tomorrow and with the statements that are made.
But we have to make sure that we don't forget that G thinks he's in a position of power.
And I think that's also part of this is that we're demonstrating to him that maybe his power isn't as strong as he thinks.
And so if we do that, that'll put G under even greater pressure as he comes out of this meeting dealing with his own fractures inside the Communist Party.
And so I'm actually pretty encouraged by what I saw today.
And we just got to hold the line and not compromise with them.
steve bannon
Great.
Jack, strategic, Secretary Rubio mentioned strategic ambiguity.
Explain that to the audience and why does Rubio think it's important and do you think it's important?
jack posobiec
Well, Steve, strategic ambiguity refers to the longstanding policy of the U.S. vis a vis Taiwan.
Do we recognize them?
Do we not recognize them?
Will we help them in a time of war?
Will we not help them?
Will we stand by and let China subsume the island?
This has always been sort of the U.S. policy since the 1970s.
Remember, this was a secret document back in 1971.
Originally governing it.
And then eventually Carter switched the recognition of the U.S. government to the People's Republic of China rather than the Republic of China, which of course worked in terms of setting a chain of events in motion, which gave China the control of that seat at the United Nations, which gave the Chinese Communists control of the seat.
These things never should have been done.
China never should have been allowed into the World Trade Organization.
They should be removed from this.
They should be stripped of their most favored nation status.
President Trump's tariffs are 100% correct, Dr. Navarro is 100% correct.
On what we need to do to constrain and quell the dragon.
And Steve, ultimately, it isn't national security that's a question here.
The national security side, people understand completely what's going on.
The issue is the mercantilists, the issue is the merchants.
The merchants get in there and they say, We need to have this investment.
We need these.
Why do we need them?
Why do we need Chinese buying up all of our farmland?
Why do we need them buying up all of these single family homes so they can park their investments and park their cash in there because Chinese banks suck?
Why do we need all of these Chinese students at the universities?
They should be deported.
Their visas should be stripped.
There's no question.
And by the way, it could be done because of the threat that Xi Jinping just gave to President Trump in the room.
You don't threaten the president of the United States when you come in for a meeting like that, when he flies all the way over there with the delegation.
You don't make threats.
You don't call us the fading power of the Thucydides trap.
No, no, you don't treat a president like that.
Honestly, if.
And this is just me, but honestly, if I were President Trump, I'd get in the plane and take off.
Threats Over the Strait 00:02:43
steve bannon
Or what I would do is at least take a carrier strike group and let's sail it today through the Straits of Taiwan.
jack posobiec
Call up the 7th Fleet and put them in the Straits.
steve bannon
Put them in the Straits and let's get some fire control solutions.
Let's just start getting the radars going and getting some fire control solutions on people.
jack posobiec
See how good their aircraft carriers are?
steve bannon
Yes, the only thing they understand is force, Jack.
Jack, where can people get you?
You're going to be doing a lot of commentary tonight.
We're going to try to track you down.
Understand it's Jack Jack's birthday, so you're going to be occupied.
jack posobiec
It is, it is.
He's turned, turning, turned, not, not, not easy turning eight, Steve, but more importantly than that, this weekend is going to be my eldest son's first Holy Communion.
And so a lot of people said, Jack, why aren't you on the China trip?
And I said, I got a couple, couple things that are more important, and first communion is definitely one of those.
But we'll be up, we'll be up at Jack Posobic, Human Events Daily, Apple, Spotify.
And, and yes, as you say, I got a lot of interviews lined up.
steve bannon
So, I don't want to give, I guess you'll play it on Human Events Daily, but Jack Vasovic, it's a war imposter, I understand.
Jack's been on for six years now.
And basically, he and Captain Finell and Dr. Thayer and Sam Faddis are entire in the new federal state of China, the people, you know, getting information out there.
So, everything you saw the last couple of days, nothing shocking.
But last night on Fox, Jack Vasovic's trying to explain the Thucydides trap to people who had never heard of it in their life.
And somebody goes, gee whiz, that's such a great history lesson.
unidentified
It was.
steve bannon
It was very endearing, but it also showed.
jack posobiec
Come on, it was a fun moment.
It was a fun moment.
steve bannon
Fox News, TV for stupid people.
Jack Posobic, thank you so much for coming on.
Captain Fennell, thank you so much for coming on.
Appreciate both of you guys.
Two warriors.
Captain James Fennell had the courage to stand up, what, 16 years ago and say that people were trying to avoid trying to divert their gaze from the rise of the Chinese Navy, the money they were putting in.
He was a hero.
Gave up his career to do that, to warn the American people what was going on.
That's what we need to do now.
President Trump, James Fennell, saying Machiavelli, because he's run the tables on them, on Venezuela and on at least the control of the oil coming out of Iran.
The Iran foreign minister is in India, another one of America's greatest allies, India, talking right now.
I think they have actually put forward that hey, you know, we heard what's going on in Beijing.
The Strait is going to be open, it's going to be under our control.
But we'll open it.
Understanding State Power Dynamics 00:00:46
steve bannon
I don't know if that's going to work.
I don't think that's going to work.
Anyway, we're going to take a short commercial break.
Get ready for the second hour.
We're going to break this all down, particularly some of the merchants.
You see how Xi dismissed those guys five minutes in the meeting?
unidentified
Yeah, fine.
steve bannon
It's great.
Good to see you.
Thanks.
Get out of here.
We're going to talk state power now.
That's how the Chinese Communist Party thinks state power.
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unidentified
Short break.
steve bannon
Back in a moment.
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