Both 2020 and 2022 were bruising defeats for MAGA, for America, and Charlie. In his CK Exclusives interview at AmericaFest, Steve Bannon talks about how those losses were actually providential, allowing for the far more effective 2024 comeback that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Steve also discusses Charlie's role in staffing up the new administration and his belief that the Gaza War will lead to a new "two-state solution" for Israel/Palestine, then takes a few questions from CK Exclusives members. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I run the largest pro-American student organization in the country fighting for the future of our republic.
My call is to fight evil and to proclaim truth.
If the most important thing for you is just feeling good, you're going to end up miserable.
But if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end up purposeful.
College is a scam, everybody.
You got to stop sending your kids to college.
You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Go start a Turning Point USA college chapter.
Go start a Turning Point USA high school chapter.
Go find out how your church can get involved.
Sign up and become an activist.
I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
Most important decision I ever made in my life.
And I encourage you to do the same.
Here I am.
Lord, use me.
Buckle up, everybody.
Here, we go.
The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
Without further ado, Steve K. Bannon.
Oh, he's got his Washington book.
That's when you know it's serious.
Officer on deck.
I like that.
Take your seats.
If you got them, smoke them.
Stephen K. Bannon, it's an honor to have you here.
This was a tradition that started with Charlie.
You guys would basically do this interview every Amfest, sometimes Student Action Summit.
And so thank you for making the time to sit down with us.
The first time it really hit me that, I think I told you, the first time it hit me that Charlie was gone was because, you know, I came to Utah those days and spent a couple days with you guys.
But the first time it hit me was when you two came up to do the transition on the show, which we always do at Amfest live, right?
So yeah, we were texting about it the night before.
And you were the one who said it's tradition.
We have to do it.
We got to do it.
Well, Charlie, you guys start the show spring of 22 on RAV?
Well, on RAV, it was July 2022.
July 2022.
And you guys had the podcast.
You had had a show.
We started it in May of 2019.
And we were just doing once a week, actually, at first.
Charlie didn't think it could fit much more into his schedule.
And then COVID happened, and he was like, let's do three times a week.
And I was like, okay, here we go.
And then literally within one week of doing three shows in a week, he was like, okay, let's do five.
Let's do five a week.
We're going to do five a week.
And then it was like, maybe more like 10 eventually.
He would just start just a content machine.
He was stuck because of COVID.
We couldn't do as much as we typically did.
It was no college tour, anything.
Yeah, so he was just like making my life miserable.
It was amazing.
And then COVID went away and he just kept doing it.
He did all this stuff.
Charlie was a, he managed by, you guys figured it out, right?
Figure it out.
Oh, yeah.
It was pure chaos, pure insanity behind the scenes.
You know, he picks people so that they can figure it out.
He doesn't want to micromanage and just make it happen.
But look at this.
What, 31.
AmFest was always so big and so intense, right?
Student Action Summit's big, but it's got a different vibe to it, right?
Younger crowd.
It's mostly students.
Students and different breakout sessions.
AmFest, because you always have Vice President of the President of the United States.
I mean, the heaviest hitters you have in the political movement.
But to know that you've got 31,000.
And walking on that stage last night, when you look out there, you just see, I mean, it's got to, did you feel like 20,000?
You know what's crazy?
That room, I think, maxes out at like 18 or something.
Every week, we received 21,000 in there for Trump last year on the Sunday.
So he came, as I remember, it was his first kind of event after winning the election.
So he flew all the way out to Phoenix.
Trump does not like to go west that much.
He also doesn't overnight.
Yeah, right, exactly.
So he's got to be able to get in.
Everything is a day trip.
Exactly.
So, anyways, he came out for that 21,000.
I think that's the most we've ever fit inside the actual main ballroom.
So we're going to try and do something similar because there is 31,000 people at this event.
And I told people it's like, you know, somebody after Charlie died kind of thought, oh, we should probably look at Amfest tickets to see where we're at.
And instantly was like, I think we should probably turn off ticketing quickly.
Because of the 31,000, you still have another list who couldn't even get to it.
We could have doubled it.
Just to be perfectly clear, we could have sold 60,000.
No, I remember this because we did.
Charlie had come to us in August to make an early announcement.
In fact, I asked Charlie, I said, Are you guys going to have the stadium this year?
He goes, No, no, we're the same place.
I go, Early says, No, we just want to do it.
So we did announce it like on August 19th or 20th.
And then by the time, because normally we start selling them in October, and we always have a war room code so our people get a special deal.
So by the time everything got organized to really do the things and get the code, I think our team came in there and go, Hey, it's actually sold out.
Maybe we can fit some more people in.
Yeah, because Charlie was always, you know, we have this inside joke.
It's always like, more, more.
You know, in all our group chats since Charlie's was killed, just more, more.
So turning off the ticketing for this event was actually pretty traumatic for us because, you know, you got fire marshal stuff.
I mean, you saw night one, it was people, people were getting upset they couldn't get into the main ballroom space and it was just getting congested.
I mean, there is a fire marshal for a reason.
I mean, but we're an overflow.
Is that where the other technology is?
Yeah, we have a bunch of overflow, and basically all the media row booths are going to be having it up.
VIP is having it up.
Everywhere that, you know, for JD, especially, you know, guys like yourself, we want to make sure you can watch it in different various places if you can't get into the venue.
But it's a good problem to have, and we're going to be creative with solutions in the future, certainly.
But we've got some more surprises up our sleeve.
So even for this event.
The content is great, and the breakout sessions are amazing.
When you look through that schedule, everything you guys put up, it's amazing.
All the connection actually.
And the breakout sessions, as you said, were Charlie's, that was Charlie's favorites because that's not people talking on stage.
That's actually getting things done.
Yeah, I saw somebody on X saying, well, it would be nice to have some normal people instead of all these influencers up on stage.
They're like, have you looked at the breakout sessions?
Have you looked at everybody that's in the halls?
I mean, okay.
This is a populist movement.
All right.
You know, I'll never forget one time I ran into Stephen K. Bannon at the some hotel.
We were passing each other in South Florida, and I was like, Steve, are you coming to the gala tonight?
He goes, Man, I'm a populist.
I'm not going to that.
Don't do galaxies.
I was like, wait, no bow tie, no black tie for you.
I would love to see you come into event wearing your customary get up at a black tie.
It wasn't totally a black tie event, but I just gave away a Peter Navarre's bride at his wedding in Mar-Lago.
And I had a nicer version of this, but the version of this.
They wouldn't have felt comfortable.
It was very sweet.
They got engaged, I think, where he was in prison.
So this got murdered.
I know Maureen was your daughter was saying it was about time or something like that.
I was like, good for Peter.
Steve, there's been a lot of chatter about some of the things that have been said.
Has there been?
I missed that.
A little online chatter.
It's mostly getting drowned out by the thing.
No.
No, but it's also mainstream media.
I mean, the New York Times, Washington Post picked up Thursday night, obviously.
Media.
Then they picked up last night myself and Megan and Jack, right?
So it's what do you make of it?
Here's what I make of it.
I think this is what I tried to say last night.
And this is what part of the aspect maybe everybody didn't see of Charlie, because people know Charlie from Turning Point and the summits and Amfest and doing all this stuff and going to do the and doing change my mind all around.
Prove me wrong.
That's fine.
He couldn't change his mind.
Different influencers.
Yeah, definitely.
Different, different controversial online influencers.
Who's great, by the way?
But Charlie was also, I mean, in transition, well, first off, just in the campaign.
I mean, because of his judgment and understanding how things roll, he was one of the most senior advisors to the campaign.
And quite frankly, I think, given the grassroots nature and the turnout, which won everything, he was probably as influential as the campaign manager and other people because of knowing what to do.
Then on the transition, Charlie Kirk, I mean, he camped out in Mar-a-Lago.
That's where you guys were doing the show.
72 hours after the election, he was on a plane to Mar-a-Lago.
And I think stayed virtually the whole time.
He may come back a little.
I think you guys were in having to juggle the show with the way he was doing.
He was, I think, one of the two or three key advisors to the president of personnel, of particularly vetting and who was MAGA and who had President Trump's back.
Then when the administration started, Charlie spent, you know, and people didn't really understand this.
He spent so much time in the White House.
In the White House, he's working with Sergio Gore on personnel also, on doing the vetting.
Because remember, they got to get 3,000 people that are not, don't have to be confirmed in.
You've got to hit the deck place funny to flood the zone and Days of Thunder.
Also, 1,000 of the confirmation people all have to be vetted.
Charlie was given senior advice, and Trump respects his advice, respects the way he thinks, his judgment at 31 years old.
In addition, he's in big policy decisions.
Why?
Because people respect Charlie's opinion.
I mean, he comes at it with a certain sense of gravitas.
He's really, and that shows you from 18 to 31, those years really in political combat, he just, he had a learning curve.
Everything you guys did wasn't perfect at first, including when he first came to Breitbart, when you guys first did the big turnout thing in 22, everything.
But you're a learning organization.
Your learning curve is like that, right?
And it's just work and effort in Charlie and on policy.
And so in these policy debates in the summer of 2025, Charlie Kirk was one of the most important people because Charlie's also a networker.
He knows how to bring people together.
He knows how to get the best ideas out of them.
And so I think a lot of what you see on the stage, and Andrew was a big First Amendment free speech guy, and Charlie is too.
I mean, there's nothing closer to Charlie's heart than open debate.
But this is just not about, oh, is this guy in or that guy in or who's going to be, you know, even Vivek last night and Schneider.
And I respect both those guys, but they're talking about who's in, who's out.
People are going to decide that.
It's not for us to decide.
People are going to decide that.
But it's something deeper.
It's not just are they in or out or able to talk.
It's what are they talking about?
What are these big issues?
And that's why I wanted to bring up one last night that Charlie was key on.
It's one of four or five that we have to get decided, I think, relatively quickly.
And that's basically who governs this country, right?
And I say this, I think, from a position of strength because as someone that's actually been in the field running media companies and being a political activist, I don't think anybody out there has a record better than mine than Defense of Israel.
I am a Christian Zionist and I'm a Christian nationalist.
Now, I'm not a Christian Zionist like some people are, but I'm a Christian Zionist and a Christian nationalist.
Hey everybody.
Balance of Nature's Whole Health System supplements are the perfect resolution for the new year.
If you want to get in a better place in your health journey, you need to check out Balance of Nature and their whole health system.
Balance of Nature's Whole Health System supplements are versatile.
Two scoops of fiber and spice mix easily into drinks, adding a warm aromatic depth.
You can also open three of your fruits supplement and mix the powder into a smoothie or sprinkle three of the veggie supplement over a savory dish.
Balance of Nature's Whole Health System supplements feature ingredients like picillium, husk, flaxseed, cinnamon, turmeric, fennel greek, mango, pineapple, wild blueberries, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, kale, cayenne pepper, and more.
Supplements include 47 ingredients of 100% whole fruits, vegetables, spices, and fibers, perfect for your daily routine.
Balance of Nature is an amazing, amazing way to supplement your health journey to make sure you are as healthy as you can be in 2026.
This new year's lock-in 50% off for one year when you subscribe to the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer.
Go to balanceofnature.com.
Again, balanceofnature.com.
50% off for one year when you subscribe to the whole health system supplements as a preferred customer.
Do it now.
At Breitbart, Bar None, at Breitbart, when I ran it, it was the biggest offender of Israel going.
When I got to the White House, I was the lead on so many things, particularly trying to get the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist organization, of which I failed miserably.
It was the hardest thing we did, and it got nowhere.
The deep state inside the government shut it down.
But really, trying to move the embassy to Jerusalem, I wanted to do it day one.
My whole plan for day one, it was to have the president, because I wanted a populist.
I'm not a big gala guy.
I wanted, what I recommended was you have the ceremony and we give the speech and the things centered around the speech.
In fact, we should take the podium about halfway through the speech and turn it.
And he would just talk to the deep state that's all sitting there in those things.
Oh, no, no, no.
Miller and I talked about it.
Could you, and then you have the camera view of President Trump with a million people in back of him, and he's just lecturing these guys, right?
Remember, Bush said after the speech, that's some crazy, right?
Just in the speech, we're going to give it to him.
Crazy.
So we rule that.
But instead of having the big lunch in the Capitol while people are freezing, and President Trump loved the parades, just let's start the parade.
Don't spend two hours with the people freezing.
Let's just do the parade immediately, get it done, go to the White House, everybody come by in the parade.
President Trump would love it.
Then he'd go in the Oval Office, and the very first thing we would do is he would sign an executive order moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
Very first act of his presidency, because it'd be so historic.
Then he would, we'd do some more work.
He would go back to the Capitol and address Congress, Paul Ryan, these guys, and he'd lay out his agenda for the first hundred days and saying, this is not what I'm proposing.
This is what we're going to do.
And you guys better get some racks in here because you're going to stay around the clock for 100 days until we do all this.
Charlie was really big on making Congress work.
Making Congress work.
He go back and do it.
Now, obviously, my plan was not chosen.
The best I did tonight.
They had a few galas, but it was fine.
People wanted to celebrate, and I thought it was great.
President Trump and my plan would go to one ball, the Veterans Ball, and he and the first lady would dance, and then she would dance with one of the veterans.
It's telling because the second inauguration is much closer to that.
I didn't flip the podium around, but that stunt of being in the Oval Office at the desk just signing all of the executive orders, and he got to perfection two years ago.
Here's the reason.
Here's the reason.
In 16, we had nothing.
I mean, we won in a come from behind.
I mean, on the night before in the polling, we were still down.
That was all turnout and people just coming out that people would never realize low information, low propensity voters.
The second time, we had four years.
Those years in the wilderness, and this is why I keep saying 16 was providential.
20, the big steal was providential, because it gave us the four years of the precinct strategy, of turning point getting up to speed.
Those four years, I would say, were the most valuable years of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point, learning, learning, using the 22, not just midterms, but the Arizona races to learn more, to figure out what works and what doesn't work, to continue to learn.
And then 24, have a machine that can actually deliver places like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Arizona.
We needed those years.
And that's why the shock and awe in days of thunder, they had 15 executive orders because it had been years in the making.
And that was what's so powerful about where we are.
But it's all providential.
The 24 election is providential.
And that's why, you know, we've got to grind on here.
Well, so you got the bona fides as a pro-Israel voice over many years, but last night you sounded a slightly different note.
Well, I don't think it's a different note.
I think I'm actually a defender of Israel.
You have these people that have made this two concepts called Greater Israel, right?
Greater Israel is not Israel.
Greater Israel is a geopolitical entity that takes part of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Sinai, all the way in Egypt.
All the West Bank.
West Bank, all the way, that's tiny.
I'm talking about all the way into Iraq and has a defeat of the Persians as part of it.
That's a grandiose plan.
And there are people in Israel that are fighting for this.
This is a real thing.
Just so you guys know, this is a real backing with this.
No, this is Netanyahu.
Remember, also Israel's changing, and you should talk to your friends in Israel.
Israel's changing radically.
I believe under Netanyahu, who I think is just doing this for his own political survival, that I would say that Israel is on the path to become a Jewish Pakistan, which is more a hardcore right ethno-state.
And I think you see this from who's leaving Israel and going to Portugal and going to Spain and going to Greece to live.
On top of that, there is a portion of the media and people here that are Israel first.
They just are.
And the perfect example was this current war that we went through.
Everything about that war was a lie.
We know that for a fact now.
The whole intensity of having to bomb the nuclear facilities, eventually Netanyahu had to give up the documents to his cabinet, everybody go through it.
And the Times of Israel said it was two years.
As you know, it wasn't two weeks.
It was two years.
They started a war that they couldn't finish.
They were getting pounded.
President Trump saved Israel.
Because remember, at the very first, you know, we sent Aegis cruisers into the eastern Mediterranean with the air systems they have.
We sent our Patriot missiles, our Thayad missiles, 25%.
It was the U.S.
We were an active combatant in that war from the very first, an active combatant in the war.
Now, on the offensive part, it wasn't just the B-2s taking out the caves.
I was in the North Arabian Sea in 1980 as a young naval officer on a destroyer that carried battle groups after the hostages were taken.
We still have essentially carry battle group or submarines there today.
It was the submarines, I think they were fast attack submarines, that launched 30 cruise missiles, which is a technology from the 1970s that took out all the surface facilities that the Israeli Air Force couldn't take out.
And President Trump didn't call it 12-day war.
The whole initial part of the, when Fox was going crazy, how much they were winning, how much they were winning on the previous Friday, was a decapitation against the regime's head because they wanted regime change.
And that would require combat troops, at least commandos.
Charlie Kirk understood, as all of us understood, that's not the defense of Israel.
That's the expansion of this greater Israel.
And we can't do it as a country.
We spent $9 trillion in the Middle East.
We've lost 10,000 troops killed in action, right?
Another 50,000 casualties, another 5,000 to 10,000 contractors.
So, and $9 trillion.
And the country's just not there.
In the carnage in the personal lives of the United States, and what's happened in the, yes, the PTSD, the suicides, plus what's happened to the country.
My recommendation, and Laura Loomer and Rabbi, you know, Rabbi Willicki is very close to Amphest.
He's got a media thing here.
Today is obviously on observation.
They're of the opinion I am, that Israel's got to become sovereign, and it doesn't need our $5 billion, right?
They sold $10 billion of arms to Germany the other day.
I mean, they're a very sophisticated defense industry.
And I think that would take off the burden because there's going to be more constraints.
And here's why I've always fought, always fought, the two-state solution.
I've always thought that Israel would just be contiguous.
And now we have a two-state solution.
You have a two-state solution.
And the Wall Street Journal this morning, the lead story, has this like, it's like the Jetsons.
It's this picture of the city of the future.
It's got modern, it's all this stuff, you know, people on air packs flying around.
It's Gaza.
It's a print of a present from a presentation that Jared and Witkoff just made to some financiers.
I think it's $300 or $400 billion to rebuild Gaza into a Mediterranean resort, but state of the art.
And in that, a $60 billion commitment of the United States for debt financing.
It's just not going to happen.
They've got now Qatar, and I'm the most anti-Qatar guy in the world.
And Qatar, you should understand, has put a lot of money into Washington, D.C. to change the opinion on Qatar.
Qatar is the financier of the Muslim Brotherhood, full stop.
And the Muslim Brotherhood is an absolute enemy to the Christian West, to our Judeo-Christian civilization, and particularly to the United States of America.
Turkey's second.
So when President Trump even is signing the designation of terrorism, they want to do a study in Jordan.
They want to do a study in Syria.
And they want to do a study in someplace else.
Leaving off Qatar and Turkey, which are centerpiece.
So I think that has to go.
So you've now created a two, you have a proto-two-state solution.
In Gaza, you're going to have 2.2 million Palestinians.
You're going to have fully financed by Qatar, except for the money they're going to look from us.
But you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars.
And Turkey, right, who we drove out, you know, Lawrence of Arabia and the British Army in the West drove out of the Ottoman Empire, drove them out in 1917.
We're basically inviting the Turks back in, who controlled the two holy sites in Jerusalem, I think for a half a millennia.
We're inviting them back in as the military.
And so when I look at Ben and I look at Levin, I said, you guys created this.
This was total overreach.
And now you have a two-state solution.
And President Trump, let's be honest, they met yesterday in Miami to negotiate Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey with Jared and with Witkoff.
And what they're negotiating is both Israel and Hamas are both slow-walking, trading in arms.
And the reason is both, I think, realize Netanyahu and Hamas that once they get to the conclusion of phase one, they're kind of out, right?
It changes over.
To me, that's catastrophic, but that's what they brought on.
This is why I'm an advocate and a strong advocate of a Christian state.
If you're going to have two states, if you're going to have Israel, and you're going to have part of Israel is going to be the beginning of a Palestinian state, which will be Gaza with the Turks and Qatar.
To me, you got to take the Christian quarter of Jerusalem with Bethlehem, and we start there.
We should have our own.
Because I think if you don't get a Christian state in Israel and get people feeling they have ownership of the Holy Land or some obligation as Christians, I'm not so sure Israel as we know it today exists in 20 or 30 years.
And that's brought on not by people who are the defenders of Israel.
That's brought on by people that bought into this kind of imperial Israel, expansionist Israel that was backed by what I call the Israel First Crowd.
And that Charlie Kirk, you know, people say, well, all the stuff, you know, Nick Fuentes and stuff like that, that's the surface.
And that's kind of the mind of Lakes.
Below is about the policies.
And below, you have deep policies on the oligarchs, on artificial intelligence, on Israel, on the globalists about Ukraine.
There are five or six fundamental basic issues about who governs this country.
President Trump walked into a catch-22 when taking office.
Do nothing, and America would be staring at a ticking debt bomb, the kind of crisis that could cripple our future.
Instead, he's taken action with strong policies to slow the train and buy us some time.
But the effects of past administration spending are still working through the system, and experts predict dramatic price increases and market uncertainty.
Trump is doing all he can, but no matter who's in office, protecting your retirement savings is ultimately up to you.
And that's why many Americans are turning to real assets like gold and silver.
Preserved gold is our go-to choice here at the Charlie Kirk Show.
We use them because they make it easy to own physical gold and silver even inside your retirement accounts like an IRA or 401k.
Now, hear from Charlie in his own words: Preserve gold is my go-to choice for all my precious metal needs.
They are the real deal, and I recommend them to my friends, family, and viewers.
Get their free wealth protection guide now by texting Charlie to 50-505.
President Trump is fighting for America's future.
Now it's your turn to help protect yours.
And one thing I can tell you about Charlie is that to his core, although he came out of a very traditional Republican training, to his core, he was a populist nationalist.
America first and American citizens first.
And that's why he built Turning Point like he built it, right?
It's you figure it out.
Let these kids figure it out.
They'll figure it out.
And that's the core of populism.
And so that's why last night I thought it was important to also, let me be blunt.
I've known Ben Shapiro a long time, right?
I've just known him a long time.
Make sure you get this one in the mic.
Oh, but he's just look, listen.
In the particularly in the year 15, after Andrew died and I took over Breitbart, we did have a slight change in editorial policy.
It became more America first.
It became more populous.
It definitely became more nationalist.
If Andrew had been alive during that time of those transitional years, he'd have been right with us.
His inclinations were to do that.
That's why he, Andrew was the central figure of the Tea Party.
The Tea Party was kind of the beginning of that.
We didn't really have it formulated, right?
We had some huge election wins.
Remember, we won 63 House seats in 2010, 63 House seats.
Now, most of those members pretty quickly flipped into be Republican establishment.
But at least it showed you there was a thirst out there, an appetite for peace.
Grassroots that wanted change and wanted pretty fundamental change.
So in 15 and 16, when Trump came along, you know, Matt Ball, Tony Lee, and I was running it, and you had Joel Pollack and Alex Marlowe, you know, all these people today who were very junior at the time.
And, you know, Ben hated Trump, and he was open about that.
And I didn't have a problem with that.
I don't have a problem with other voices talking.
He worked for never part of the company, but a contractor as an editor.
And then you had this incident in Mar-Lago, which was a very marginal incident with Corey Lewandowski in a stringer that we had hired.
You know, he shoved her arm or her hand or something like that.
It was very confusing.
I believe the testimony was he grabbed her, he suplexed her.
Exactly that.
Blood everywhere.
Blood everywhere.
Because it was right before, it was right before Super Tuesday, and they wanted Trump.
These guys were adamant that they had to do something to shop block Trump.
And I just wanted to stand for it.
So the story goes, he either quit or I fired him.
And there's probably a two-minute gap between both of those happening.
And he said, Bannon's turned Breitbart into Trump Pravda.
And Megan Kelly, I know she told the story last night when she asked those questions, which we would think would be pretty innocuous today in the first debate on Fox.
Of course, we went to high dungeon.
Oh, this is awful.
And I unleashed the dogs.
And to the fact that, you know, she had to get security.
And Roger Elscome says, you've got to back off.
I go, no, we don't back off.
We have one, we have full, all-ahead flank because it was Trump that they were trying to take out Trump, the Bush faction.
Fox is very pro-Bush to take him out.
And I said, we're not going to do it.
And that stabilized it.
And Breitbart was his most powerful media thing.
In fact, later, Harvard, a year after the election, Harvard did a study on all media in the 2016 election because they hadn't figured out how they won.
And they realized that with the Pepe's and the Meme Wars.
It was the Meme Wars because Trump really had no money and had no organization.
So he had the Mike Cernovich, like Mike Cernovich, the Meme Wars, the Pepe's, were all in social media.
And Hillary Clinton gave an interview about two months ago.
She said, Bannon and those influencers at the time, before influencers were a thing, over and she had a huge operation.
We just ran circles around him because it was self-organizing and people would just, you know, intention Trump.
And they said later that the most important media outlet by an order of magnitude was not the New York Times or not the Washington Post or not the Nation or MSNBC, was Breitbart for Trump.
And I'm very proud of that.
It was why I was selected to come into the campaign because we were doing such a job.
I knew nothing about, we only had 100 days ago and he's down, I don't know, 10 points.
I didn't know anything about campaigns.
I'd never been into a campaign office in my life, but we specialized in taking down Hillary Clinton, right?
And so that was our.
We had just done Peter Schweitzer's book, which I worked on with Peter and Peter did the research and wrote it everything.
Clinton Cash had come out a year before.
And Bernie Bros were looking for a place to go.
So we put a movie out.
We made a movie called Clinton Cash.
It was just like a video, but it got like 14 million views because we put it up for free.
A lot of the Bernie Bros, because remember, if you just get people to stay home, that's a vote.
If you actually get them to come and vote for you, that's two votes.
And all we wanted was those kind of Bernie Bros, disaffected Democrats and Union Democrats and Independents who leaned working class or populists who weren't prepared to vote for a Republican just to stay home.
And so we did that.
My point is that then Ben made a big deal about not voting for Trump in 2016.
You know, this is he was all over thing.
And so I just don't, I don't buy it.
It's just that they're pushing another agenda.
And that agenda failed.
And not just did it fail, I kept warning them all the time on the show and behind the scenes, this is going to fail.
And the damage you're going to do to Israel is incalculable.
And now we have it.
And now we have a two-state for people that were adamantly against a two-state solution.
Just look at the Wall Street Journal today.
They're going to build a city of the future there with $300 billion of Qataris money and other money from the Gulf Emirates and from Saudi Arabia with a security force led by the Turks that have Egyptians and Saudi troops on that strip in Israel.
So they brought it on themselves.
And so I agree with Loomer.
I think Israel ought to get their total sovereignty and their total independence.
Like today in Syria.
Waliki and the hardcore guys that kind of have a vision, they're not for what we're doing in Syria.
Because the Syrian situation with the ISIS guy is really, that's a Turkish proxy.
That's Erdogan's expansion program.
And so when we're up there siding with them, a lot of the Israelis are saying, well, hang on, that's not helping us and not helping the Druze.
So I think they need their total, full independence.
And they'll take care of themselves.
They'll get on with it without constraints of the United States.
One of the most common.
I think they want us to go with Q&A.
Oh, do we need to?
We've been going for.
How many?
That went quick.
Did I. Did I dominate the microphone?
That's what they're doing.
This is called the Philippines.
They're not paying for us.
So let me ask one last question here, though.
One of the most common critiques that I've heard, even just walking the floor, people talk to me about Israel, but before that as well, is there's a feeling that from the pro-Israel side, even if they are Israelis, but it could be Mark Levin, it could be whatever, that they want to get as much out of Trump out of these next three years.
And it's a feeling like they're trying to maximize everything they can, even if it's going to torpedo the administration.
Is that a concern that you have?
I don't think there's any doubt.
I think this was my complaint.
I went back.
I try to, how to say this, not bug the president by calling you on every topic, et cetera.
When we talk, we talk for a length of time, and I go see him very, very rarely.
But when I do, it's something important.
And so people had asked me to come back, and I went back two days before the bombing, and we'd spent, I don't know, like three or four hours.
And with President Trump, one thing I will tell you, he is the, and my experience at Goldman Sachs of at Goldman Sachs, you're there to work with CEOs and chairmen, right?
He is one of the best listeners.
When you're in a meeting with him, he's not like talking all the time.
He wants to hear what you have to say, competing ideas.
He asks questions and he takes it on board.
So we spent a lot of time that day.
And when I got there, who was there working?
Who was in the, I got to the West Wing a couple hours early.
The person that set up the meeting, the lunch, had asked me to come a couple hours early.
And I walk in and who's sitting right there?
Charlie Kirk.
Charlie Kirk had been there on and off for two weeks, right?
You guys had to juggle all this stuff.
And when Charlie was back at the White House, Charlie's working 12 and 14 hour days.
And part of it was still vetting and helping people to vet, but a lot of it was working on ideas that he felt the administration had to capture.
On this one, when I got there, we had been talking, and he had a very definitive plan on this very topic.
I mean, this is what it's about.
And he was adamant like I was.
We could not allow ourselves to be pulled in to a regime change war.
Also about regime change.
You know this from our work on the CCP, which you guys have been part of.
I don't believe you can do regime change from the top.
You can't go into decapitation.
We can't just go in and take out the Chinese Communist Party.
We just can't go out and take out the Mulas.
I'm not a big believer in just going to go and take Maduro out.
Other people have different theories, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
But you saw this in Vietnam when we were in, had a big commitment, and all of a sudden it wasn't working out for us.
It wasn't going.
What did we do?
The CIA assassinated Diem.
And then what happened?
A complete disaster for their country and our country.
Change has to come from the bottom.
I'm all for cutting off all the oil, not allowing any of the MULA's oils to go to the Chinese Communist Party to cut them off.
And so then you get revolutionary change.
A decapitation, right, strike that then would lead to some civil war internally, we're going to get pulled into that.
And that's a 10 or 20-year process with a ton of American cash, troops, but more importantly, time.
It's opportunity cost.
We have so many problems here that we have to solve.
We don't have the ability to get the public's attention, but more just the work of people there because they're working 16, 18-hour days anyway.
They need all that energy to solve.
You know, you rank order things.
And Charlie was a huge believer in this.
And so, no, and I would say that there's no doubt that they're trying.
That was the biggest.
That's one chance.
They're trying to take the logic.
But President Trump, here's the beauty of President Trump.
He really thought through how to end it.
Remember, not until he ended, he came out and named it.
It was a 12-day war.
When President Trump puts a brand on it, the brand sticks.
It ain't a 13-day war.
It's not going to be a 30-day war.
And he was adamant.
And then when Netanyahu, because remember, Netanyahu decapitated the team that Witcoff was negotiating with, the Iranians, on that first night.
And then when Netanyahu tried to go and decapitate the team negotiating for Hamas in Qatar, it crossed the line with Trump.
Ever since then, just reality, Israel's been kind of a sideshow in this.
It's all been working thing.
And now we found out last night in North Carolina, there is no meeting scheduled over Christmas with Netanyahu.
It's something he's thinking about.
And the president says, I'm going to get it on the books.
But this is how it's kind of gone.
That's a signal.
It's a signal.
And so for those, listen, they're adamant.
It's going to be their way.
They're not going to back off this greater Israel project.
They're not going to back off Israel first.
You're going to have, you know, we're going to have all kind of things starting.
That's fine.
But we have to be adamant.
It's done.
You guys brought it on.
I don't like it.
I don't agree with it.
But there's a Palestinian state going to be set up with Qatar and Turkey.
That's going to happen.
And we have to figure out how to work around that.
And so, no, I think there's going to be, and I think if you walk around here and just talk to people, you'll get the feel that certain forces are trying to get the most out of it in the time.
And we have to be ever vigilant to make sure.
Yeah, and it's also about the access of the president to information.
That's one of the great things about that.
This is a huge untold part of the Trump admin, Trump 2020.
Well, you know.
It's in the feedback loop.
You know who knew that better than anybody, Charlie Kirk.
Charlie knew this.
Listen, you have an operation that could put on a 31,000, that could double the size of already the most important conference in all the world for conservatives.
And you've doubled the size of that in a couple weeks, given the tragedy you guys had and the work you have to do to keep the show going at the level.
And Erica, everything on her plate, and you can do it.
And Charlie built that organization, had all that, was starting to did the college tour in the spring and started another one.
Like I told Charlie, I said, dude, do you need another college tour in the fall?
You're doing so much.
And when he's back in the White House, it's not just for getting people on board.
It's the exact thing.
It's making sure.
When I said he's a networker, Charlie was always making sure that the right people at the right time with Sergio were getting in front of the president.
That lunch, they had tried to schedule that lunch for months, and I just wasn't in D.C. that much.
And it was Sergio that came to me, and Charlie was working there the week before and said, hey, we need you here on Thursday.
It's blocked out.
And I go, okay, this is the thing that the shooting is star says.
It's Thursday at noon, but come or come right after the show at noon and we'll get you in there at 1 or 1.30 and we'll be here.
Because Charlie was working with Sergio to make sure the president was getting a broader access.
And another person who works in this too is the vice president, the vice president's team, Sarabian and those guys, constantly trying to get more voices in front of the president.
And so I think that that is a thing we have to fight going forward.
Yeah.
This is Lane Schoenberger, Chief Investment Officer and founding partner of YReFi.
It has been an honor and a privilege to partner with Turning Point and for Charlie to endorse us.
His endorsement means the world to us, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Turning Point for years to come.
Now, here Charlie, in his own words, tell you about WhyReFi.
I'm going to tell you guys about whyReFi.com.
That is why F.Y.com.
WhyReFi is incredible.
Private student loan debt in America totals about $300 billion.
WhyReFi is refinancing distress or defaulted private student loans?
You can finally take control of your student loan situation with a plan that works for your monthly budget.
Go to yrefi.com.
That is whyrefi.com.
Do you have a co-borrower?
WhyReFi can get them released from the loan?
You can skip a payment up to 12 times without penalty.
It may not be available in all 50 states.
Go to yrefi.com.
That is yrefy.com.
Let's face it, if you have distress or defaulted student loans, it can be overwhelming.
Because of private student loan debt, so many people feel stuck.
Go to yrefi.com.
That is why.com.
Private student loan debt relief, yrefi.com.
Let's get some QA.
That's great, Steve.
Thank you.
QA.
Do we have a microphone?
Yes.
Does that explain what I was trying to do last night?
Yeah.
Leaving out the nasty, snarky part, which you know me.
I got to go there.
What are these at?
Charlie was very classy.
I'm going to tell the story about when we started the handoff, and I go, so you're going to mention it?
Wow.
Hi, Mr. Bannon.
My name's Emma.
My dad loves your show.
We watch you every day.
So as somebody who- Your dad's a man of discernment.
So as somebody who was born in 2003, I was a day old when Osama bin Laden was killed.
It feels like my entire life it's been this confusing mess of endless wars in the Middle East.
Other than, as a Christian, I do want to protect our holy sites.
Why does it feel like even in the conservative movement, we're constantly being dragged into all of these conflicts rather than focusing on all of our problems here and worrying about the midterms and putting America and American citizens first?
So, it's a great question.
From the mouth of babes.
One of the biggest issues, it seems like, is that so many of the problems that we have failed to solve or gotten dragged into have blown back and have come here now.
I mean, the central issue we have today is who actually runs the country, right?
Who makes the decisions?
Who actually empowers the chief executive to make, and this is why the big focus on his Article II powers.
What are those powers?
You watch the show, we've been adamant about that.
That was one of the things in the years in the wilderness that Russ Voten guys came up with, that we've got to maximize the Article II powers of the chief executive because that's ways to get things done, particularly in crisis.
You still have a network, this kind of globalist system, that people make an awful lot of money and have an awful lot of power in having the United States as the kind of the security guarantee around the world.
If you look at, just take the Eurasian landmass quickly, you look from Europe to the Gulf and the Gulf Emirates, the Middle East, around to the South China Sea, and then up to Japan and Korea.
Those four big nodes are the basic trading parties of the United States.
We have trading relationships, commercial relationships, capital markets, but it's also an American security guarantee.
We have NATO, we're in the Middle East, and this is why we have a $1.2 trillion defense budget.
Now, those trade deals are upside down because we've shipped all the jobs.
It's worked to the detriment of the American people, the middle class and the working class.
But the elites have made a tremendous amount of money in this system, and they continue to make a tremendous amount of money in this system.
And they're going to continue that until we actually take power away from them.
And that's one of the reasons I have to fight.
So they always want to focus on everywhere else.
And quite frankly, they don't care.
They just don't.
They don't care about the American worker.
They don't care about the American family.
And you can tell this by their policies of immigration.
They're always trying to, whether it's mass illegal immigration from Mexico and from Latin America to drive down the wages of African Americans and Hispanic American citizens at the lower end, are flooding the zone with these bogus H-1B visas and all these visa programs so that kids coming out of college have to compete against the world here in the United States and drive their wages down 50%.
So the problems that we have been involved in the world have kind of come back to us.
Now, one of the biggest problems we have here today is that we've looked the other way for years on this Marxist-Jihadist coalition.
And this red-green coalition that people like Frank Gaffney and Trevor Loud and others have been warning people about for 20 or 30 years is now a reality.
You see that in New York City with the new elected mayor.
You see that in Chicago where they forced out ICE.
You see it in LA.
You see it in these sanctuary cities that are basically independent.
And we have 15 or 20 million illegal aliens here and they're not about to be deported.
In fact, they're going to do everything to stop that.
That's the force.
And now this is why we're making such a big deal about Texas.
In Texas, and we had on the show today in the audience one of the women fighting this in the United Kingdom.
Because people in the United Kingdom will tell you in England and in France, they're five or ten years away from a civil war, right?
They've allowed it to go on so long.
And so we have to nip it in the butt.
We've allowed it to get out of control in Dearborn, Michigan.
It's going to be very tough to deal with.
Minnesota.
In Minnesota, looking at the Samayans, but in Texas, it's just beginning.
They're building two mosques a month.
And here's Harris, Harris County and Tarrant County are the two counties.
They realize if they can take over Tarrant County and Harris County, they can flip Texas.
And if they flip Texas, we can never win again.
So that's why I just announced tomorrow, January 9th, because this is how we play at the war room.
We're bringing Gert Vilders, the hardest core anti-Islamist in Europe, the Netherlands, a guy that has been hardcore.
We're bringing him to Plano, Texas on the 9th, and we're throwing down hard.
We're having him as a speaker.
They're going to go crazy.
Look, the message of Charlie Kirk and his work, if you cut through everything, is that Charlie, and this is what I said last night, he's a Christian martyr and therefore a Christian saint, even more than an American patriot.
He understood that the country's gone through a de-Christianization process over the last 60, 70, 80 years, and that the purpose of power is not power for power's sake.
The purpose for power is the re-Christianization of our institutions.
And that is the work, that is the task for us at hand.
And so I think that, and I think we can not just think, I know we can do it.
We've won seven of the last eight.
They will never tell you that.
Since 2015, when Trump really came on the scene, there have been eight national elections, either primaries, off-year elections, which is a national election for Congress, or presidential elections.
We've had eight.
We've won seven.
Okay?
And I'm telling you, it's very doable for us to win this year.
And here's why.
I believe the bets we've made on the economy are going to stop paying off.
And that's when it's going to get ugly.
When they can't fall back on affordability or playing by the rules and some economic argument, it's going to get Charlie Kirk type of nasty, the way they treated him everywhere he went.
So we just have to hunker down, understand we had one of the greatest leaders.
I think if you look at history, that Charlie is as close to the revolutionary generation where you had many of the stars of the revolutionary generation who were in their 20s, early 20s to maybe early 30s.
Charlie Kirk has had more impact on our country for his age than anybody really from the revolutionary generation.
So you guys have here, right?
So, you know, we have to pick up the mantle.
It's a, you know, cry havoc and unleash the dogs of information war.
So.
Well said.
Great question.
Hi, Mr. Bannon.
My name is Cole.
I am a high school senior and I plan to ship out for Marine Corps boot camp this summer.
Amen.
Thank you.
I was wondering what your advice would be to find political and just general success following military service.
Thank you.
What I would do, you're making the, every time I talk to audiences, I say do this.
I served eight years in.
It's just go out.
The first thing you should do is either enlist or if you're in college, go be an officer in the military.
And here's why.
The most formative decade of your life is your 20s.
It's one of the reasons of the crisis we have today because we are taking away opportunities from people in this late family formation, late home ownership, and even learning as an apprentice, as an artisan, a profession in your 20s.
The best thing you can do is in the military.
Don't worry about your political future going forward.
Just hit it every day.
Take as many tough assignments, go as travel the world.
If you've got an assignment that takes you overseas, take it.
If you've got something that's particularly hazardous, take it.
That building of your character is everything in that decade.
And you're going to a place that is one of the finest institutions.
Remember, in 250 years, it's like the Royal Navy.
Why is the Marine Corps so special?
Because the Marine Corps is going to strip you down of all your false ego and get back to the core of your character.
And it's a tough process, but they're going to build back up through daily actions.
And daily, you're holding yourself accountable and working as a team.
Remember in the war room, when somebody comes to work for me, I make them watch a film called 12 O'Clock High.
It's about the 8th Air Corps in the first days of World War II.
About in situations like this, it's all about working together as a team, right?
As imperfect as you are.
And the sacrifices that have to come with that, because working as a team means sublimating some natural human tendencies.
The Marine Corps is the perfect institution.
You know, as a naval officer, we're pretty good and the Army's pretty good, but the Marine Corps has perfected taking basic American citizens, young kids, and turning them into something that's very special and very lethal.
So don't worry about your career going forward.
Maximize every day you're in the Corps and you'll turn out fine.
Steve Bannon, everyone.
Yes.
Thank you, Steve.
Thank you very much.
Thank you guys.
By the way, I'm so proud of what you guys have accomplished and all the grief you've gotten and all the hate you've gotten.
It is amazing.
This conference, look at the energy, look at the kids.