| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon discussed the first 100 days of the incoming Trump administration. | |
| During the conversation, Mr. Bannon also touches on Elon Musk's influence on President-elect Trump. | ||
| And he calls for a moratorium on immigration. | ||
| This was hosted by Politico Playbook. | ||
| Thank you, Steve, for being here. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Dasha, thanks, and thanks for Politico for having me. | ||
| Let's start with some of the headlines that you've been making recently. | ||
| There is a new voice in President Trump's ear, Elon Musk. | ||
| You're not happy about it. | ||
| Is President Trump too close to Musk? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just to be sure, you know, it's not that I'm not happy about it. | |
| I mean, Elon Musk, and I think I'm the first one that really built the narrative, he came in in basically in the spring and early summer, and most importantly, he backed our play, which was this was going to be a MAGA plus election. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, a base plus these dissident moms at the school boards. | |
| And people have been trying to moderate President Trump even on the campaign trail. | ||
| So number one, Elon Musk came in and totally backed kind of the populist, you know, MAGA play. | ||
| He then wrote $250 million worth of checks to back that play, not to put in TV advertising, which is extraordinary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not over a whole cycle. | |
| That's in five months. | ||
| And I've said from the beginning, both in the United States, he deserves a place at the table. | ||
| And in Europe, I've said, and I think Politico has covered it pretty well, is that he holds the two tactical nuclear weapons of modern politics, which is unlimited cash in a social media platform that's not just ubiquitous, but also he can deem who's heard and who's not heard. | ||
|
unidentified
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And there's not many governments in Europe that are going to withstand that. | |
| That being said, in Politico today, the piece by Messerly and Wren, I think laid out the best. | ||
| This is a new coalition, much broader than 16. | ||
| This is the beginning, I think, of a 1932 FDR-type realignment in American politics. | ||
| And clearly, you're going to have members of that coalition that don't agree on everything. | ||
| I do fundamentally disagree with some of the basics of the Mark Andreessen, Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel outlook, philosophy of life and philosophy of politics. | ||
| And there's going to be clashes. | ||
| But I think the political article today is the best at summing it up. | ||
| President Trump is good, particularly about people arguing ideas and the best idea and the best policy wins. | ||
| So going forward, it's going to be quite intense. | ||
| I actually think that we're winning this round and we're winning this round pretty big. | ||
| He's already backed off the H-1B visas. | ||
| He's already said they've got to be reformed. | ||
| We say they have to be done away with. | ||
| I think we'll get Elon there. | ||
| And as soon as I can turn Elon Musk from a techno-feudalist to a populist nationalist, we'll start making real progress. | ||
| If you can't turn him, do you want him out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can't turn him. | |
| Look, the bottom line, he's not going to be totally out. | ||
| I mean, there's reporting today that he is going to have some access, I think, to the EOB, maybe an office over there, particularly with Doge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So he's not going to be out. | |
| Look, when you write $250 million worth of checks, when you're that involved, when you have actually backed a ground game, you're going to have a seat at the table. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've always argued it can't be at the head of the table, and that table shouldn't be the cabinet room in the West Wing. | |
| So I'm a realist, and I've had this fight before. | ||
| People, I think some folks remember back in 2017, Elon and I went back and forth virtually every day about the EV tax credits, which I told him at the time, I said, people making $32,000 a year are not going to underwrite you and these ventured capitalists on a company that could be worth billions and billions of dollars, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
|
unidentified
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That was Tesla, and I won that round. | |
| So I've gone with Elon before. | ||
| We're going to go at it again. | ||
| Elon's not going to go away because he's got, like I say, he's got the two tactical nuclear weapons. | ||
| He's got modern politics, and he will use those tactical nuclear weapons. | ||
| Do you think he has too much influence right now? | ||
| I mean, he's been posted up at Mar-a-Lago. | ||
| He's been in Trump's ear non-stop since the election. | ||
| As a teacher in Harvard Business School, kind of in the first year, there's power and there's influence. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's shocking to me is he doesn't have much power. | |
| Why do you say that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, because he doesn't have the ability to actually make decisions and inform those decisions and drive those decisions. | |
| If you look at even the time at Mar-a-Lago, he's come in, he's definitely had some influence, and he's had some influence on picks, but let's go back over that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was adamant about Howard Luttnick being Secretary of the Treasury, actually trashed Scott Besson. | |
| Last time I looked, Scott Besson's hearing, I think, is on Thursday or Friday for Secretary of the Treasury. | ||
| You know, many of the picks that he wanted didn't come to pass. | ||
| Some of the picks did, right? | ||
| So he's had some influence. | ||
| He's had some influence over policy. | ||
| None of that's really stuck yet as hard policy. | ||
| Like, for instance, the HB1 visas, the whole issue of the business community, particularly the tech community, essentially importing indentured servants to take jobs of American citizens. | ||
| He's had some influence so far, but those policies haven't stuck. | ||
| It's going to be a constant fight and a constant clash of ideas. | ||
| And if I, you know, I would go long the populist nationalist positions on these. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, the hardcore American citizens come first, America comes first. | |
| So Elon's not going to go away. | ||
| And quite frankly, he shouldn't go away. | ||
| I mean, I've been quite intense, and part of that is to try to shift the Overton window on this debate. | ||
| But Elon's not going to go away anytime soon. | ||
| And there's going to be a continual clash and continued fight over ideas. | ||
| How do you have that fight? | ||
| And how do you have that clash? | ||
| For those of us that don't know the inner workings behind the scenes, does that play out in public with you sort of trashing him in interviews or criticizing him on your podcast? | ||
| Or are there conversations behind the scenes that are happening that we don't know about? | ||
| It still kind of shocks me that the political press hasn't really spent the time both on populist policies and or even President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
President Trump to me is a McLuhanesque figure. | |
| And what I mean by that, he deeply believes at a very deep level Marshall McLuhan's ideas and concepts about mass communications. | ||
| President Trump is about how do you connect with a mass audience and how do you connect your ideas with a mass audience and also how you read the room from a mass audience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That to me explains his popularity, that he is kind of hardwired in to the zeitgeist of working and middle-class people in this country and where they are. | |
| And I think a lot of that is coming from his Queen's background, not his Manhattan background. | ||
| So the best way I have found to ever fight for ideas is to do it very publicly and to do it using media. | ||
| And I think this is the reason that War Room has been such a powerful platform. | ||
| You were one of the architects in the first administration of the shock and awe strategy. | ||
| Trump's different this time around. | ||
| You're not in the White House this time around, but is there going to be the same shock and awe vibe, or is it something different altogether? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dash, I think it's going to be much more intense. | |
| We refer to it right now, we refer to it right now as days of thunder. | ||
| And I think the days of thunder, I think these days of thunder starting next week are just going to be incredibly, incredibly intense. | ||
| I think you're going to see 50 executive orders. | ||
| You're going to see a lot of legislation put forward. | ||
| You're going to see the beginning of it today with Pete Hegseth. | ||
| So this is going to be quite intense. | ||
| It's going to be 10 to the 10th power more intense, I believe, than the shock and awe we did in 1917, because remember, there's been four years of preparation here. | ||
| You know, say what you will about Project 2025 and other projects like that at these other think tanks and other groups, but we spent years, people developing the policies, developing the executive orders, seeing the direction of where we want to take this movement, and also developing personnel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're going to see many more people hit the beach, many more cabinet people get confirmed much quicker. | |
| You're going to have much more thought-through ideas. | ||
| There are going to be many more executive orders. | ||
| And most of these, I think at the beginning, or all of them at the beginning, the 50 that I think hit right away, will have office of legal counsel opinions on them. | ||
| So I tell people, shock and awe was a 17 concept. | ||
| Days of thunder, I think, are going to be the concept starting next Monday. | ||
| And I believe President Trump is going to hit it and hit it hard with what I call, or Bartley and Wall Street Journal called muzzle velocity. | ||
| Those types of driving force of policies and personnel to get things done and get them done quickly. | ||
| So Heritage Foundation, AFPI, these groups that have been building playbooks like Project 2025, you think that will infiltrate and have an impact on some of the policies of the administration? | ||
| Steve, did we lose you? | ||
| Uh-oh, this is the futuristic excitement that I was talking about. | ||
| Can you hear me, Steve? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Doctor, I'm afraid I didn't hear you. | |
| Can you repeat that? | ||
| Yeah, can you hear me now? | ||
| Testing once. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I can hear you now. | |
| All right. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| Thanks for bearing with us, guys. | ||
| I was saying you mentioned Project 2025. | ||
| I mean, the Heritage Foundation, AFPI, these groups that have been putting together some playbooks. | ||
| Do you think that will have an impact and sort of infiltrate some of the policies coming from the administration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All those. | |
| 2025 has become a buzzword. | ||
| But it's all these different groups over, listen, over four years, particularly people that believe strongly that the 2020 election was stolen and that President Trump was the rightful president and would come back and win the primary and take the White House again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People dug down and started working these policies. | |
| What did we not get accomplished the first time? | ||
| What did we want to get accomplished now? | ||
| And people went to work over a four-year period and built the networks, kind of the subject matter experts in the networks needed to actually have the 3,000 people hit the beach right away that don't have to be Senate confirmed, but also the other thousand that have to be Senate confirmed. | ||
| President Trump's administration this time is 10 times more prepared than it had been when we came in the first, because we were kind of a come from behind victory. | ||
| As you remember, we didn't have a lot of time to think through transition. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There wasn't that deep bench of players that believed in President Trump's philosophy. | |
| So not only is President Trump the most powerful individual politically in Washington, he also now has a true army in back of him of people that have spent years thinking through policies, of people that have worked together for years and are prepared now next Monday to hit the beach. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I think you see it right now, what I call the flood the zone concept in the confirmations this week. | |
| You're going to see people that are coming together that have great backup, have thought through policy, are prepared to hit a relatively hostile confirmation process, both from a little bit from establishment Republicans, but particularly the Democrats. | ||
| And I just think, I call it days of thunder. | ||
| I think people are not prepared right now, particularly the political press, of how intense this is going to be, but this is years in the making. | ||
| You talk about the army that's behind him now. | ||
| The coalition is quite broad. | ||
| It's so different. | ||
| I mean, just looking at the events in this coming inaugural weekend, right, you've got the crypto ball, you've got young influencers, you have the Black Conservative Federation, Hispanic ball, all of these folks that weren't engaged last time around. | ||
| But that makes it a little bit more complicated, right? | ||
| There are a lot of different interests. | ||
| I want to talk about some of that, particularly when it comes to Congress. | ||
| You have Speaker Mike Johnson, who will actually be on this stage later today. | ||
| Johnson didn't have full Republican support to be Speaker. | ||
| You have Senate Leader John Thune, who's a Mitch McConnell guy. | ||
| Are these the right leaders to enact President Trump's agenda? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me just talk about your first part of that, about this broad coalition. | |
| Think about it for a second. | ||
| The Democrats or the established order in Washington had every source of institutional power. | ||
| They had the media, they had Wall Street, they had the technology in Silicon Valley, they had the corporatists, they had every lobbyist, this kind of populist nationalist movement, and to show the power. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our new coalition partners are not maybe with us 100% ideologically, but they understand the power of this going forward, that the Democrats basically, because I come from a Democrat family, basically abandoned working class people in the middle class in populism. | |
| And they see the power of populism. | ||
| Clearly, it's a complicated coalition. | ||
| We have the brolegarts, right, and you have hardcore populist nationalists. | ||
| And so that coalition going forward, and you see the collapse kind of the Democratic Party that lost some of the central parts of their thing, particularly Silicon Valley and a little bit of Wall Street. | ||
| This is now coming together. | ||
| It's going to be very complicated. | ||
| You're going to see it play out in the halls of Congress, I believe, because no one really paid attention to this radical idea called modern monetary theory that right now in Washington, D.C., everything we do, whether it's the war in Ukraine, whether it's deportations, whether it's immigration, even deconstruction administrative state, everything is going to be within the framework that a lot of the easy alternatives of how to pay for things and the sustainability, not of the planet, | ||
|
unidentified
|
but the sustainability of the economic and financial model of our country and our government is going to be the number one criteria. | |
| It's going to be the prism everything has looked through. | ||
| And these are going to be intense battles. | ||
| You can see it already, this battle on Capitol Hill between the one and two reconciliations. | ||
| This is not simply a process story. | ||
| This cuts to the heart of how one is going to govern in the future. | ||
| President Trump has this tension of, at the same time, has a coalition that really could end up being two-thirds of the American people if handled correctly. | ||
| He has to balance that within this framework of this massive debt and really the refinancing of this debt and the paying for the refinancing of this debt. | ||
| So, no, I think right now in Capitol Hill, it's going to be very intense. | ||
| Speaker Johnson, and he knows I've never really been a fan, he's got a horrible job. | ||
| It's a tough job. | ||
| He's going to have to put together coalitions, particularly of people that want to have significant reductions in deficits. | ||
| And I just think, even the last couple days, the mindset in Washington is still wrong. | ||
| People come up and saying, oh, we have a $5 trillion cut, but it's over a 10-year period. | ||
| We have to get out of that mindset. | ||
| It is what is the first two years I put my investment banker hat on. | ||
| This is like a restructuring. | ||
| Forget 10 years. | ||
| I'm not interested in 10 years. | ||
| I'm not interested in the out years. | ||
| I'm not interested in years five, six, and seven. | ||
| I'm interested in this appropriations process. | ||
| I'm interested in this deficit in this year and next year. | ||
| What's the size of it? | ||
| How it's going to be financed, and how you have dramatic moves of how to close it. | ||
| This is one of the reasons I think what Elon's doing at Doge is so absolutely central, not just to deconstruction administrative state, but to actually work with Russ Vogt and Scott Bessett and come up with a model that Speaker Johnson and Thun could shepherd through the House and the Senate to actually put something on the president's desk that reinforces how do we get back to a sustainable financial and economic model in this country. | ||
| But to that point, I mean, there are ideological differences here. | ||
| So, are Johnson and Thun the right leaders in this moment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, look, they were picked by their House members. | |
| They're picked by the Senate. | ||
| President Trump's very comfortable with both people, and I think that's very important because this is going to be like going into combat, right? | ||
| This is going to be so in the moment, it's going to be so intense, and decisions are going to have to be made. | ||
| You have to trust the judgment of those people. | ||
| President Trump trusts the judgment of Speaker Johnson. | ||
| He trusts the judgment of John Thune. | ||
| Ivis have different opinions, but I'm just one schmendrick in the crowd, and we're going to fight very intensely for these things. | ||
| President Trump makes the ultimate decisions, and that's why I think the first most important fight right now is on it's not just a process fight, it's a fight about how we go forward. | ||
| That's why I think that the one versus two reconciliations is probably the most important fight that we're going through right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It will set the tone for not just the first year of President Trump's second term, but I think will set the tone for actually how we finance this country and this government going forward. | |
| I mean, on tax policy, for example, there's a lot of talk about lowering the corporate tax rate. | ||
| Again, these ideological differences. | ||
| Do you think that kind of focus on corporate tax rate risks alienating the working class that you talk about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, this is why, you know, I'm one voice among many, right? | |
| Like I said, I'm just another schmendrick. | ||
| However, this is quite critical. | ||
| This is why we're fighting for two bills. | ||
| We want to take care of immigration, deportations, energy, and maybe some defense in a first bill that's not revenue generating. | ||
| And so it could start in the Senate. | ||
| We agree with Senator Thune and the 53 senators who appear to agree with us to do that. | ||
| In the tax bill, look, one thing that's disturbed me coming out already. | ||
| We want the populist wing, right, are going to fight for not just no taxes on tips, but I noticed in Jason Smith's, when I'm, I didn't, I missed the part where he said no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, no tax on bonuses. | ||
| Those were critical campaign promises. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Our wing of the party, our wing of President Trump's movement, that's totally supportive of President Trump, want to go and have much more tax cuts for working class people and for the middle class. | |
| And if the wealthy and the donors won't get their lobbyists to support lower federal spending, which they're not, they've really been the class that's driven this modern monetary theory that's got us in this jam, that deficits don't matter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, now we know deficits do matter because it's the financing and refinancing of those deficits that are killing us. | |
| So in that regard, to me, corporate tax rates have to come up. | ||
| And the wealthy have to be taxed more simply for the fact that we have to close this gap on the deficits on an ongoing basis. | ||
| Now, if they can turn their lobbyists and support Elon Musk and support, particularly Russ Vogt, on having dramatic cuts in federal spending, and I mean in years, I mean in this year and next year, don't give me 10 years. | ||
| I'm not interested. | ||
| When people tell you, oh, it's $6 trillion of cuts over a 10-year period. | ||
| They are lying to you. | ||
| This is how we got into the situation. | ||
| When McCarthy said, oh, they have all these Republican wins. | ||
| These are not wins. | ||
| This is another way to kick the can down the road. | ||
| This has to be addressed now. | ||
| We're adamant on the show and talking to people and presenting to President Trump that you have to have many more taxes, particularly the tax cut on Social Security. | ||
| That is a priority. | ||
| Any tax cut, particularly even reinstalling the tax cuts of 2017 for the wealthy, as you know, Dasha, I had this huge fight with Gary Kahn and Jared Kushner and Steve Mnuchin in the Oval Office of President Trump. | ||
| And hey, I lost. | ||
| I lost in the Wall Street Journal came out. | ||
| Bannon's got to go. | ||
| I lost. | ||
| I lost that round. | ||
| But I think we're going to win this round. | ||
| And this is absolutely, I think, central to the vibrancy of the economy and really to the American people. | ||
| So you talk about cutting at the federal level. | ||
| What's the first agency that you would scrap or gut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, first off, you know, I spent eight years as a naval officer. | |
| I spent almost four years at sea on a destroyer. | ||
| My daughter's a West Point graduate, 101st airborne, served in Iraq. | ||
| So Bannons have a history of doing the five years as citizens, good citizens, and then going to civilian life. | ||
| She's actually in, she's been at the support of Pete Hexett today. | ||
| She'll be in the audience as a former junior officer to support, female officers support Pete. | ||
| Now, that being said, when I see an NDAA of $900 billion, and I don't really see us in a real confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party, either in capital markets or technology, the defense budget is too big. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm pretty adamant the defense budget's got to be cut. | |
| I think you start. | ||
| Okay, first off. | ||
| Would Hegseth do that, Steve? | ||
| Would Hegseth do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When people tell you that the problem here is entitlements, they're missing the point. | |
| We're not going to get to entitlements. | ||
| Entitlements right now is a contract with the little guy. | ||
| They're not going to give up their Social Security. | ||
| They're not going to give up their Medicare until they see the political class and the donor class actually get their arms around discretionary spending. | ||
| And to get your arms around discretionary spending, you have to start with the defense budget. | ||
| We have to rethink. | ||
| We have to have a revolution in military affairs. | ||
| And this is why I think Pete's so important. | ||
| A revolution in military affairs that then flows through how we actually pay for this. | ||
| At $900 billion, and this is why I'm so adamant about NATO's got to pay more. | ||
| The Gulf Emirates and the situation we have in the Middle East have to pay more. | ||
| We can't have two carrier battle groups in the Red Sea keeping the Suez Canal open for the Europeans in East Asia. | ||
| Japan's got to step up to the plate. | ||
| Our allies have to step up to the plate. | ||
| The defense budget is too big. | ||
| And I realize people say, well, we for years haven't done things. | ||
| Well, listen, we've got to rethink this. | ||
| If you're going to cut discretionary spending, it has to start with a good faith effort to rethink the defense budget. | ||
| And to have an NDAA that was $900 billion, given the financial situation we have and given the reality of what we face now, to me is grossly irresponsible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Grossly irresponsible. | |
| And that has to be addressed, has to be addressed head-on. | ||
| That's why I think the P-Hexes of the world and the young warrior cast that fought these horrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and understand what's happening in Ukraine and the Middle East are the perfect leaders today to really get in back of significant changes in our defense policy to keep us strong, | ||
| to make sure that the main thing is the main thing, which is the confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party, but are able to think through defense so that we can reorder defense and to get to then the social programs that you're going to have to talk about and they're going to have to be some reorienting and some cuts in that to then eventually have a conversation with the American people of entitlements. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's not going to be a conversation. | |
| There's not going to be a conversation where they're willing to accept from the political class in Washington anything where they think the political class is a bunch of con men that are bought and paid for by the corporatists, Wall Street, and the donor class, which is exactly the situation we have today. | ||
| So I think we've gotten a couple new hashtags from you today. | ||
| We've got droligarchs and we've got days of thunder and those days of thunder, I assume, are in part going to come from those executive orders, right? | ||
| So what is the executive order that you are fighting hardest for? | ||
| All the ones Stephen Miller and Homan have got, I think, a great grasp on both the deportations, the wall security. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that, I think, is covered by very smart guys who know this. | |
| The one I want that's not going to be the first day, but eventually get there, I want a complete 100% moratorium on all immigration until we get our arms around. | ||
| Including legal immigration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I say legal immigration in quotes. | |
| There is no legal immigration in this country. | ||
| It's all a con. | ||
| It's all a con against American workers. | ||
| Every part of it. | ||
| These programs have been so abused and so gamed. | ||
| I believe we need a 100% moratorium for a while to get this sort of thing. | ||
| So Stephen, in a country made up of immigrants, you want a 100% moratorium on all immigration? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just for a while. | |
| A moratorium until we get our arms around, so then we can have a factual conversation. | ||
| What we need is to go and show the facts about what these visa programs have done, the people that can invest money here and get visas, all of it. | ||
| The programs are so obscure, have been done behind closed doors, are so complicated. | ||
| We need a discussion on that. | ||
| And the American people are thirsting for a discussion on that. | ||
| Have you talked to President Trump about this? | ||
| I have not talked to President Trump about this, but I do talk every day on the show about this, so I know that the base of our movement and the base of our party support a moratorium. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I didn't say it's forever, but a moratorium until we get our arms around. | |
| Have you talked to Stephen Miller about it? | ||
| I've had discussions. | ||
| I've had discussions with a lot of people about this, but I've not talked to the president. | ||
| The other one is to set up, I think, a refocus, like President Trump is talking about a new Monroe Doctrine from Panama to Greenland, is also to rethink about taxes. | ||
| We have an internal revenue service that was set up basically in 1913, right, after the panic of 1906, 1907. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the drivers I would love to see in the executive orders is set up an external revenue service that we wouldn't just look at tariffs, because tariffs paid for everything up until the early 20th century. | |
| But you wouldn't just look at tariffs. | ||
| You look at everything about how you can charge fees, essentially, whether that's on investment, whether that's on other things of access to this country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
America's behind the golden door, okay? | |
| And this market's the most robust, lucrative market in the world. | ||
| And we shouldn't just let people have access. | ||
| We shouldn't let foreigners have access to this market and to the American people and American citizens for free. | ||
| So I think I would love to see something that set up an external revenue service in Treasury that eventually took the burden off people on internal revenue service. | ||
| There's no reason the American people, American corporations, even the donor class has to pay for everything. | ||
| And I think we have to rethink that. | ||
| So things on revenue, other things on economics, on immigration, I think are important and not just illegal. | ||
| We've been focused so much on illegal immigration. | ||
| We tend to forget that in the 16 campaign, and particularly the 16 primary, one of the biggest things President Trump had going for him was talking about this whole concept of legal immigration, which honestly is so gamed. | ||
| There is no legal immigration in this country right now. | ||
| So you've got your perch here in the war room, but as far as we know, you're not going into the White House this time around. | ||
| So who is the Steve Bannon in this administration that's going to have Trump see her? | ||
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I think it's a very different structure. | |
| I think Susie is a safe pair of hands. | ||
| Susie has been Susie Wiles. | ||
| I hired her actually in the 16 campaign against the recommendation of President Trump at the time. | ||
| She was fantastic. | ||
| We would not have won Florida in 16 if it had not been for Susie Wiles. | ||
| We brought her in, I think, in August, right after I got there in September. | ||
| She's fantastic. | ||
| She's a safe pair of hands. | ||
| She's got a way she runs things. | ||
| I think you see a very different kind of White House staff and White House going forward than kind of the contentious in the open fighting that we had, but they were all for good reasons. | ||
| There was different policies. | ||
| I'm not so sure. | ||
| I think President Trump, when you say Steve Bannon, President Trump's always been his own strategist. | ||
| President Trump, and particularly if you look at the way he's managed this coalition so far, of how he put it together for this great victory across the board, this sweep of how he's actually managed it in the transition and how he'll manage it going forward. | ||
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President Trump's a deal guy, and he understands how to, I think, juggle opposing views and, quite frankly, strong personalities. | |
| So one thing I will note that many of the strongest personalities in President Trump's orbit are not going in the White House. | ||
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Corey Lewandowski, Dave Bossi, Jason Miller, Boris Epstein, Steve Bannon. | |
| I see some pattern recognition there. | ||
| And I think all of those people are going to be very strong voices on the outside in whatever vertical they're in. | ||
| And so I would look for President Trump to have a lot of support both inside the White House with a much more smoothly running operation and also outside with allies who now have kind of their, as you call them, perches or their own kind of verticals that can support the president in the policies that he's eventually going to want to drive. | ||
| Susie Wiles plans to be sort of a gatekeeper in the White House. | ||
| Do you believe she can execute that role? | ||
| And do you think that the right people will be gatekept, so to speak? | ||
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This is Susie, I think, smart enough to know there's one level of gatekeeping and then another. | |
| Look, the failures of John Kelly and others. | ||
| President Trump's President Trump. | ||
| You know, he's in his 70s now. | ||
| He's got a house style. | ||
| And one thing people should know, he's always trying to get input from a wide variety of people, people who the public don't even know, just to bounce ideas off him. | ||
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He's always seeing how it plays in the room. | |
| He's very good at judging what people are thinking and where the country's going. | ||
| This is one of his superpowers. | ||
| And so I think Susie's smart enough, because you've seen so already on the campaign and so far in the transition. | ||
| She doesn't try to go John Kelly on you. | ||
| She doesn't try to hermetically seal the president because he can't be hermetically sealed. | ||
| Particularly now, given that he knows 2020 was stolen, he came back in 2021. | ||
| In those first couple of dark years when even Rupert Murdoch said we're going to make him a non-person, President Trump has gone up the learning curve of confidence in his own judgment and confidence in policies and also people that will have his back. | ||
| So there's still going to be total access, I think, at one level to President Trump because this is just the way, this is his house style. | ||
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I think she is going to have a little more management. | |
| So it's maybe not quite so chaotic At the staff level, although I will say, particularly in that first year, all the benefits of the economy and foreign policy, the peace and prosperity of 19, those seeds were sown with Reines Priebus and the team with all the fighting that went on. | ||
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They were all sown in 2017. | |
| That's why this first 100, next week, the days of thunder next week, the first 100 days, the first six months, and the first year to me are everything in this because the seeds of peace and prosperity that President Trump is dedicated to bring back, it's all going to be sown there. | ||
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That will all be where it's either sown or where it's not sown. | |
| And so that's where this fight the next year is going to be so intense. | ||
| Now, to be clear, I know this has been slipped in a couple of times. | ||
| There's been no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020, but I don't want to look back. | ||
| Let's keep looking forward. | ||
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Hang on, hang on, hang on. | |
| Ho, ho, ho, ho. | ||
| Look at Jack Smith's. | ||
| Look at there's no thing of widespread fraud. | ||
| Please, hang on, Dasher. | ||
| I understand you've got a legal thing you have to do. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| But why is the J-6 committee having people go to the White House and beg for blanket preemptive pardons? | ||
| Why is Jack Smith and his team quitting early and also talking to people about pardons? | ||
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This has to be. | |
| Well, they're worried about political persecution in the same way that you have claimed that's a mission. | ||
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Hey, if they just thought it was political persecution, they wouldn't be worried. | |
| They're worried. | ||
| This has to be totally adjudicated. | ||
| You have to adjudicate 2020. | ||
| You have to adjudicate J-6. | ||
| You have to adjudicate the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump. | ||
| And on this one, we're absolutely adamant. | ||
| President Trump needs to do this for this country, not for himself. | ||
| You see last night the Jack Smith thing's a nothing burger, total nothing burger. | ||
| Look, see, President Trump himself has said he wants to look to the future. | ||
| So let's keep doing that because otherwise we're going to get off the rails real fast. | ||
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President Trump does want to look to the future. | |
| He says his retribution will be peace and prosperity. | ||
| That doesn't mean that some of his colleagues that understand what they not just tried to do to him, but did to this country has to be adjudicated. | ||
| And this is going to be a big effort, I think, of people try to get President Trump on board to do that. | ||
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Like I said, President Trump is not a vindictive person. | |
| President Trump is not someone that looks for revenge, but we need to do this for the country. | ||
| And you should know there are elements of President Trump's coalition that are absolutely adamant that this has to be done. | ||
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This weaponization has to be taken out root and branch from this government. | |
| So you say he's not a vindictive person, but you do want to see some vindictiveness? | ||
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unidentified
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No, no, no, no. | |
| Not vindictive. | ||
| Look, I went to a federal prison for four months. | ||
| I'm not vindictive about that at all. | ||
| That is what it is, but I did it on a reason to not bend the knee to Nancy Pelosi in an illegitimate J-6 committee that's now begging the White House for blanket preemptive pardons. | ||
| Benny Thompson, the chairman, publicly, and again today it's in punch bowl about they've got a scoop about how they're doing it. | ||
| So listen, this is not about vindication. | ||
| It's not about revenge. | ||
| This is about we can never allow this to happen again. | ||
| And the only way that's going to happen is you have to put forward to the American people what the actual facts are. | ||
| What the facts are of 2020, what the facts are of J6, what the facts are of this vast criminal conspiracy that came after President Trump. | ||
| Hell, he was indicted for what, 92 felonies. | ||
| You know, this kangaroo court in New York is guiding for 34 felonies. | ||
| That all has to be from New York City to Georgia to Washington, D.C. | ||
| That has to be fully vetted, investigated, and adjudicated. | ||
| And I've strongly recommended a special prosecutor that doesn't report to the Justice Department. | ||
| The special prosecutor to me should report right to the White House. | ||
| Steve, you mentioned your stint in prison in 2024. | ||
| You're also facing trial again in February on charges related to alleged money laundering, conspiracy, and a scheme to defraud. | ||
| That's something that Trump can't pardon you in that case. | ||
| How is that all going to impact your ability to help President Trump enact his agenda? | ||
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It's not going to impact at all. | |
| First off, the situation in New York, I'm not worried about whatsoever. | ||
| We will take care of that. | ||
| It won't impact me. | ||
| No offense, I come out of prison this time with more power, more impact, more focus than I had going in. | ||
| So I'm not afraid of prison. | ||
| I'm not afraid of any charges they put up. | ||
| I'm not afraid of any kangaroo court. | ||
| I'm simply not afraid of it. | ||
| So we'll take care of the situation in New York. | ||
| Another political persecution, but we'll get through that. | ||
| It won't impact me whatsoever. | ||
| And lastly, I know you're close with Don Jr. | ||
| The Trump family this time around, there's a different dynamic. | ||
| Jared and Nabanka aren't going to be involved, but what do you think will be the role of the Trump family and folks like Don and Eric? | ||
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By the way, I'm working very closely with Jared. | |
| I'm working very closely with Jared on prison reform. | ||
| Jared Kushner met a year ago at the Jim Caviso film at Bedminster and made a pact that we would work together to make sure President Trump was re-elected. | ||
| That was that imperative. | ||
| And I am a big supporter of all the prison reform and the First Step Act that Jared Kushner, there'll be some announcement, I think, in the future about Jared and I working together on the First Step Act and prison reform. | ||
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unidentified
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We're big believers in prison reform. | |
| I think, obviously, Don Jr., who's a fantastic guy, and we're very close with. | ||
| Don Jr. has taken more of a lead role, but Eric and Laura did such an amazing job at the RNC. | ||
| So we're working very well with the family, and particularly I'm working very well with Jared Kushner. | ||
| And Jared Kushner, I'm telling you, has done something to help this country that's very significant, and that is prison reform, which we need dramatically. | ||
| All right, Steve, I know you got a show to record. | ||
| Thank you so much for beaming in here. | ||
| And sorry for the technical difficulties, everyone. | ||
| Steve, thanks so much. | ||
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unidentified
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Yasha, thank you, and thank Politico for having me. | |
| We got a quick word from our sponsors, and then my colleague Jonathan Martin will be up on stage here. | ||
| And enjoy, everyone. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
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House Speaker Mike Johnson here talks about his expectations during President-elect Trump's first 100 days in office. | |
| He highlights disaster aid for the California wildfires, the Republican Party's congressional agenda, and legislation relating to immigration, energy, and taxes. | ||
| It's hosted by Politico Playbook. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Welcome, Mr. Speaker. | ||
| Thanks for taking the time. | ||
| Glad to be here. | ||
| He's a little busy these days. | ||
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I'm actually going to start there. | |
| So, you have a quite daunting to-do list this year. |