Steve Bannon (60:05)
This is what's called a. That's called a press gaggle. Let's get that shot back up there for. We can. Got enough of me. Let's get that shot back up. It's okay to see the unsteadiness. It's going to be fine. Let's double box it. I got to anchor this and produce it and direct at the same time. Just teasing the team. I want people to see it. This is called a press gag. You know, gaggles. When you have all these press. This is the pool that's with the president the entire time. Now, did we see the. Now you're going to go out. When you're on the White House staff, you have what's called wranglers. You have press wranglers. There's our own Brian Glenn right there. You have press wranglers. And the press wrangler's job is to keep this unruly element, keep those great shots. It's fantastic. You're seeing the sausage being made, folks, right there. And I want to join. I think we're getting ready to go to the Charlie Kirk. Yeah. In fact, we're into the Charlie. Charlie Kirk show now. I want to welcome the Charlie Kirk audience. Just to do a reset, we are live from Asheville, North Carolina. Our own Brian Glenn has been invited to have our own camera today. Not taking a press feed, but our own camera is there with the president's motorcade. The president landed at about 10:30, 10:40 Eastern Standard Time. He did a short meeting with Officials on the tarmac. He then had a press availability, answered a few questions. Then he went over, got his Secret Service vehicles out of the line, and actually went to go see his people, war room posse and MAGA members on kind of a rope line. He did a meet and greet there, shook hands, had people really saying, Mr. President, we love you. Then he went for what we call roundtable. These are very traditional when president goes to a local area, either even for a factory opening or to see people, particularly when you go to these disaster areas. The theme of the day is President Trump is getting all direct briefings from people. Are there. Franklin Graham, Samaritan's purse. I can't tell you how important Samaritan's purse has been. Ten days ago, when Ben Berkhom was there for two days, all we heard was, Samaritan's purse, Samaritan's purse. They'd been out in western North Carolina and East Tennessee bringing kind of philanthropic and charitable relief that the federal government had one of the major questions. And I was actually impressed with the press not asking wise guy questions. I think you see a very big difference in President Trump's first term and second term. You don't see the snarky questions that the press asks every day. Some snarky question about Russiagate or. These so far have been pretty, I think, pretty good, pretty thoughtful questions, although a lot of them are from the liberal media. Right there, you're seeing a shot inside the press van. We're there with our own camera not taking the pool feed, which is pretty extraordinary. Now, the Secret Service requires you, as you're gonna see, Brian doesn't have his audio. That's cut off for security reasons. And they tell you to put the camera straightforward, what's called a tail light shot. The president went to a briefing over of what they called traditionally, these roundtables, where local officials, people, you know, ask questions who introduce local dignitaries, in this case, local congressmen who had been there for North Carolina. Then the president gives you some comments. Once again, the president, the most available president, I think, in the history of this republic to the press. He took questions from the. From the media. And most of these questions really revolved around disaster relief, what's going to be coming up in California, and particularly fema. He did sign an executive order that really looks to a pretty substantial restructuring or elimination of fema. The president gave you what he intends to do, and what he intends to do is to look at local authorities and kind of the femas, the emergency groups in each state and Just give this money for support. Support. Give the money to the governor, give the money to the states and let the states deal with it and really cut out the middleman, which is fema. And I think part of that is because of the politicization of fema. And the other part is just because the incompetence of fema. Remember, this is part of the deconstruction of the administrative state, particularly in the Alphabet agencies. There's a lot of folks, including myself, that think these Alphabet agencies have just grown and grown and grown with virtually little regulation or supervision from Congress. And that has led them to be not just overly bureaucratic, but also incredibly and highly inefficient and too politicized, too able to be weaponized. One of the things the President is there today in western North Carolina is to get the answer to the questions, why are we in the fourth month of this? And you're going to see things today, and I'm sure the President is going to see things that are going to shock him. When Ben berquam was there 10 days ago, I was quite frankly, stunned. My kid brother had worked in western North Carolina and actually lived in Asheville for a couple of years. And it is, in fact, my college roommate and other people I'm very close to are very. Are down in Asheville, one of the most beautiful parts of the country and just a magnificent location. It's become a big retirement area over the last decade or two. As people, you know, Florida is a little too much for them as far as no change of seasons and maybe up north is a little too cold. So the environment in western North Carolina is perfect. So Asheville has been a tremendous and really high explosive growth. Talk about this cold winter. It's been a kind of a bitterly, brutally cold winter with this kind of arctic, you know, air arctic weather coming down. But really since right after Thanksgiving has been pretty cold. And I think we're three or four months into this. What the President's most upset about, about, and he wants us to get answers from, is why is he coming out to North Carolina to visit with and hear from the forgotten man and woman when this should have been taken care of months and months ago? Is this just bureaucratic inefficiency? Is this just incompetence? Are they not going to work because they're still heaving to on Covid so they're working from home or was this political? And I've advocated from the beginning that you have to have a thorough investigation of this to find out what happened. California is very different. California's about policies that have been decades in the making. Josh Pettit, who's a golf course architect and we normally have him on here talking about for the major championships about the golf course. He walked through the kind of how the radical part of the environmental community has a structural, has structurally do commissions, committees, you know, coastal committees, have put a stranglehold on really common sense environmental policies, along with radically left Democrats to kind of, you know, be the predicate for this disaster that happened. The President's going to discussions out of that because in Los Angeles you could be talking about in the great LA area, $200 billion of destruction. I can tell you, having very close knowledge of home ownership in Pacific Palisade Age. One of the most remarkable little villages in all of America, and particularly in Southern California is where Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan lived for many, many decades. A very understated elegance of just really this very nice village. Completely gone. Worse than Dresden in 1945. It's like the Tokyo firebombings in March of 1945. President's going to want answers for that today. Shifty Schiff was supposed to be with him, but Shifty Schiff made a big deal about not going. Really? Really. That's tied to these votes in the Senate. Right now you're in the motor pool right here. You're in what's called a press van. You can put the camera straight forward. That's called a tail light shot if you're watching it right there. I want to thank the Charlie Kirk audience for joining us. We're hearing rural America's voice. This is live, uninterrupted coverage. We're blowing all the commercial breaks so that we can do the coverage of. Since we've been invited by the comm staff to be there. Kind of a hat tip to the new rising power of the podcast and particularly the rising power of these streaming services. Getting away from mainstream media and our own. We got Ben Berkwam in Chicago and Brian Glenn. Ben, who was out there 10 days ago. Brian Glenn is with the President today. Brian Glenn has asked three great questions. I mean, really appreciated by the president. President gave him a kind of a thumbs up and hey, thank you. On the way up, Brian Glenn, a total professional, is now with Right side Broadcasting for years doing the coverage of all the. Of all the events and is now with his real America's Voice. He'll be doing both the White House and Capitol Hill. The reason Schiff's not is really not out there. Is Schiff there's major votes. So we talked about the actions the president has to take. We also talked about the resistance. You've got Democrats have gone to court on the deportation. They're in court on the 14th amendment. They're in court on many, many things. I'm sure they're going to try to go to court on fema. Anything to do with deconstructing the administrative state that they're going to stop. But particularly in the Senate, there's been kind of a brutal fight. Schumer, who is having these press conferences or having press availabilities where he will go up and literally rip apart someone like Russ Vote. I heard one last night. I listened to it from about 30 or 40 minutes. Schumer and other Democrats just saying how terrible Russ Vote was, how Russ Boat was the godfather of Project 2025, how Russ vote was absolutely, was absolutely terrible. Now, MSNBC is all over President Trump taking down fema. Their coverage is hysterical on everything that President Trump does. Their hair's on fire on all of it. The president, let's go back to the Senate. So remember, we have John Ratcliffe has just been confirmed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Senator Marco Rubio is now secretary of State. President Trump, four days into his administration, only has two approved cabinet members. Everything else is on the interim that are really not his people. And this is after flooding the zone last week with just to go back and think about it, spectacular performance of his, spectacular performance of his, of his, of his nominees with no real Democratic pushback on the ideas or the representations. Just one more to reset. You're in a press van. That's Brian Glenn and his cameraman. Our team we're heading to now, we're going to go to a disaster site outside of Asheville, North Carolina. President Trump will walk around, he'll meet some local folks, meet the forgotten man and woman, have some interchange. We will cover this live. I'm going to remain here for this coverage until the end. President Trump will then return to the airport. I'm sure he's going to say a few words in the tarmac. Then he and the first lady will enter the Air Force One. And I think it's scheduled to end about 1pm Eastern Standard Time, although I believe he's going to run a little late here. He's then going to take off for Los Angeles, Angeles. He arrived out in Los Angeles, I think early afternoon local time. And then he will have a once again, you know, meet some officials. He will have a roundtable where he'll meet you know, a bigger group of officials and then I'm sure he's going to tour the area. I will tell you, President Trump knows Los Angeles. He owns a house in Beverly Hills. He hasn't spent as much time in LA as obviously in other parts of the country. Really not a California guy, although he loves California. I know he loves his house he's had in Beverly Hills Hills. The President of the United States knows Pacific Palisades. He will be absolutely floored. The people I know that live out there have many, many friends. I lived in California for 20 years, although spent time all over the world and in New York a lot, but had a home base there. People are, you can't believe what's happened to the Palisades, what's happened to Altadena, which is out by, in by Pasadena. What's happened in these towns is really just unbelievable. It's military level devastation that it's all gone and what is standing has been condemned. So once again, we're in the press pool right there. We've got our own camera. We're not taking this off the press feed. That's rill America's Voice, Real America's Voice was invited and here's why. Back in 2021, when the president left the White House, the President Trump back in Mar a Lago was cut off from any access. I don't believe mainstream media covered him live until the midterm election of 2022. Even Fox News, I think blocked him for a year and a half. Rupert Murdoch went out and said they were going to make him a non person. He was covered live nonstop by Real America's Voice, right side broadcasting. Brian Glenn was one of the chief anchors over at right side at the time. We knew the right side guys very, very close to him. Great, great team over there. They were covered nonstop. Remember all the rallies. Real America's Voice would be there. We would do coverage. We tossed our teams. He covered President Trump live. He covered Matt. Remember the days Ben Berkwam would be out there hours and hours in advance. On Saturday, we'd have Ben on the Saturday morning show with war room posse members that were already there 5, 6, 7 hours before the event started. The White House staff and Caroline Levitt, you remember Caroline. Caroline as a young woman ran for the house a couple of years ago and we did a lot of coverage of her in the primary. She was an engaging personality. She was a young woman woman. She's an absolute firebrand. She would not back down. And Caroline Levitt became beloved by the War room audience and really embraced. Caroline Levitt is now the press secretary of the president United States. I think one of the things I've had the most fun in the show is to see the people that have been contributors or been part of it, the Jason Millers, the Boris Epstein's, the Caroline Levitts, the Liz Harringtons, the Natalie Winters we got now we have. So it's Scott Besant, Russ Von Vote in the, in our own Peter Navarro. Peter's actually in the White House as the, as the senior advisor on trade and manufacturing. That's obviously going to be very important. You heard President Trump today talking about Canada. It was of all the talk on Canada is probably the most blunt talk. I mean, he made a proposal. He said, hey, look, you know, you can cut out a lot of costs if you defense a lot of things going on. We'd love for you to be the fifth for a state. We can make you a deal. I don't know, maybe it cut out two, maybe it makes two states, who knows? I know the western part of Canada. I spend a lot of time with people from western Canada over the weekend. They're very different in their philosophy from Quebec and where Toronto is, the eastern part where 80% of the population lives. But the western part of Canada is saying, hey, we don't speak for all of Canada. But they think people would love some sort of closer association. They're kind of loggerheads with the Trudeau administration. Once again, you're in a press van. That is a shot from our own camera, not a press feed. If you notice why we're not looking at the side and some of the Trump supporters over there, is that the Secret Service? When you have a camera and it's on, it's called a tail light shot. They don't want it going to and fro for security reasons. Brian Glenn is in there. The audio is always cut off for security reasons. Reasons. Brian is going with the rest of the press with our own camera, not a pool feed. We're going now to the actual site of some of the devastation. So here's what will happen is the advance team will work through with local officials and they'll figure out, hey, particularly in a devastated area that's this huge, I mean, this is all the way from northwest Georgia up through the Appalachians to western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee and all the way up to Virginia. You know, people, for historically, a lot of this was part of this. At least was part of that. We're General Sherman right there. We just lost the feet Entirely back here. We'll get to that in a second, maybe take a poll feed. President of the United States is heading to the site of the devastation. He'll get a walk around. The advance team will work with local officials and say, hey, look, right there. We got our feedback. We say, hey, look, you know, we want some areas. The President can get a real feel for what's going on. He wants to meet people there, he wants to meet things. So that will become his understanding of the entire area. The president already committed on the tarmac, and he said again at the, at the roundtable, he says, hey, we're going to take care of this problem. And this is what. If you go back 10 days, remember our coverage people saying, you know, Ben Berkhwam, Mr. Bannon, you know, any way you can get to the president, make sure the President comes here. We, we've been. We've basically left to fend for ourselves with no money, no resources, no assistance on this biblical level flood that's devastated so much of the area. They've just been, you know, cut off. And look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I don't believe in coincidences. I'm sure it's the pattern recognition here is this is part of the strongest part of the support for President Trump. They just said in the meeting right there at the roundtable, one of the individuals said off camera, hey, there's a county here that gave you 88% support. 88% support. It's just, it's left a bad taste in people's mouths that the Biden regime, somehow, this was some sort of political payback or the lack of. There was just a lack of urgency all around there. It's one of the reasons President Trump is not enthusiastic about fema. You know, what professional organization would allow that to happen? What professional organization would not be down here taking care of this basic, you know, basic destruction of one of the most beautiful areas of the United States, but particularly where American citizens are living in tents. The night after we were there, I think it was six degrees in the mountains of western North Carolina. Some of those mountains got real out. When you're in Asheville, you know, you're in the mountains of Western, you know. You know, you're in the mountains and it's cold at night. And people. The FEMA advance hadn't been brought up. FEMA trucks hadn't been brought up. People were left by and large to fend for themselves. This is why Samaritan's Purse was so amazing. All the local charities People were, you know, giving as the American people are, want to do the most charitable people in the history of the earth, the most giving nation in the history of the earth. But this is not. It shouldn't be upon local charity to pay for this. It shouldn't be Samaritan's purse that has obligations all over the world as they try to. They have a huge, you know, evangelical mission. That is their task and purpose. Every dollar they have and every dollar they raise has to be used for the task and purpose. And when they're in western North Carolina, they're doing it because it's Billy Graham and Franklin, you know, Billy Graham's legacy, Franklin Graham and just the giving nature of this organization and many, many, many others. But it's all coming from private charity. Well, one of the reasons you pay your taxes is that in those extraordinary instances like massive hurricanes, massive flooding, like you see on something that was biblical, that came off of Hurricane Helene, that left, you know, what, a trillion gallons of water into the hills and hollows of Appalachia and wiped out so much. You anticipate and expect in kind of the compact you make with your government, you know, for its sovereignty is that in these situations, extraordinary situations, they step up. You know, people are just not prepared. And it's no hit on people. You're just not prepared. No one's prepared. Here in western North Carolina, you have folks that are, you know, making the average wages of citizens in the United States, many people working two, three jobs, working overtime in Pacific Palisades, a very different breed, you know, very different group that's to the, you know, you're getting close to the top 1% there, definitely the top 3% of wage earners, governors. And it'swhere as Appalachia is kind of, you know, good old fashioned conservative right wing populism. And traditionally conservative Republicans, Pacific Palisades, the exact opposite. I would not be surprised if 88% of Palisades had voted for Kamala Harris. It's one of the biggest areas for fundraising where Southern California and Northern California, Silicon Valley and the Hollywood area are really cash machines for the Democrat Party. I think one time I heard a story statistic 50% of all money for Democrats comes out of California, for the entire nation. That shows you how big it. So their political philosophy is very different. It's not that President Trump's a president for everybody. He's been very adamant about that. But it's a different set of questions in North Carolina is why was the aid. Why is we four months into this. And President Trump's not going to Davos because he knows he's obligated and has a commitment to the American people and a love for the American people. So he is where the forgotten man and woman is. Why is it four months into this, why was this not taken care of? This is going to be tough to do. You got a lot of reclamation to do, like claimant, but it's doable. We've done it before. There's organizations and institutions that have the organizational wherewithal and capacity to do it. Why was it not done? California is a very different situation. California is a situation that it's a little bit like the Maui situation. How did this happen? You've really got to get down to California of, you know, was this a loaded cannon of kind of environmental decisions have been made and those sparks that kind of flew from these fires or into the power lines that ignited and where were the firemen? Where were the. Where was the water? What shocks me is how this embers are spurred from house to house and house. And it looks like nobody defended. I mean, the questions are not answered in the Palisades. And we say strings attached. Well, you've got to come in and get answers first. You have to get answers. And you have to understand if you're going to put the money in, and particularly the federal government is going to put the money in to reclaim this and reorganize it, that it has to be at a situation that it can't happen again. We can't have the same type of decision making. We can't have the same type of interconnections of these radical environmental groups coupled with, let's be blunt, radical politicians that created a witch's brew that allowed this devastation that was every bit as bad as the firebombing of Tokyo in 1940, in March of 1945. How did that happen? What were the policies of this? And people say it's contingent. It's contingent upon what President Trump summed up yesterday in Davos. What was his opening statement? Statement? A revolution of common sense. He reiterated today. He says, hey, we have, you know, common. He was talking about the economic model and for Canada to think about. He says it's a combination of common sense, tariffs and competence. And that's, I think, based upon his economic model. If you remember yesterday in Davos, the opening shot from President Trump, President Trump, with all, you know, Klaus Schwab had just groveled to him on the global stage. I mean, groveled. And we had Graham Allison in that clip beforehand that played the day before. Graham Allison said, hey, look, this guy was politically dead and he's been resurrected. He resurrected himself with his populist base and he's back. And Graham Allison said, remember, three and four years ago, we wrote this guy off and we would laugh at him. Well, they ain't laughing now, they're groveling. And yesterday he sat up there and said, part of these radical policies, policies that you see in Los Angeles, he said point blank, he says, hey, we've had a revolution of common sense in the United States of America. Revolution of common sense, and we're not doing this anymore. And he says, let me tell you what action I'm taking. Immediately I'm pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. The Paris Climate Accord, boom out. We tried to do that seven, eight years ago. It's been blocked. It was blocked. It was blocked by the administrative and deep state constantly. And of course, all the trader politicians come to President says, oh, you can't do that. You're going to get a bad story. President Trump knew it was a scam from the beginning. In the interim, when President Trump pulled it the first time, you had the yellow vest. Remember what Gillet Jean in the yellow vest representing the rural part of France, they put the diesel tax Macron and these elitists in Paris put the diesel tax rate on them and the people revolted. They burned down, you know, big parts of Paris in protest, saying, hey, you're putting the burden. Burden of the Paris climate change is really underwriting Chinese pollution and Chinese industrialization at the expense of the west and we're not going to tolerate it. President Trump said, hey, number one, we're getting out of the Paris Climate Accord. Ba boom said number two, I'm reversing everything from the green new scam. And last night I was doing this rush going over Russ vote his testimony. We're done. President Trump said additionally, unfortunately, I am stopping anymore. Right there the headline Yesterday, Trump stalls 300 billion of infrastructure funds as Biden climate agenda is ditched. He told him right there the entire. If the camera can just get this for a second. Can we cut back to this for a second? Can you cut back to see. Thank you very much. And then we come back right there they said that on this climate. President Trump, this is impoundment. Okay, we go back to the feed. This is called impoundment. Remember, we've talked about this. Take your number two personal out. It's a piece of nomenclature. You're going to want to keep impoundment. They've been Banging on. Russ, vote on this. This is a theory, right, put into practice that the, that the, the money that's appropriated in the appropriations bill is a ceiling that the president can come in and impound unspent funds and either use it for different purposes or just kick it back to the Treasury. The president has gone into the, into the green New Deal fiasco, giveaway of Biden, which caused so much inflation. He said, hey, there's 300 billion there. All engines stop. I'm impounding that immediately. I'm going to use that and divert it to other things that be done right away or just put it back to the treasury so it doesn't add to the deficit. And they're going absolutely crazy. The Democrats are addicted as bad as the Republicans are. The Democrats are addicted, addicted, addicted to vast spending. I think we're coming up now. We're seeing about three minutes out. The president's going to do a walk around. He's going to get a real. He's going to get to really see and meet some of the folks at local officials working. You see they got the split screen. Off to the right there is where the president will be coming in a second. He's three minutes out the press pool with Brian Glenn. And we'll get Brian back up here in a second is to our left. I'm going to hang for the coverage the entire time. The Charlie. We're in the Charlie Kirk Show. I know it goes out nationwide on radio. Want to thank everybody. We're doing very special coverage today. We've been invited to kind of be the lead sled dog on coverage by the White House communications team. Want to thank Taylor Bodowich, Stephen Chung and of course Caroline Levitt for thinking of real America's Voice and kind of a. I think they're looking for alternative sources now besides the mainstream media who quite. The audience is so pathetic and they're still snarky. It looks like the van's getting close to coming to a stop there. Brian will be jumping out and see to the right. Let's do the split screen again if we can. Thank you very much. That's Swannanoa, North Carolina. That's where I think Ben Burkhram was the other day. Part of the trip was to Swannanoa. Let's do the split screen. I'm a direct here. If you make a split. There we go. There we go. That's okay, Wendell. I'll just take control of this and get back to my old directing days. You think. You think I'm Obnoxious behind a microphone. You ought to see when I'm directing something really, I really turn it up. Harry over there is give me stink eye already. My producer. So you see a split screen right there on the right. Swannanoa, North Carolina. And that is where the President will be in a moment. That's going to be a walk around, actually see some of the devastation. It's breathtaking. Ben Berkhom was there a couple weeks ago. And the left is the press van that is our own. And Brian Glenn is right now with his cameraman. We're not taking a feed. The feed is to the right. So we'll be there momentarily. The President didn't go to Davos because he wanted and needed to go to both Los Angeles, but he wanted to. He made an adamant. He says, I'm stopping in North Carolina first. This is not acceptable. This really played into what the President's been very concerned about. FEMA played into his fears about female fema. He finally said, I've had enough about it. Now this Is of the 200 EOs, executive orders and or executive actions taking place the last couple of days. Everything from using military transport command to ferry illegal aliens out of here into other locations, principally their home countries, all the way to changing the names of this migrants. And all the official, official reporting, official proclamation from the White House to illegal aliens as they are is a term of art, a term of law in the American, American system. The President's done so much on the economy with tariffs, trade, also the deportations underway. Our own Ben Berkwam is in Chicago. He's out with raids today. He started off Ben, who had just gotten back from western North Carolina. Ben was at a hotel, a holiday in that had been totally refurbished and filled up, sold out with illegal aliens. Are there three hots? Three hots a day in a. In a clean, in a clean. Let's go ahead, Vance, pull up. Let's go and do the big. Can we do the. You got the establishing shot there. You want to take the full screen on that while Ben and those guys. While Brian and those guys get positioned. No, let's go to. Let's go. You want to go to the feet for a second?
