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Bannon`s War Room
Episode 4623: Epstein CoverUp; Reducing Spending For Defense
Episode 4623: Epstein CoverUp; Reducing Spending For Defense ...
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- [00:00]
Katie Turner
To be with you. I'm Katie Turner. Donald Trump is meddling this time in Brazil, using the COVID of trade as a way to strong arm the democratic country into backing off one of his political allies, the former president of Brazil, Yair Bolsonaro, a man who also tried to claim the election he lost was rigged, a man who also allegedly helped fuel an attempted insurrection of Brazil's own government. But Bolsonaro, unlike Trump, has gone to trial for his role, and the Supreme Court down there could very well convict him and put him in prison later this year. In a letter to Brazil's current president, Lula, Mr. Trump calls the prosecution a, quote, international disgrace. But Lula is not backing down, telling Trump Brazil is a sovereign country with independent institutions that will not accept being abused by anyone. But it isn't just a letter from President Trump. He's actively trying to pressure Brazil financially with 50% tariffs, claiming the US has a trade deficit with the country. But that's not true at all. The US Actually has a trade surplus with Brazil. So why is Donald Trump using the COVID of trade to interfere in another democracy? What does he get out of it? Joining us now, NBC News business and data correspondent Brian Chung, managing editor of the Bulwark and MSNBC contributor Sam Stein and senior editor at the Atlantic and host of Radio Atlantic, Hanna Rosen. Brian, first off, explain the trade relationship with Brazil.
- [01:40]
Brian Chung
Yes. So a lot of Americans might be tuning in to the news of the Brazil tariffs and wondering how is that going to impact the things that I buy at the store? Brazil exports a lot of major goods that we see at the grocery store on a daily basis, most namely coffee. So we are a major importer of coffee from Brazil, Also things like orange juice as well as produce. We even import some crude oil. So when you think about a 50% tariff, which would be effective August 1, unless Brazil can negotiate with the United States, then all of those things could, in theory, get 50% more expensive for the consumer as well. You make another important point about the politics of all of this as well. Up until now, we had seen a lot of the letters that the president had been publishing on Truth Social. Two countries where the United States has a trade deficit, where they don't buy as many things in the United States as the United States buys from them. Brazil is the first country that we've seen in a letter so far this week that buys more from the United States than the US Buys from Brazil. We have a trade surplus with that country to the magnitude of almost seven and a half billion dollars. So Again, that's the reason why the rhetoric is also from the president about a year, Bolsonaro, as opposed to about the country cheating us through a trade deficit because we don't have a trade deficit with Brazil. Again, we have a trade surplus.
- [02:51]
Katie Turner
Is there any way to look at our trade relationship with Brazil, Brian, and to see something unfair going on, anything that that would justify Donald Trump trying to use trade as a cudgel?
- [03:02]
Brian Chung
Well, again, even when you look at the letter that he sent to Brazil, it is completely restructured from what we had seen as the copy and paste shop for every other country that he had sent letters to earlier this week, including to South Korea, to Japan, to smaller countries like Kazakhstan, Moldova. With Brazil, he started the letter essentially with an entire paragraph about how he felt Brazil was unfairly treating Bolsonaro. So this kind of underscores the president isn't very isn't going to succeed in using the trade deficit and they are cheating us in a trade relationship as the excuse to do this type of tariff. But again, the question here is, can Brazil then still negotiate with the United States? Because that is still very much relevant to this conversation as it is with any country that we have a trade deficit with. There is a timeline now. There's a few weeks until August 1st. And can the Brazilian government convince the United States to not put that 50% tariff in place? That is the open question at this point.
- [03:58]
Stephen K. Bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
- [04:20]
Natalie G. Winters
And where do people like that go.
- [04:21]
Stephen K. Bannon
To share the big lie?
- [04:23]
Mike Benz
MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
- [04:30]
Stephen K. Bannon
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
- [04:40]
Mike Benz
War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
- [04:49]
Natalie G. Winters
Welcome to the War Room. It's Natalie G. Winters hosting, filling in for Stephen K. Bannon. We are here a little bit of a different background than the White House or anywhere in the horrible city, though I guess it's slightly greater now than is Washington, D.C. but we are coming at you live from the Tampa Convention Center. I guess it's the Eve of Turning Points sas that is the Student Action Summit. So I guess don't lose faith in this country for a lot of reasons, but certainly in the youth. I've already started to see so many hundreds of young kids pouring in, in school, out of school, on summer break, you name it here, excited to see so many people speak, including Stephen K. Bannon. You got Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Charlie, of course, the whole Turning Point and RAV crew. Now, our set is in the midst of being built, so I'm going to preemptively apologize if you hear any loud, shall we say, men at work noises. We got a lot of hammers and construction tools going on, but that's why we have the beautiful background behind us. You know, warm. We're always gonzo. We're going to have Mike Benz on shortly to hit what you guys just saw in the cold open. But before we get there, I want to flag a story in Denver. You can toss it up on screen. Coming from notice this isn't war room. This is a direct quote, the story titled Trump fired them. Now they're plotting to stop him. And I guess we'll continue with the no paraphrasing, just directly quoting because it's so diabolical. Quote, USAID and the State Department are now reapplying the skills and knowledge they built up over decades to undermine Trump's power. Now, this piece goes on, extensively reported several, quote, several officials, anonymous and on the record, including people who are currently employed by the federal government getting your taxpayer dollars working under President Trump as saying, quote, get ready for this. They were so quick to disband usaid, the group that supposedly, supposedly instigates color revolutions. But they've done a very foolish thing. You just released a bunch of well trained individuals into your population. If you kept our office going and had us play solitaire in the office, you might have been safer to keep your regime. Now, from a language analysis, we've got a lot of action going on. But from a, I would say analytical analysis of what they're talking about. This is not democracy activists talking about their different worldview or being apoplectic over tariffs. These are people who are using, in some cases kinetic tactics to oppose President Trump and his administration. And to that point, they're actually hosting, as highlighted in this article, secret workshops promoting a tactic they call non cooperation. Again, a direct quote from one of these sources. Quote, they're building a network of government workers willing to engage in even minor acts of rebellion in the office. And they're planting the seeds of what they hope could become a nationwide general strike. And the go to document that they're circulating and using to buttress a lot of these activities. Well, you probably wouldn't believe me or you think I'm joking, but I'm not. It's a, quote, an old CIA pamphlet with allies who still work in the government called Simple Sabotage. And before we get into that, I know Mike Benz is going to have a lot of thoughts on that. Let us just Case closed. I think War Room's theory of the case that there is no meaningful distinction between domestic policy and foreign policy. And frankly, all of these foreign wars, these mass foreign surveillance states, the foreign interventionism really has only just been a really training ground, a test run for the tactics that they have wanted to deploy. Fine tune them and hone them in here in the United States and through a lot of these quotes and these programs, right. The idea that the people who carried out color revolutions, regime change, pro democracy movements, choose whatever euphemism you want, that those people are now turning inwards, right? Not focusing on saving those countries, but instead weaponizing those tactics here in the United States proves not only that the deep state exists. I think we're far, long gone past that. But that usaid, the State Department, this foreign global apparatus really has been ground zero in the hotbed of so much of that resistance against President Trump. Now, I want to read some more quotes. You know, rarely do we quote legacy media outlets in the warren, but it's important to understand the enemy. And I say the enemy because this is not just, you know, highfalutin MSNBC rhetoric. This is calls for kinetic action. Quote, widespread practice of simple sabotage will harass and demoralize enemy administrators and police. The saboteur may have to reverse his thinking. Where he formerly thought of keeping his tools sharp, he should now let them grow dull. Services that form were lubricated should now be sanded. Normally diligent, he should now be lazy and careless. And I guess we're exposed to what? Believe that those very same people had nothing to do with the not one, but two attempts on President Trump's life. They actually have a new group called Democracy Aid where they're having, quote, invite only workshops with federal employees who hear about them from their friends, where they've, quote, shifted from salvaging the foreign assistance infrastructure to redeploying that inside the United States. Let that sink in. The global apparatus that your tax dollars were used to set up to influence elections abroad are now being turned inward in a circular firing squad to come after the president. That you voted for in the administration that you elected. And they're so bold, brave and brash that they're willing to be quoted on it in the media. Also flagging no conspiracies, no coincidences, the Brennan center, that was one of the consulting firms and weird think tanks that of course, none other than Judge Merchant's daughter was busy consulting on behalf of. They receive a ton of Soros money. They put up a poll today that about half of all election officials and election workers are, and I quote, quote, concerned about politically motivated investigations. Well, to that I would say you probably should be. And if you're worried about an investigation, probably means you did something wrong. And of course, today you saw the sweeping idea, right, that President Trump can't institute anything related to revoking birthright citizenship, sort of doing it through a class action lawsuit instead of the nationwide injunctions, right. Kind of overruling what the Supreme Court did. Well, guess who was behind that lawsuit? None other than Norm Eisen, one of the lead architects of everything USAID and State Department and color revolutions abroad. Now, I do want to flag one piece of very good news. You know, we've really honed in on particularly the United States shortage of rare earths. Both, both on the actual supply side, but also more importantly on the processing side, especially when we engage in these ever expanding tariffs, tariff wars, not just against the prc, but frankly the whole world. The United States really has a critical shortage of these critical minerals trying to dominate about upwards of 90% of the processing, the refinement of these critical rare earths, not just for your day to day lives, but of course for military technology too. And if we want to toss the CNBC article up on screen, and just a wonderful move from the Defense Department, from Secretary Pete Hegseth Pentagon. The Pentagon is set to become the largest shareholder. They really helped spearhead a new, if not the largest rare earth mine called Mountain Pass in the United States, which is going to help give us an upper hand against China. You know, we talk about unrestricted warfare all the time, right? The idea that you don't have to invade the United States to overtake a country. Frankly, I think they learned from Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, that that's actually quite the depletion of resources. Instead, they want to create a White House where, well, it might not be flying the Chinese flag. Every single electricity tool, utilities, you know, the medicines, the prescriptions that you rely on, we are all relying on the Chinese Communist Party for all of those supply chains and the rare earth supply chain in particular. Has I think really grave ramifications for the national security of this country. And it's great to see the DOD stepping up their game and getting ahead of that. Now, Mike Benz, I want to bring you on. Obviously we're going to hold you through the break. I guess trigger warning to the audience. I will have to interrupt you. I know that you don't like it when I do that, but just give me a few minutes on this notice piece because my head was exploding or I guess maybe it wasn't because I expect it. But your thoughts.
- [13:12]
Mike Benz
Someone had plagiarized my work. I you know the, this, this concept I've been describing of a so called professional class of regime change specialists at usaid, the State Department and the CIA and this language that I've been using for years now, which is that we have trained this professional class of government officials at usaid, the State Department and the CIA with a very special set of skills which is toppling governments that the U.S. state Department does not like that the foreign policy establishment, us, uk, NATO, our transatlantic alliance when we need a government gone, we have a professional class of specialists we employ to do that work and they are concentrated at usaid, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and all of the USAID and State Department funded NGOs and foundations and for profit contractors of that network. And this is fundamentally what this group has been doing to and against Trump taking that special set of skills to deploy US government funded NGOs against the democratically elected president. This is the group that we send in to topple a democracy when we do not like the democratic.
- [14:33]
Natalie G. Winters
Got a job break. I apologize, however, I would think for all the military and military strategy that USAID and our betters over at State have done. I'm a big fan of Sun Tzu. They should appear weak when they are strong and not be giving all these quotes and airing out their strategy to notice. That's my humble critique, though I haven't received billions of taxpayer dollars to reach that conclusion. We're coming at you live from Tampa. We'll be right back after the short break with more Mike Benz.
- [15:00]
Stephen K. Bannon
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- [16:27]
Mike Benz
War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
- [16:35]
Natalie G. Winters
Welcome back to the War Room, the temporary war room. We're here in Tampa. I think it's probably the Tampa Bay behind me or the Tampa Bay Convention Center. The set we were supposed to be in is still being constructed. That's okay. I'm sure all of the workers there are actual American citizens. Rob. It's the best. Very excited for a fun week and weekend here. So you'll be getting here shortly, but in the meantime you've got Natalie Winters holding the fort down. You know what else is coming in hot? That is birchgold.com Bannon where you got to be texting Bannon to 989-898 getting the latest installment of all things gold Information obviously coming off the bricks summit. I saw there was some reporting that the PRC has been back channeling, asking questions about the status in terms of the reserve currency being the United States dollar and how the yuan is looking in comparison. Interesting questions. No conspiracies, no coincidences, as you know here in the War room. But speaking of conspiracies and coincidences and pattern recognition, Mike, I think msnbc, despite all the brilliant luminaries over at the Bulwark like Sam Stein, when they're sitting there saying, well, this is the typical tariff playbook, there's one thing that was very distinctive about the Brazil tariffs and that was the explicit mention, as you noted, of the censorship that they've been engaging in and the sort of weird Orwellian games that they're playing. So can you to pivot to that? Can you sort of walk us through the significance of the Brazil tariffs.
- [18:06]
Mike Benz
In a shot across the Bow. This is a 50% massive whopping tariff on the on goods coming from the country of Brazil, which is under a unbelievable dictatorship, through Lula and his henchmen in the courts who have arrested the former President Bolsonaro, who are silencing tens of millions of Brazilians, throwing them in jail for any speech that criticizes Lula. This is the thumb of a total dictatorship, something that we've not really seen in any Latin American country outside of Venezuela since. Since the Cold War. And what's been done here is essentially massive economic pressure in order to try to change the incentives inside the Brazilian government around continuing these dictatorial, coercive measures against their own people. And the fact that this was explicitly done in the name of what Trump called digital trade, that essentially our social media companies and their ability to operate in foreign countries is part of the trade package that goes into the bilateral relationship. The fact is, is it was Lula's government that not only ordered the shutdown of X in their country, but also ordered massive fines and even seized assets from Starlink, a completely unrelated company, in order to put more pressure on X to censor as the government wanted. And so, given that Lula is only in power largely because the Biden administration orchestrated massive covert action to prop him up, there has been no pushback directly against the Lula government from the US Government, who they were in bed with on their way to power. But Trump has now basically signaled a massive change to that policy. And I think that the reverberations on that as the tariffs set in will be substantial. I believe that any free speech diplomacy toolkit has to involve trade aid, arms and tariffs. Every lever of our relationship with foreign countries should be leveraged to promote the universal human rights principle of free speech. We did this in the Cold War. This is how we opened up much of the Iron Curtain. This is how we promoted free speech, exported the First Amendment in spirit throughout the Cold War. We have a history of doing this. It's worked before, it's working now. We just got a 3% digital tax in Canada ban stopped over this. We got the UK to pause enforcement of censorship aspects of the online harms bill by threatening tariffs. And I believe that this playbook has to be taken not just on Brazil, but especially against the European Union.
- [21:01]
Natalie G. Winters
And I can't have Mike Benzon without asking you the latest with all things Epstein. I don't think you've been on the show since that debacle, and that's an understatement. I'm curious your thoughts on Sort of where we stand. The weird, undated unsigned memo. You had a great hit with Jesse Kelly where you were really getting into the, the sort of deep CIA ties there. But I'm just curious, your, your kind of overall assessment on where we stand on that fight, that information warfare fight.
- [21:27]
Mike Benz
Well, I believe quite strongly that Jeffrey Epstein is exactly as Vicki Ward reported. Epstein's sweetheart plea deal. Justice Department official Alex Acosta said that he belonged to intelligence and the, and the DOJ was told in 2008 to leave him alone. And I believe that there has been a cover up of that aspect of the Jeffrey Epstein story which obviously inverts the entire conception of Jeffrey Epstein, if indeed that is substantiated. And tonight I will actually be publishing a detailed presentation video on the exact documents to be sought by the Justice Department so that there is no wiggle room to get out of this issue any longer. The exact documents to make public that I know the Justice Department has the, the exact individuals to follow up with and, and to keep the American people apprised as to the, the on the record statements those individuals should give to the doj. I believe they've been able to effectively get away with not investigating the Epstein's intelligence connections because of the Pandora's box that that opens. But I think that given the public outrage over this and the, the intense pressure that's felt by so many in the admin, combined with the knowledge that this is not going away, that they will at least have to give a little bit. And tonight I'll be publishing a video about what exactly they need to give immediately in order to show that this is a genuine investigation and not a cover up.
- [23:05]
Natalie G. Winters
Yeah, the audience is certainly going to be all over that, I think why this audience is so upset and myself included, at what has been going on, because I think it's an affirmative front to sort of what the core foundational values of the MAGA movement really rest upon, which is a frustration with these sort of establishment Republican belief and ideology that accountability is found in, you know, strongly worded letters and the tweets and the sort of performative politicking of the day. Now it seems like we're not even really getting that. We're being told that we just need to move on and not care about it. Certainly we're not getting prison sentences or anything in sort of that territory, frankly, on a lot of verticals, on a lot of fronts. I'm just curious in sort of the, you know, botched dissemination, whether it was the binder stuff. Now this weird Letter. Where do you sort of, maybe in your mind, kind of reverse engineer. Obviously we don't know the answer, but place the blame. Perhaps it's a loaded word, but sort of the issue with the release of these files. Is this something that, you know, is it, is it the Trump admin, Is it politicals? Is it something that, you know, we would colloquially refer to as the deep state? Is it a CIA thing? Where do you think that sort of urge to suppress this is really emanating from?
- [24:19]
Mike Benz
I think it's a combination of donors and national security officials. I think that, that they have intersecting interests on this and they're both involved in the story and they both have considerable influence on not just the White House itself, but the agencies, the policies, at all the executive branch agencies. I think that, that part of, part of the reason this is such a hot potato is because there are Trump world donors who have been intimately involved in this network. And part of the reason this is such a hot potato is because if they have to tell us about Epstein's ties, then they have to tell the world because the world reads our media. They can't just give us all national, all 300 million Americans national security clearances to access it. It becomes public knowledge, which means the entire network effectively would have its cover blown and it would frankly generate a lot more questions than answers about every single thing. Once, once Epstein's intelligence ties are confirmed, then what that immediately proceeds to is a intense forensic, detailed, microscopic investigation into every single thing that Epstein has done, everyone that he's handled, money for every company he's invested in, every region he did business in, every business leader he met with in order to effectively ask, okay, well was, was that a CIA operation? Was that, you know, Israeli intelligence, Saudi intelligence, UK Intelligence, what? Every single thing you know of, of a storied four decade international jet setting career then gets opened up and infected by the intelligence label once Epstein does. And so I think that in combination with donor pressure has been, has, has created a real bind that has put the White House squarely in the crosshairs of the power struggle between the voting base and the donors who provide the money.
- [26:23]
Natalie G. Winters
Mike Benz, as always, we love having you in the war room. I'm sure people are going to want to get those documents you're going to be releasing or calling for tonight. If people want to follow you watch that. Where can they go to get all.
- [26:33]
Mike Benz
Things Mike Ben's best places on X at Mike Ben Cyber. I also have a YouTube channel where I upload legacy videos, have 500 some there as well.
- [26:45]
Natalie G. Winters
Mike Benz, thank you for joining us. And sorry for all the hammer noises and it's you may have been been hearing. That was not the deep. We have it on good authority that was real America. You're always making noise. I'm sorry. It's not me. I flew down here to do this show and the set wasn't ready. It's all good. We have a beautiful background. We love, we love Tampa Bay. In the meantime, we also have of course, Birch gold. So you got to be checking out birchcold.com Bannon texting bannon29898 it's probably even a better looking asset than everything we got going on behind me here. Fun fact, I think this is a very shallow bay. It's about only 12ft deep. I googled that in the break. There you go. I will also add this, right if you can't get the Epstein stuff right, how in the heck, how in the hell are we going to get the 2020 election audit right? The origins of COVID Jan6 this is rudimentary stuff. This is easy. This is basic. All it takes is courage. And when I voted, and I'm sure you did too, for President Trump, I voted for 2020 election audits and audits of stuff like this, going after people like Brennan, like Clapper, all these horrible people who have lied and destroyed this country and probably could be tried for treason. Not audits of, I don't know, you know, Patriot missile reserve interceptor reserves and ammo and munitions reserves to make sure that we have enough so we can continue to send more of them to Israel and Ukraine. Right? Election audits. Not auditing Iran's nuclear program on behalf of of foreign countries like Israel are arming Ukraine even more. These are foundational values. But as Steve always says, maga, you guys, this audience, we're up for a fight and you're the only ones who can do it. We'll be right back after this.
- [28:27]
Stephen K. Bannon
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- [29:53]
Mike Benz
War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
- [30:01]
Natalie G. Winters
Welcome back to the War Room. We are still here in Tampa. I think the hammers have subsided a little bit. That's good. Not the deep state. Just setting up the stage for Steve. The whole crew are going to be here doing live shows tomorrow throughout the weekend. In this break I took a quick look at some of the sponsors, the other shows, beautiful booths being set up. I've yet to find the Patriot Mobile booth. You guys know we love the guys over there. Glenn Story, hardcore patriots, hence the name seems only fitting. So you got to be checking out patriot mobile.com/ban and using promo code ban and they have a host of deals get off all these horrible America hating and probably compromise networks. That's why we love Patriot Mobile. Now sort of linking what we were talking about before we went to break. What's going on over at the Pentagon. Obviously I think that rare earth mine mountain Pass is a huge, huge win for second Secretary Hegseth and frankly for the country. I want to bring on Will Thiebaud. I hope I'm pronouncing that right from cra, who we love so much for the latest on the ndia. We've been tracking this a lot but where we sort of stand in terms of our audience making calls. And then there's some other breaking news I want to get into. But let's just start with hitting everything that's going on at the ndia.
- [31:14]
Will Thibault
Thanks, Natalie. So, you know, we're in the midst of a few really important weeks for the National Defense Authorization Act. Again that's this annual, you know, colloquial era, otherwise known as must pass legislation that defines the authorized activities for the Department of Defense against which then money money is allocated and appropriators will spend money for the the law that is authorized in the National Defense Authorization Act. It is, I think, a generational opportunity for America first conservatives, to permanently redefine how the military has functioned for too long. For decades, we've seen this sclerotic combination of acquisition policy that's inefficient and five years too slow. We've seen diversity, equity and inclusion take a stranglehold on every military personnel decision and program decision. And, you know, then we see the application of military power in a way that doesn't serve American interests. So let's not let this chance go to waste as an opportunity to ensure that the military serves the American people well throughout the 21st century. This affects a few things. It's everything from ensuring that good states, good conservative states can regulate artificial intelligence and that our AI companies don't run amok over the American way of life. It's about codifying the important changes of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump, of ending wokeness in the Pentagon, ridding the bureaucracy of diversity, equity, inclusion. That should be law. It shouldn't be an executive branch action that ends at the next Democrat president. And then we should ensure that our military isn't beholden to the typical defense industrial base, but is responsive and building the kinds of systems and technology that can deter war and if it comes to it, win the ones that matter, protect our homeland. It is not enough to rest on conservative laurels and assume that Secretary Hegseth and President Trump have it. They do. They're implementing exceptionally important policy for the nation. But it is still the job of Congress to make sure that's real. So you'll probably see the House and Senate release versions of the NDAA in the next 10 days or two weeks, and that'll be the mark on the line. But what comes next is a little squirrely and uncertain. There are some secret committee votes. There will be, you know, the understanding of what's in the base text or what's an amendment. And it's imperative that that base text of the NDA, the text that is voted on, is as good for America as possible. On all the issues I mentioned, you know, when amendment votes happen, that's when you start to have secret ballots, that when. That's when we start to lose accountability over who supports what. And I think the American people should expect a lot more from the, the, the conservative majority, the Republican majority, at least in both the House and the Senate. Now is the time to act, you know, perhaps more than any other year. And so it's about holding, you know, appropriately and genuinely the feet of, of, of our senators and congressmen to the fire so that they're making permanent the actions of President Trump and Secretary Hegseth. It's, it's a, it's a golden opportunity. But I think you're already starting to sense that the blob is, is going to try and move the NDA in a typical direction that guarantees status quo interests without good change in some of the key areas. Like we talked about. You know, we have to make sure that the NDA stays focused on the national old in America's foreign policy, too. Yeah.
- [35:06]
Natalie G. Winters
I'm curious to bring this to the news that just happened today. Speaking of wokeness, speaking of these wins, the sort of distinction between what Secretary Hegseth wants and what was going on before him. Obviously a lot of holdovers there. Admiral Donnelly, the person who was responsible for, I guess, commissioning a lot of these drag shows on, if I'm not mistaken, actual Navy vessels for cash prizes. Never thought I'd be saying that, but maybe, I guess under Joe Biden, I can actually totally believe that. Walk us through what happened today with him.
- [35:36]
Will Thibault
Right. Natalie, It's a great point to bring up Admiral Donnelly, frankly, an otherwise exceptional naval officer, but he was in command of the USS Ronald Reagan back in 2017, 2018, and during that time, again, this is the first Trump administration. The USS Ronald Reagan hosted Navy sanctioned drag shows while the aircraft carrier was deployed. This was not, you know, kind of a private offhand activity. This was an official event where the drag queens were awarded cash prizes. And then a lot of those drag queens became official representatives of Navy recruiting efforts. And the, the point is, and I think the, the, the, this is the point that Secretary Hegseth especially understands. The point is that it's not, you know, frankly, it's, it's absurd to just punish these enlisted service members who are perhaps confused about a lot of things in life and doing this during their tour of duty. But the people whom we really need to hold accountable are the senior uniformed military officers who allow this to happen. The point is this is a disqualifying event to be in command of a ship. And as a lot of your audience knows, when you're in the military, you are in charge for everything that does or does not happen in your ship of your military infantry platoon. Right. So Admiral Donnelly was in charge of those sanctioned events and he allowed drag shows to happen routinely. That's a bad thing. And so, you know, he was promoted once during the first Trump administration, promoted again under President Joe Biden, and he slipped through the cracks of the this time around to command the 7th Fleet. But there's a lot of great opposition from groups like Claremont CRA and others to show the administration that hey, you know, the deep state of the military got one past you. You know, it's okay. These were the first slate of promotions but now we've got to reel it back in. It's not too late. We don't have to seat that officer as commander of the seventh Fleet. We can put someone who is not interested in politicizing the military in charge because there are a lot of great naval officers out there who are not interested in promoting drag or paying drag queens thousands of dollars to perform on Navy ships. This is about restoring the principles of war fighting in lethality that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have been talking about for months now. It's somewhat tragic that Admiral Donnelly got caught up in this, but it is such an important signal to send to the rest of the general and fly grade officer class that no longer will this kind of politicization be tolerated. And it will cost you your career because it used to cost you your career to be a conservative or to be pro life as it was for Peter Pace under the Obama administration. But now we're restoring the military to lethality and merit. And that's why the story of Admiral, Admiral Donnelly is so important because it's about the people you put in charge of critical organizations like an aircraft carrier.
- [38:44]
Natalie G. Winters
And we'll just give you a few minutes. You had a great piece following Operation Midnight Hammer talking about really what is I think a quite large vulnerability of the United States that is in terms of drones, particularly cheap drones. We obviously dominate the high tech $5 million Android type drone market. But really cheap drones, obviously China dominates that market. A lot of the DJI hikvision those type companies are rightfully so banned or on entity list or whatever, blacklisted here in the United States. But just walk the audience through a few minutes. I think it's important for them to, to know where we stand on that front.
- [39:19]
Will Thibault
Right. The article you referenced, Natalie, you know, wrote one in the American mind and the Federalist is kind of about moving forward past Operation Midnight Hammer. You know, a lot of rightful, I think consternation and discussion about that operation. But what should be acknowledged and I think people of, of all foreign policy stripes can, can agree on is that we used a massive fleet to accomplish that mission. We used probably over half of our functional B2 bombers. We almost certainly depleted our, our, excuse me, our bunker buster stockpile by over half. We we expended a ton of military resources to make this happen. And that's not insignificant, right? We, we have to make sure that we can project power in other ways, in other theaters. We won't always be able to fly from Missouri to the Middle east and drop these kinds of bombs. China, for example, has hundreds of four does. What we need now is a massive fleet of unmanned drones in the air and at sea who can provide for deterrence and lethality in multiple different spheres. That means we have to rapidly expand our acquis policies to be more flexible and to account for all these great startups that are building drones. Secretary Hexsett just signed a memo today, as a matter of fact, that does just that. But there's time is of the essence. Ukraine and Russia each build 50,000 drones per month. China is ordering 1 million one way attack drones in 2025 alone. In the US you know, we're just starting to think in terms of quantities like 5 or 10,000 a year. That's not enough, it's not fast enough. We have to move so that no matter the theater of war, no matter the kind of threat, we're ready to confront it. Because although Operation Midnight Hammer was a pretty stunning show of force, pretty incredible in a lot of ways, it's not necessarily going to scale all the time in other theaters of war. And that's I think, just the sober minded assessment of what our military needs to look like into the 21st century. It goes back to the NDA because the NDA sets the conditions and the frame for what the, what military acquisition needs to look like so our service members have the weapons that they need to deliver capability when it matters in a way that's repeatable and enduring and in service of the American interest.
- [41:50]
Natalie G. Winters
How about this? Drones not drag shows. That's I think, the way forward. I'm sure you would agree. Will, before we have you back on, in the meantime, if the audience wants to stay up to date with everything you and the team, team over there are working on, where can they go to follow you and call their senators, members of Congress get, get engaged in this very critical fight.
- [42:09]
Will Thibault
Yeah, I'm at William Thibault, you know, I'm a director of the American Military Project at Claremont, a visiting fellow at cra. Check out those wonderful organizations because there's a ton of great work that happens there to again keep the military, the military, make sure the institutional integrity is something that serves the American people and not the other way around. That's in a way that's disconnected from American interests.
- [42:35]
Natalie G. Winters
Thank you, sir, for joining us. We'll have you back on soon.
- [42:38]
Will Thibault
Yeah, I hope so. Thanks.
- [42:41]
Natalie G. Winters
Of course. And to link whatever you want to call it, that misprioritization, I think that's probably too euphemistic a term, frankly. The outright sabotage of the United States military, whether it's drag shows or depleting drugs, drone stocks not having adequate numbers are a number I always like to cite. For every one ship we build, China builds 300. Not necessarily all military, but you guys know very well the idea, the concept of military civil fusion. So they all are essentially dormant military vessels. When you think about those usaid, those State Department, all those bureaucrats, right, who espouse the idea that they're going to sabotage President Trump, that they're going to use these tactics to undermine the American America first movement. Really makes you wonder how we got here. Right to a place where America's national security, where we need to be opening up mines in the 11th hour because we don't have adequate rare earth supplies. So much so that China can run circles around us in a trade war and that we have to essentially buckle and give them what they want because we can't sustain life here in the United States for more than what, a week or two, all by design on both sides of the trade, China and here in the United States. We'll be right back from Tampa. War Room. Don't go anywhere.
- [43:53]
Stephen K. Bannon
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- [45:06]
Mike Benz
War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Banff.
- [45:14]
Natalie G. Winters
Welcome back to the War Room. We are here live in Tampa, just ahead of Turning Point's Student Action Summit, which you can't see below me, but there are hundreds of young kids getting their lanyards, their badges, getting ready to attend a bunch of breakout sessions and chapters to focus on their campuses and their communities. How to bring the Turning Point, conservative America, first MAGA message, you name it, home, which I think is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And I'm sure for those of you who are maybe feeling slightly defeated right now, it's a wonderful sight to see. I'm sure they're not much younger than I am, but still, even it gives me hope. Something else that gives me hope is, of course, people like BRANDON Showalter and Dr. Miriam Grossman, who join us now. Dr. Grossman, I want to start with you on the heels of a wonderful event hosted by the ftc, which has been doing wonderful work, really going after the. The transing course of America's youth. Walk the audience through. I think there's a link if people want to watch it. But what exactly you guys did, and then Brandon will bring in.
- [46:11]
Dr. Miriam Grossman
Well, thank you, Natalie, for having me on. Yesterday really was a watershed moment in this country for. In the fight against the transgender industry. And the reason I say that is because it was the first time that a government agency, the Federal Trade Commission, actually had an entire day in which the microphone was given to the victims of the transgender ideology, meaning young people, their parents who have been harmed, and the doctors and therapists and attorneys who are fighting against the ideology. Now, the point of the day was to discuss fraud and to uncover the fraud that's occurring day in and day out regarding transgender ideology and the way that young people are led to believe things that are just not true. And, for example, that they could be born in the wrong body and that they need to have their bodies medically and surgically altered in order to feel better. This is an untruth. There's no evidence of being able to be born in the wrong body. And when young people and their families are sold that falsehood, it's fraud. Furthermore, when they are encouraged that the only solution to their issues, to their suffering, their mental health, suffering, is to sign up for hormones and other interventions, surgical interventions, that is also false, that is fraudulent. So we have tens of thousands of people who have been harmed by the fraud of the gender industry. And yesterday, for the first time, we had an entire day of people speaking the truth. And in a government agency, it was Amazing. And I really urge your audience to go to the link. I believe that you have it there, the FTC link, and you can watch the entire thing. It's very disturbing that we've reached this point where so many people have been wrongly pulled into these false beliefs about what is a man and what is a woman. Sex is determined at the moment of conception, when the sperm and the egg unite. You have either a male or female life at that time that is permanent, that cannot be changed. And those are the truths that we need to come back to in medicine.
- [49:11]
Natalie G. Winters
Indeed, return to tradition, return to truth. Brandon, just give us a few minutes on how this links to the breaking news kind of out yesterday, today, what the DOJ is doing to sort of complement this.
- [49:24]
Brandon Showalter
Yes, one of the most encouraging developments from this NFTC workshop that Dr. Grossman was a keynote speaker for in the morning was Chad Mizell showing up Attorney General Pam Bondi's chief of staff of staff. And he announced there, and it has since been put out on the DOJ's website, that 20 subpoenas have been issued toward these clinics and hospitals who have been involved in performing these mutilating surgeries on children. And I just can't say enough how much I appreciate Attorney General Bondi statement that medical professionals and organizations that mutilated children in service to have a warped ideology will be held accountable by this Department of Justice. And I can tell you that Dr. Grossman and other presenters yesterday at the this workshop provided ample receipts. There is so much evidence of fraud and of course, the entire premise of gender ideology is a fraud, it's fraudulent that you can be born in the wrong body. So of course, anything I said this yesterday and during my panel, anything that begins with a lie is going to do damage. But there's now concrete evidence of so many crimes and malfeasance, false diagnoses, fraudulent practices. And I'm looking forward to seeing what the FTC and the DOJ do with these. What a difference a year makes.
- [50:40]
Natalie G. Winters
All right, real quick, we're coming up against the end of the show. Dr. Grossman, if people want to follow you, where can they go to stay up to date with everything you guys are working on?
- [50:47]
Dr. Miriam Grossman
I think the best place is probably my website, which is Miriam Grossman, maryland.com.
- [50:55]
Natalie G. Winters
Thank you, ma'. Am. The audience loves you and the work you guys are doing. And Brandon, where can people go for you?
- [51:01]
Brandon Showalter
Brandon and Michelle on Amazon, deadnamedocumentary.com, generationindoctrination.com and I would just echo Dr. Grossman's words. And now see the entire FTC workshop that has already been archived and it's on their website. I send it to your producer so the War Room Posse can watch it in full if they so desire.
- [51:19]
Natalie G. Winters
Amazing. Thank you, sir. Thank you. The two of you, the work you guys are doing, let's just hope not hope. Make it so. Use action, action, action that Bondi brings the same justice and protections for the kids who were victimized by Epstein and his elite cabal type associates. Of course. Before we jump to our final guest, you can probably hear the young Turning Point kids getting all excited. We've swapped that out for Hammers. I'll take that. Make sure you guys are checking out hometitleock.com Bannon using promo code Bannon. Don't fall victim to some scam that'll take you off the playing field, out of the game. From being able to make the critical essential phone calls to your members of Congress to defend whether it's the ndaa. Take your pick. We need to restore this country not even to its former greatness. That's great, but just to what President Trump promised. Mike Lindell, you got a minute? Hit us with the Latest all things MyPillow.
- [52:13]
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- [53:01]
Natalie G. Winters
We got to go. We'll see you tomorrow in Tampa. Warren Posse. Thank you.
- [53:06]
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