
Episode 4745: Trump's Power And The Rule Of Law Steve Bannon Exclusive ...
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Steve 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 hearing that. 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.
Stephen K. Bannon
And where do people like that go.
Steve Bannon
To share the big lie?
Stephen K. Bannon
MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Steve 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.
Stephen K. Bannon
War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
Steve Bannon
Welcome. It's Saturday the 30th of August in the year of our Lord 2025. Welcome for my favorite show of the week. I love them all, they're all our children. But our favorite is the Saturday show. Reminds me of I tell folks working around the house with my dad, my brothers and I, back when we were kids, every Saturday morning was turn two. Of course I had a paper rod and grass, stuff like that, but you still had to turn two, turn two for the house maintenance.
Stephen K. Bannon
We had a house that was built.
Steve Bannon
At the turn of the 20th century. So I always need a lot of upkeep, a lot of work. My dad was very much into the tlc. We're doing something quite special today and I've wanted to do it at kind of the end of the summer where we're now getting ready to fire up the football starting the next week when everybody gets back on Capitol Hill and everybody's back from whatever vacations or holidays they're able to tuck in at the last. Like I said, I've never seen an August like this where even the Augustes that we stayed in and had fights over budget, et cetera. I've never seen an August like this and just the intensity of it. And we want to pull the camera back today and kind of go through something that I think is good to prep the war room posse in the audience for the fights going forward. Remember, we've never had as action oriented a president or presidency than President Trump's. Now, how did this come about? Of course, most of you were here with us when the 2020 election was stolen or even before they went to the pandemic, the impeachment, the pandemic, 2020 election stolen and then went to the whole fight and illegitimate Biden regime. But it's those four years in the wilderness starting in January of 2021, when you had the Russ votes of the world and the doctor Kevin Roberts over at Heritage, and you had Stephen Miller with the America first legal Policy group, and you had America First Policy had all these different think tanks, along with the political operation of the precinct strategy and the grassroots and getting grassroots organized, that kind of, in that providential, four years after the election was stolen, was able to kind of build through and think through and get some depth to what saving the country meant and what a second Trump term would be. And that term's gone into. We've broken that down into certain things. You know, you had the networking of the kind of Project 2025 or the all these different groups. You had the network in, you had the policy. And we had a structure of how that was going to roll through with President Trump's presidency. And if you think about it, just the immense, what I call flood the zone of the executive orders in all of it to begin. But it had a greater purpose and a greater meaning, which was take on the administrative state and to destroy the deep state and put the policies in that would save the country. Everything from closing the border.
Stephen K. Bannon
Right.
Steve Bannon
To taking on the law firms and the universities and all that. So it's come together now, Frontline. The PBS guys and Frontline historically have just done these amazing documentaries. Now, they're always center left or rooted in the left because that's PBS and these filmmakers, but they've always been very powerful films of all the ones. And many of you people watch Frontline documentaries on all the topics. This one they did is so important. And it came out, remember, they made it in February, March, April, May of this year. It was put out just four weeks ago. We played it in an evening edition over two evenings in the 6 o' clock hour on War Room to, I mean, rave reviews from the audience who obviously sees the Leftwich land in it, but sees how they've come about this topic. That documentary, Trump's Power in the Rule of Law, is more relevant today on 30 August than when it was even released. Why you're now seeing President Trump go next level, whether that is with what's happening in Washington, D.C. with, you know, using the military to reinforce the police, what's happening with the Federal Reserve, what's happening all these, what I call seize the institutions and as you know, our beloved maximalist strategy here at the Whirlwind, which is, hey, we're burning daylight. You've got to put the pedal to the metal. You cannot Back off. You gotta go, go, go. So this documentary, Trump's Power in the Rule of Law, which has, you know, probably 2/3 liberal voices and 1/3 Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, et cetera, it's made up over going all those people you saw in the. I think it's a two hour documentary. All right, maybe it's just on an hour documentary. It's made up of all these voices you see in these snippets, but those come off hours, long interviews. And I granted these guys to come to the war room because I knew the quality of their filmmaking to come. And they just do a no holds barred interview. We haven't, I don't think, had the opportunity. I think we put it up on our Getter account and Rumble and others, but I haven't had a chance to break it down and actually show it to you guys. And that's what we're going to do this morning. We're going to, we're going to break this down into pieces and you actually see the raw material. Like I said, we invite these people in.
Stephen K. Bannon
It's no holds barred.
Steve Bannon
I didn't give many limitations on questions, how snarky they could be, how they try to trip you up, all of it. You get to see the raw thing and. But I also think you get to see kind of the, the thinking that goes into this process has taken multiple years to kind of manifest itself. And that's what's manifesting. And this is what, you know, Weigel and the guys at Semaphore announced this poll that came out that showed that 53% of the Republicans want to see President Trump run for the third term. Now, I know some people are going to be offended by that, et cetera.
Stephen K. Bannon
But hey, that is what it is.
Steve Bannon
It's the power of this personality, it's the power of the individual that's driving this. But these ideas are powerful also. That's why they need a powerful delivery system. I'm very proud of this interview. And number one, it is a. Although it's very straightforward, when PBS comes, these are very smart people and they've got their own angle of attack, just like we do. Don't you know, we're not Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm here. When we go in and do an interview or you come on the board and we've got an angle of attack. You guys know that and you're gonna see it here. So what we're gonna do this morning is we're going to break this down. You're going to see the Interview from PBS in all its glory and basically the entire thing. We'll see it, and I'll come back at certain times during the next couple hours and break it down for you. What I want you to do is to take away from this what we need, because starting Tuesday, when everybody's back, we're going to be. It's going to be constant fight. There's so many massive issues, starting from the budget deficits and how we finance the government before the clock runs out on the midnight on the 30th of September, all the way through all these different fights on the National Defense Authorization Act. Everything's happening in Ukraine and Israel, plus President Trump seizing the institutions. Remember, first it was flood the zone. Now it seized the institutions. Seized the institutions in a maximalist. Maximalist strategy. I'm very proud of this. This is what you're about to see is the underlying interview of which they extracted certain pieces for Trump. Trump's power in the rule of law. And I remember Megyn Kelly and everybody else, Mike Davis, the viceroy, everybody else went through this exact same thing to have these interviews. So very proud to present this. We're gonna be with you for the next couple hours. Make sure you take your number two prince a lot, jot down any notes you have, get them up in the live chat. And now we present Trump's power in the rule of law.
PBS Interviewer
One place we're thinking of starting the film is the moment when President Trump goes to the Justice Department to speak in the Great Hall.
Stephen K. Bannon
I'm going today.
PBS Interviewer
Tell me about, about what was going on on that day. What was he. What was he doing? What did, what did you see? What was the point?
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, that's one of the keys to the unitary theory of the executive, that in of the president, his executive power of being the chief executive officer of the United States government, being the commander in chief of the military, the uniformed armed services, and everything to do with national security and the military. And third, which has really been lost since the Watergate, is he's the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. And the Attorney general reports directly to him. The FBI director reports to him. And it's not this kind of. It was hived off for 40, 50 years because of, quite frankly, the judicial insurrection that took place that removed Nixon from office. Nixon, when you look at Watergate, you think of Woodward and Bernstein. That's all kind of nonsense. It was a judicial insurrection. A guy named Jeff Shepard, who was there, really has taken a couple of books and documented this quite well, afterwards, they tried tothe radical left, essentially separated the attorney general, that entire system, fromparticticly from Republican presidents and President Trump. I think that was a historic day, a very meaningful day to basically assert that the chief executive, the officer of the president, is the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer in the country.
PBS Interviewer
That's sort of the theory of what he was doing. Was it also personal for him? Because he talked about that Justice Department being weaponized against him. He's talked about lawfare.
Stephen K. Bannon
Of course. Look at it. Look at it. Said 92 indictments. Jack Smith. The indictments around Jack Smith, I think were 300 years in prison. They wanted to put President Trump in prison. Remember? They wanted Trump to die in prison. They want Trump still to die in prison. This game's this fight and battle is far from over. If Hakeem Jeffries raises $2 billion and this all comes down to a handful of seats in California and New York in 2026, and if somehow we don't hold onto the seats, this very thin majority, the first action Hakeem Jeffries will take will be to move to impeach Donald Trump. And if somehow the election's stolen in 2028 like they stole it in 2020, the first thing they're going to do is it's all going to go back again to try to indict Trump and to try to indict people around Trump and put Trump in prison. I say this all the time. It's quite evident. This is a long war. It took as many, many decades to get here. It's going to take us many, many decades to get out. And the Trump, particularly the phony Republicans that kind of say they're with President Trump, et cetera, are not in for this long fight. This is a long, tough fight. The left understands it's a long, tough fight. You see the way they organize around it and how they embed institutions. This entire process we're going through now is to purge these institutions of this. And it's a long, tough fight, and it's far from over, and it's going to last. To actually get it done will take decades.
PBS Interviewer
He when he's there, one of the things when you talk to Justice Department lawyers or former Justice Department lawyers, they're sort of shocked by is that he's at the Department of Justice. He's naming individual people, like Norm Eisen is one of them, who he calls scum.
Stephen K. Bannon
But that's just right there, even in your question. They're shyou just said it. They're shocked that he's there now. Think about that. And they are shocked. But you just, just that question you've answered for the American people exactly what the problem is. The President of the United States, the chief executive, the office of the president. Okay. Who is the chief executive officer, the commander in chief and the chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer. They are shocked that he's in the sacred temple of the Justice Department. F them, right? This is what democracy is about. These are anti democratic forces. They have to be broke. They are shocked because the President of the United States and worst of all, Donald Trump actually soiled their temple by going in there. I happen to think President Trump should go there every week and give a talk about lawfare. This country, what they did is so radical in turning the apparatus of the government against its people. It was almost like East Germany. We used to on the show in the years 21 and 22 tell people a film they should watch is the lives of other others. This amazing film about the Stasi in East Germany. It's in German. And the war room posse, who are blue collar, lower middle class audience took to this film and loved it and could see exactly what was going on in turning citizen government, turning citizens against each other. So no, you're exactly right. They were shocked and they're going to be more shocked because we are going to tear apart what they have done in the justice system. And this is one of the big reasons of going after the law firms. We're going after the actual mechanics, right? The structure. That's why what President Trump is doing, the team around him is so fundamental, to basically get back to being a constitutional republic.
Billy Joe Shaver
So I suggest you take a look inside. Cause I think you changed already. You went and lost your pride. But I'm American made. I got American power. I got American babe in America's heart. Go on red, raise the flag.
Steve Bannon
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Stephen K. Bannon
Kill America's voice family.
Steve Bannon
Are you on Getter yet?
Billy Joe Shaver
No.
Stephen K. Bannon
What are you waiting for?
Steve Bannon
It's free, it's uncensored, and it's where all the biggest voices in conservative media are speaking out. Download the Getter app right now.
Stephen K. Bannon
It's totally free.
Steve Bannon
It's where I put up exclusively all.
Stephen K. Bannon
Of my content 24 hours a day. Want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? Go to Getter.
Steve Bannon
That's right. You can follow all of your favorites. Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack pos and so many more. Download the Getter app now. Sign up for free and be part of the movement.
PBS Interviewer
So the reaction, though, that he's doing what he's accused the other side of doing, that he's weaponizing it. That he's, he's not.
Stephen K. Bannon
Hang on. He's exactly the opposite. He's not weaponizing it. He's doing the exact opposite. He's actually opening it up and making sure and guaranteeing we don't weaponize it. You haven't seen any weaponization of this Justice Department. You haven't seen a huge, which, hey, I think there should have been named massive investigations already. I think the House should have named massive investigations. I think we should panel grand juries to the criminals that we've driven out of here. You know, I'm a maximalist. President Trump, I think, is being very even handed on this. He's not going to, he's going to go out of his way not to weaponize it. I think you actually have to purge out the criminals that were there. I think you shouldn't panel grand juries now. It'd be going hard. I don't think we're going nearly hard enough. And I think President, the left and the people that hate Trump should understand one thing. In our movement, President Trump is a moderate. He's somebody that balances every part of the equation in thinking through what actions should be taken and he makes, I think, decisions that are like Solomon, right? Very even handed, if you see what he's doing compared to elements around President Trump. And I consideri'm proud to say I'm to the right of President Trump on this and always to the maximalist of what we should do. We have to. The system was so out of control and so dangerous to the American system. It has to American people. It has to be purged so it never happens again.
PBS Interviewer
Let's go to the first day in office, signing the executive order, starting at the Capitol One arena, going on to the White House. He signed a lot of executive orders the first time when you were with him was this different, the beginning of this term, the types of executive action.
Stephen K. Bannon
It'S no comparison, but here's why. And the first time we came from behind at the last minute and closed and won, you know, a come from behind victory, probably the greatest come from behind victory ever. We had no time to do a transition. It was a very small team. And Chris Christie, the transition team, the books and the analysis was a total joke. He just had to throw it at it. He had to start over again. Also, we didn't have a deep bench. There hadn't been, you know, there were a lot of Republicans. But when you take overtake over the government, everybody, whether it's President Obama or President Trump, you essentially have about four or 5,000 executives. You put in 3,000 to 4,000. You put in right away. Another thousand have to be Senate confirmed so you can hit the deck plates running with 3,000. We never had more than 1,000 because you just didn't have a deep bench of training the second time. And this is why the big steal stealing the 2020 election was providential. We were able tothe two things we started right away was the political effort, the precinct strategy, to actually get some traction, to build the MAGA movement, particularly with low information and low propensity voters, so that President Trump could have a political wave to come back on and not just win the primary, but win the presidency. The second partand this is what was so powerful. Public intellectuals who heretofore had been at places like Heritage and these other places bought into this, the idea that if we were coming back, we had to actually have a policy prescription. And so there you had in the years 21, you had coming up, things like the America First Policy Institute, you know, under Brooks Rollins, you had Stephen Miller's America First Law Institute, you had Russ Vogt's center for Renewing America, you had the Heritage Organization start to look at an umbrella, maybe this thing called Project 2025, which everything would come together. It was twofold. Number one, to build cadres, to actually build networks and people working together that were subject matter experts, so that we could hit the deck plates running on an inauguration day with as close to 3,000 people as you can get. And I think we were the fastest. Sergio Gore kind of heading up that operation, became very involved in it. I think we hit 1000, 2000 and now close to 3000 in record time. Because we had had years of going through and working with people on the policy side. You had all of this come together, actually got published in a book, you know, mandate, mandate, I think mandate for leadership. But it was many, many different elements of coming together. One of the central aspects of that was the thesis of deconstruction the administrative state. And in deconstructing the administrative state, first off, you have to anchor that into a who's in charge, right? And that's why you get to this unitary executive theory of which it all comes together in the office of the President. And so this time, I think I did your show years ago where I said, hey, we're going to flood the zone. And you know, we're. And I said, there you go. We're going to do two or three things a day. If you go back in time, that was a huge deal. It was a huge effort for us. And if you look at some of our executive orders, except for the travel ban, some of the executive orders were a little shambolic, right, because you just didn't have the time here. You've had years in major public intellectuals. And the hidden story here is how many public intellectuals we had that bought in to the fact that Trump was actually coming back politically. There was a buy in by 22, right? By 22, early 22, I think, when Project 2025 came together. But all these other elements had taken that first year, along with Mark Meadows Group CPI. So four or five of these came together in that year, 21 and bought into 22, that we were actually going to win and come back. That is historic because these people I think realized by throwing in with kind of the MAGA movement and President Trump, they were going to be excluded from the Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley, more of the traditional Republican Party. That efforts led to what this is, this is why on the very first day, you know, they had a meeting with President Trump in Mar a Lago around New Year's. And I think Susie and the team walked through and Stephen Miller walked through Kind of a program of, hey, we're going to do this. And Trump goes, no, I want to sign 100 on day one. Right? I want to hit it and just overwhelm the system with action, action, action. And it came close to that. They were a little more spread out, but that's what we call it, Days of Thunder. And we monitor this every day in the war room. I mean, at its Height, there were 10 or 12 either executive actions, executive orders, or other things he was doing, pushing legislation in theor, being commander in chief and taking certain actions as commander in chief. There were a dozen a day. It overwhelmed the system. I say all the time there are six to eight major stories or major things going on that even the mainstream media can't cover. The editors are too overwhelmed on assignments. And to be blunt, they kind of bit because the mainstream media is kind of lazy. They always want to go either to court intrigue or to the horse race. They bit right away on Elon Musk. And I kept saying this was like in the confirmation hearings. A guy like a Matt Gaetz or Pete Hegseth serves a purpose and you draw all the fire. You can get a Bobby Kennedy and a Tulsi Gabbard, you know, because the media has a tendency to want to focus on one big thing to tell the story. The Elon Musk part of it essentially gave tremendous cover for so many other actions that were taking place. So Elon Musk, whether you like him or hate him or think he's doing a good job strategically, he was perfect for what he did as far as media narrative, because it all centered on Elon Musk. In the Doge effort, where so much other stuff was going on.
PBS Interviewer
Was that effort, was all of those executive orders, were they part of, of an intentional attempt to test the limits of executive power, to push forward what the, what the President could do.
Stephen K. Bannon
I think if you talk to President Trump, when you talk to President Trump, he's not looking at testing. He's flat on, this is the way it is. This is the unitary theory, right? It works. It's about in the office of the President. Give me the. I'm going to take these actions. So make sure that we do it in a proper way. Make sure we do it with executive orders that are cleared by Office of Legal Counsel. Make sure we've gone through all the process, but it's action, action, action. And if you look at every different element, remember, for your Viewers of the 4,000, I was, let's say 4,000, 3,000, non confirmed, 1,000 Senate confirmed. Of the 4,000, roughly individuals you get to staff a government, whether Obama, Bernie Sanders, or President Trump, you're managing an apparatus that spends about 6.5 to $7 trillion a year, has assets I don't know of, they say 80 to $100 trillion. Right. And has people. You have essentially 2.5 million civilian employees. You know, people call bureaucrats or civilian employees. You have about 2, 2.5 million, let's say military or in the military, but you also have contractors. Now, there are 18 million contractors. They've done a lot of this so they can get out of the pension situation and health care, but they have contractors. About half of those contractors are the people that do the, you know, clean the buildings, do all that, that type of work. About half of them are actually do administrative work. Of that, about half, let's say 5 million, are actually kind of executives, are at that level. So essentially, if you add it up, you have about 10 million people that individuals or billets that run the government. And this is what you. In deconstructing the administrative state, this is what you want to radically take down kind of programmatically and make sure that the people, the billets go with it. In the case, in the court case that we're involved in about the foreign, with USAID, the controversial 2 billion. Remember the 2 billion, the argument about the 2 billion, it's paid to contractors, right, who did executive action or actually took action. They're not employees of the government. They're not military. It's that bucket of contractors. And so that is what the deconstruction of the administrative state, right, to basically take the bureaucracy, but take it apart brick by brick, is all about, and the focus of it. And many times it's with monies being paid to contractors. And President Trump, I believe he doesn't, when you talk to him, he doesn't think of this as some theoretical exercise. He says, hey, the office of the President is endowed with this power and I'm going to take executive action around it. And, hey, if they, just like he said on the travel ban, if they want to take us to court, let them take us to court. But we'll win in court.
PBS Interviewer
That's what I was wondering. I mean, does he know unitary executive theory? Does he know these ideas that lawyers around him have, or is this an instinct for him?
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, for one, it's obviously an instinct of an executive. Remember Hamilton said in the Federal Spread the key when they were debating the Constitution, the key about the executive is that's where the energy is going to be. That's the driving motive force of the government. The framers of the Constitution wanted a strong executive and wanted an executive that drove the action. It had that urgency of the moment. That's President Trump. I mean, he's all about action, all about getting things done and, you know, all gas, no break. So does Heyes. He understands the theory of it. But President Trump's not going to sit there and spend a lot of time with constitutional lawyers debating the finer points of the Constitution. He sees the plan. It's the office of the president is endowed with these powers. Let's get on with it and get on with it. Let's look at the verticals that what we want to do and make sure that we've got actions and executive actions that could do that and executive orders that can do that.
Steve Bannon
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Stephen K. Bannon
Today, War Room, here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. People should understand this. Just because a guy sits in the Oval Office and signs things, it doesn't mean it's happened. This is the thing about the administrative state and then its rogue element, the deep state. You have a massive bureaucracy and they think, whether the President's AOC or Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, they're the permanent government and they're just going to wait out anybody that's there. They got their own way of doing things right and their own processes. It's called the interagency process. Right it's this kind of, you know, apparatus of interchangeable, you know, interchangeable players, but an apparatus that's just going to weigh people out. You have to hit with motive, force, anything to get it done in the bureaucracy and make sure it actually gets done. So that on the deck plates of America, where the citizens actually live, those actions actually go all the way through. That's what President Trump's focus is on, not some theoretical debate about this. But you think about players that have had this. That is actually pretty well thought through. Mike Davis is a key player. Now, why is Mike Davis a key player? We call him the Viceroy now, but he was absolutely unknown when I got to know him. He's the guy that put Gorsuch. So we had a list of judges initially in the spring of 2016 to try to show that President Trump was actually a conservative. Remember, they put the, and I think Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society put it together. Later, after I took on the campaign, we expanded that list. I think anotheri think we got it up to like 22 or 23 people to show this is in the heat of battle as we're moving forward to say, hey, look, Trump is a conservative. It's the only time it's ever been done. These are who we're going to pick these judges from. And it looks like there could be a couple of judges because Hillary Clinton was not forcing the issue of Ed Garland taking the Supreme Court role. They wanted somebody more progressive. And so this whole thing of the Merrick Garland billet or slot became quite big. Mike Davis, who had worked for Grassley and I didn't even know at the time, he fought to get this young judge that nobody really knew, a guy named Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch is absolutely central to the entire thing because Gorsuch in the transition, he kind of comes out of nowhere. I sat on the five man committee to select the next Supreme Court justice with Don McGahn and Mark Paoletta. Right, who? People, these are guys that are very focused on this theory of the deconstruction of the administrative state. And Gorsuch was looked at as the young intellectual jurist about the Chevron deference. And this is this policy or this court ruling that's gone on for 50 years that by law, by the interpretation of law, you defer to the administrative state to kind of govern itself. He washe had this theory that it had to go back to the courts. You had to take away, strip away the power of actually the bureaucrats to govern themselves, to manage themselves, to Basically set law for themselves. It was absolutely fundamental. Gorsuch then became the first election. And I will tell you, it wasn't all that competitive. Gorsuch, by his intellect and his opinions. And the focus then was not so much on social issues. Roe v. Wade or those things were considered kind of settled law. It was the focus was going after the administrative state. That's the legal aspect of what you see every day coming out of the Oval Office in this unitary executive theory. And like I said, President Trump doesn't have time and patience. I mean, he'll hear it. He understands it. Don't get me wrong, we've been working on this for years, but he's not sitting there looking for a debating society of constitutional scholars. He's a man of action and said, hey, this is why he went afterran for the presidency in the first place. This is why in his first term, he understood the blockyou know, blocking. Just because you're president and sitting in the Oval Office and signing things and talking to the media doesn't mean that your actions are actually flowing through this apparatus and having impact on people's lives, of the American people.
PBS Interviewer
What did he learn from the first term? I mean, we know about his frustration when Jeff Sessions recused himself. We know Bill Barr was not cooperative in his attempts. After the election, there were clashes with White House lawyers. What did he learn about lawyers from the first term that informs him the second term?
Stephen K. Bannon
I think he learned that if you see the Mike Davises of the world and the lawyers that are there today, right. And particularly people at the Justice Department, and look at one of the things that I think all of us learned because all of us used, you know, name brand law firms and white shoe law firms and, you know, we have the legal bills to show it. After President Trump left in January 2021, your audience should understand that President Trump and the core team around him. We were deplatformed by Big Tech. We were debanked. All my banks I've been business with for 40 years, I was debanked by every bank. I had all my credit cards cut off. As President Trump did de bank deplatform, all of our law firms fired us. My law, one of the top two and three law firms I used came to me and said, hey, we love you. We have no problem with you. But because you're associated with Trump, our corporate clients are saying, if you're retained by Bannon, we're out. So thisand this is one of the reasons I detest corporations. They're inherentlythe People in them are inherently evil, right? And you saw this in the whole dei in the woke. But what they did to people, they werethey're aand. This is this consolidation of power. This is why I'm such a neo brandisian that this concentration of corporate power and governmental power combined can create oligarchs like you've seen on Wall street, in particular, like you've seen in Silicon Valley. I think President Trump, the years 21 and 22, which are never really looked at, are the central ground of really taking the experience from the first term, but really thinking through, because people have to understand there was never any doubt with his inner team and himself that we were coming back and winning. That's what I think is lost on people. They sit here today and say, this stuff's so overwhelmed. You know, Rachel Mattis now doing the show every night, 100 days for the first hundred days, because she's got to be the anchor. And they're like overwhelmed by these actions. This gets back to the fact he had a core group around him and drew in public intellectuals and he had working class people in the Precinct. Strategy that Team 100% not just believed, but knew that Trump was returning. Trump would win the primary, Trump would win the presidency, and that we had, starting on January 20th of 2025, would have a mandate to make these changes, to basically get back, get America back to being a constitutional Republic. Those years of 21 and 22, when we were deepall, our banks were gone, our credit cards were gone, no law firms. What Boris Epstein did, I think is underrated. He put together a team, kind of a pickup team of lawyers. Right. Because none of the big law firms would represent Trump. And so in the years 21 and 22, of which the tremendous legal pressure came on President Trump, and that's where he saw the power of these law firms. These law firms combined with these private equity institutions are too powerful. They've actually taken on a life that the American people quite understand. They're not like law firms. When I was at Goldman Sachs about Sullivan and Cromwell, or how powerful Sullivan and Cromwell was back in the 1950s and 60s with John Foster Dulles and his brother. These are Bennett Williams in D.C. this is more than being fixers. These are apparatuses that actually control the imperial capital and are the linkage between the capital markets in New York in control of the political class in Washington, D.C. which your audience should understand. These votes and people running around, that's all kind of. That's all kind of pro wrestling. The decisions and the power are behind the scenes, right? And these politicians, because they have to raise so much money, look, $100 million was just spent in the, in a race for a Supreme Court slot in Wisconsin. Over $100 million in one state election. The size of the money that has to be raised in the power makes Wall street and the lawyers actually and the corporatists actually more powerful against the people. So this was many years in the making. In those years of 21 and 22 when the entire world was against President Trump and his team and it looked like the odds were so incredibly long. For the people inside, we didn't think there were long odds. We said, hey, this is how it's going to play out. This is have to be ready. And that's why you've seen so much action in the first hundred days. I mean, quite frankly, more than I ever thought we'd be able to pull off to witness. He', Sanif, you look at. These are major things. They're not minor things. He's totally redoing the geostrategic structure of the post World War II world, right. From the postwar international rules based order of which the American, you know, we essentially underwrite do commercial relationships and trade deals which were upside down in our security guarantees. This is why our defense budget is a trillion dollars. This is why we basically provide the defense defense of Western Europe, the Gulf Emirates and the Middle east around the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea and all the way up to Japan and Korea around the rim of the Eurasian landmass. President Trump is totally shifting that back to hemispheric defense from the Panama Canal to Greenland and the Arctic and the Pacific all the way to the island change to kind of hermetically seal the United States. That in and of itself on any one president's term would be monumental. That's one of a dozen things he's doing. The trade, the trade situation he's done totally, geoeconomically, totally rewrites the wiring, the hard wiring of the international trading system. Everything he's doing, whether it's onlook, we've sealed the border. The New York Times admitted the other day that the border's essentially been sealed. And we were told by Republicans when they tried to pass that legislation, this will take 20 years. You have to basically give amnesty. You have to give this huge bill which we were criticizing. We fought tooth and nail against Lankford and McConnell says not done. It's proven now, it didn't need to be done. President Trump sealed it. I call it all quiet on the Southern front right now. You still have the problem with deportations. My point is that these things he's doing are not small things. This is not Bill Clinton's putting uniforms on kids in school. He is taking on the most fundamental issues dealing with the sovereignty of this country, and particularly putting not just the country first, but putting America first, citizens first, in this entire globalist network. The things he's doing are breathtaking and the depth of what he's doing, and quite frankly, the media is only covering a very superficial nature of it, because one just the staffing of the media. I can understand editors sitting there going, hey, what are we going to do? What are we going to cover today? The other aspect that I think is very powerful is he is doing something extraordinary and he's trying to disintermediate the media. And the way he's doing it is just about every day or every other day when he has a signing, he'll just open up the Oval Office and invite the media in, and he will give sometimes kind of a stream of consciousness of what he's thinking about whatever he's signing or just what's going on, and then he'll open up to questions and take all comers. I can tell from our audience, which is the tip of the spear of the Trump movement, how much they're learning every day as president, because we covered all life, we'll drop any programming and go live. And they're the people most engaged and they're learning every day. So I think it's just incredibly powerful. It's totally changing what the office of the President is as far as the American people, the access to it, but the power that can be generated from it.
PBS Interviewer
Help me understand the people who he appoints to the top of the Justice Department, the top of the FBI, Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, and the critics who say they're chosen for personal loyalty, they see themselves as his lawyers rather than lawyers for the United States. What do you make of that, of who they are, how they're chosen?
Stephen K. Bannon
And that criticism, Jack Kennedy chose his brother. Ronald Reagan chose his personal lawyer, William French Smith. Obama chose Holder, his bestie. Right. So I think those criticisms are just. It's just going to be the criticism, whoever you choose. I think the team he chose and at Justice, I love Pam Bondi, but Matt Gaetz was our guy and I'm the huge advocate. We sort of stuck with Gates, and Gates would be over there right now and even be more aggressive. I think the team's fantastic. We made A decision at the show in war Room and really the audience that everybody had to be confirmed. You know, there was a moment there they thought they were going to pick up, particularly when Gates stepped aside. They thought they were going to leave with Pete Hegseth and Pete Hegseth. It came within 30 minutes, I think, of having his nomination or maybe an hour of having his nomination pulled. And our audience let it be known it was all or nothing and we were going to go up onto the ramparts. And whether it's Joni Ernst or Tom Tillis or whoever's going to get in the way, you're going to pay a political penalty for that. President Trump wants this team. He's going to get this team. I think the team has just been terrific so far. I think it's been great. And yet clearly, and anybody wants to pick people who are in sync with what you're trying to accomplish, particularly President Trump has a sense of urgency. You know, Churchill had this thing in World War II when he took over as Prime Minister, he'd get reports and things like the typical bureaucracy, the administrative state then, and he would write at the top in red action. This day, he wanted action, right? He wanted to make the apparatus work. He knew he was in a war, wartime situation. We feel the same thing. I think President Trump feels the same thing. So he wants people not simply that are loyal, but also understand exactly what his program is going to be.
Steve Bannon
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Stephen K. Bannon
War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Banner. It's one of the things of having four years to get ready and actually, you know, refine, you know, particularly on the personnel side. You don't have that. You don't have some of the mistakes we made in the first term because we just didn't have time and we didn't have a benchmark. Now we have a bench. I think the team is really working in sync. I think it's been terrific so far.
PBS Interviewer
Early on, the attorney general sends a memo and says, basically, you know, I'm interpreting the law. The president interprets the law. And if you don't want to sign a brief, if you don't want to sign something, it's time for you to leave. There's a big fallout around the Eric Adams case when the acting attorney.
Stephen K. Bannon
I don't think there's been enough of that. Once again, I'm a maximalist, but I think it's better to get it done at the beginning. I would have requested all the resignations of the U.S. attorneys immediately, and then I would have gone in and this is something that's now big controversial. Can he actually get rid of the working prosecutors like SDNY or the Eastern District or Washington, D.C. or any U.S. attorney's office? The answer to that is yes, and it should be done. It should have been done immediately and many more should be done. They serve at the pressure. This goes back to Watergate. This goes back. Watergate was a judicial insurrection. The true story of Watergate is written by Jeff Shepard. It is not Woodburn and Bernstein. It is not Deep Throat. It was Deep Throat, people should understand, was the deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt. Think about that for a second, right? The apparatus turning on a president. It was a judicial revolt by the House Legal Committee, the Justice Department, these radical lawyers of the Justice Department at the time, and Judge Schericka in the same corrupt court you've got down here in Washington, D.C. right now. And that's the confrontation. The confrontation that's going on in these courts with the president's actions goes back to Sirica in Watergate. And this isso when President Trump goes to the sacred temple of Main justice and Norm Ison and these guys are shocked and they're upset. And you have Weissman up there, you know, you know, on msnbc, oh, this is horrible. You, he's president of the United States. He's the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer by the Constitution. I think he should go to the Justice Department every week and make sure he has a talk with the lawyers and make sure he'sand make sure that they're in sync with the president of the United States. People, the left is in very dangerous territory here because the same thing will happen to an AOC or Bernie Sanders. Whoever comes in from the left, if the apparatus doesn't like it, they're not going to do it. And that's why the Constitution, the founders of the nation, understood that they put executive power in the office of the president. Regardless of whether it's Donald Trump or aoc, it's the office of the president. And President Trump is going to fulfill that. And you're going to have some massive court cases about this because it's working its way up right now. And this is a showdown. One side's going to win and one side is going to lose on this. And our side's going to win.
Steve Bannon
Okay. Want to thank our pretty intense guys. Do a good job and they. Beautifully shot, I might add. Of course, that's the billion dollars they just got cut of their budget. Not sure. I'm sure this documentary series will get its own independent financing, but they do things that's very high quality. Want to thank our sponsors. Birch Gold. Make sure you understand of how the BRICS nations are trying to destroy the dollar, why they're trying to do it through a de dollarization program. Now that we've had this kind of trade issue with India buying the Russian fuel, maybe even India joins them, it's going to get more complicated than ever. Birchgold.com promo code Bannon the end of the dollar empire. Seven free installments put together the last four years read like they're ripped from today's headline. So go check it out. We're also working on the free installments 8 and 9, but get it. We're also doing right now compiling a print edition for all of this. So I want to thank the team at Birch Gold. Also, if you want to get it quick and dirty, they've got a great guide to investing in gold and precious metals. Do A In the Age of Trump. It's totally free. Just take your phone out. Bannon B A N N O N at 989-898. Get that today and I'll get you started and get your relationship with Philip Patrick and the team. Okay. We're going to end the first hour with one of my favorites, Billy Joe Shaver. I should say the late Billy Joe Shaver. Get the behind me Satan. That'll take us out. And that is not implying PBS were satanic.
Stephen K. Bannon
They were not. They were real.
Steve Bannon
They were gentlemen and women and did a, I think a fantastic job. And you see the answers right there. Back in a moment for the second hour. And I'll be breaking it all down for you at the top of the hour. Short commercial break. Billy Joe Shaver takes us out. I'll be back in a moment.
Billy Joe Shaver
I was headed straight for hell but I couldn't for my life figure how to help myself. And I said, get thee behind me, Satan for I commanded any name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth the year get thee behind me, Satan, for I command it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The movement moon and stars were hidden by the shroud that clouded round I could see my loved ones weeping as they lowered me in the ground no words were spoken over me. I almost thought I died Then I knew I wasn't dead. I had been buried alive. I said get deeper by I miss it. For I commanded the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth here 50 behind me, sitting For I command it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I knew that I was buried in the deepest, darkest place. The deeds I had done put me in this awful place. Then I felt a stir inside me and a smile came across my face and I said, get deeper and we're Satan. For I command it the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Empty behind me sitting. Oh, I commanded in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, I sit behind me For I command in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Nazareth in the name of the Lord Jesus. Jesus Christ. Amen. And amen. Amen.
Stephen K. Bannon
Brother.
Billy Joe Shaver
Sam.
Steve Bannon
What if he had the brightest mind in the war room delivering critical financial research every month? Steve Bannon here. War room listeners know Jim Rickards. I love this guy. He's our wise man. A former CIA, Pentagon and White House advisor with an unmatched grasp of geopolitics and capital markets. Jim predicted Trump's electoral College victory exactly 312 to 226, down to the actual number itself. Now he's issuing a dire warning about April 11, a moment that could define Trump's presidency and your financial future. His latest book, Money GPT, exposes how AI is setting the stage for financial chaos, bank runs at lightning speeds, algorithm driven crashes and even threats to national security. Right now, war room members get a free copy of MoneyGPT. When they sign up for Strategic Intelligence. This is Jim's flagship financial newsletter, Strategic Intelligence. I read it. You should read it. Time is running out. Go to rickardswarroom. Com. That's all one word. Rickards War Room. Rickards with an S. Go now and claim your free book. That's rickardswarroom. Com. Do it today.
Title: Trump’s Power And The Rule Of Law – Steve Bannon Exclusive
Date: August 30, 2025
Host: Stephen K. Bannon
Main Theme:
A deep dive into President Trump’s approach to executive authority, the administrative state, and the legal, political, and institutional battles shaping America’s governance. The episode leverages Bannon’s extensive PBS interview (for the Frontline documentary, “Trump’s Power and the Rule of Law”) as a springboard for analysis of Trump’s second term, focusing on executive power, the relationship with the Justice Department, institutional purges, and the long-view strategies behind “Making America Great Again.”
Steve Bannon uses the Saturday show to step back and frame the broader, ongoing political conflict surrounding Trump's presidency and the "maximalist" MAGA movement. Central to the episode is Bannon’s reflection and breakdown of his PBS Frontline interview, which serves as both a retrospective and a mission plan on Trump’s methods of governing and the movement’s intent to “seize the institutions” of American governance. The conversation focuses on lessons learned, reshaping the administrative state, and the decades-long battle over the meaning of executive power and the rule of law.
“If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.” (Steve Bannon, 00:34)
“It was a judicial insurrection… after Nixon, the radical left essentially separated the Attorney General from Republican presidents.” (Bannon, 09:07)
"This is a long war. It took many, many decades to get here. It’s going to take us many, many decades to get out." (Steve Bannon, 10:47)
“President Trump, I think, is being very even handed on this. He’s not going to... weaponize it. I think you actually have to purge out the criminals that were there... the system... has to be purged so it never happens again.” (Bannon, 16:57)
“[Trump] says... the office of the President is endowed with this power and I’m going to take executive action around it... [If] they want to take us to court, let ‘em take us to court. But we’ll win in court.” (Bannon, 24:33)
“The focus was going after the administrative state... Gorsuch in the transition, he kind of comes out of nowhere... he had this theory that it had to go back to the courts.” (Bannon, 29:29)
“My law... firm came to me and said... Because you’re associated with Trump, our corporate clients are saying, if you’re retained by Bannon, we’re out. This is one of the reasons I detest corporations... they're inherently evil.” (Bannon, 33:50)
“He is doing something extraordinary... every day... he’ll just open up the Oval Office and invite the media in... The tip of the spear of the Trump movement... [is] learning every day.” (Bannon, 41:19–43:30)
“Churchill... would write at the top [of reports] in red ‘action this day’—he wanted action. President Trump feels the same.” (Bannon, 41:19)
"This is a showdown. One side’s going to win and one side is going to lose on this. And our side’s going to win." (Bannon, 45:15)
Throughout the episode, Bannon is combative, direct, and unapologetically ideological. He peppers his analysis with war references and historical analogies:
For listeners seeking clarity on the ambitions, ideological foundations, and tactical thinking of the Trump movement in its second administration, this episode is essential. Bannon explicates both the intellectual lineage (unitary executive, administrative state deconstruction) and the practical war-fighting strategies (personnel, legal, institutional) guiding Team Trump. The episode’s synergy with the PBS Frontline documentary offers insight into not just the public narrative but the internal logic and planning of the MAGA effort.
Recommended for: Political strategists, policy scholars, journalists, and engaged citizens interested in the “how” and “why” of Trump-era power politics.