Transcript
Stephen K. Bannon (0:00)
They controlling the message, though. So far they have been.
Steve Bannon (0:02)
They have been. They've used the bully pulpit of the White House, the President himself. You know, I was, I was told by White House advisers yesterday that a.
Stephen K. Bannon (0:10)
Clue as to how they're feeling about.
Steve Bannon (0:11)
Things, they feel like they're winning the.
Stephen K. Bannon (0:14)
Messaging argument, is the fact that J.D. vance showed up in the White House briefing room yesterday, the first time he's done that sort of a swaggering appearance suggesting Democrats, Democrats, Democrats are the ones to blame. He didn't stick to the facts all the time in that appearance, but that's the messaging.
Steve Bannon (0:27)
And Democrats are still trying to.
Stephen K. Bannon (0:30)
They're on their back heels. The White House feels Donald Trump is governing like the dictator of America. Right? He promised to be a dictator on day one, his words. He's compared himself to America's king, even to the Pope. The goal of the second term quite clearly is not hiding. This is to assert complete control over every aspect of the federal government. He wants to directly control who gets fired and hired across the entire government and even civil society, from Fed directors to talk show hosts. He wants to directly control who gets indicted, most recently with the ridiculous prosecution of James Comey. He says right now, the position of the Trump administration and Donald Trump is that he, by himself, unilaterally can raise taxes on the American people by a trillion dollars entirely by executive fiat, just by being like, yeah, taxes up. He says he can rescind or reallocate any congressionally appropriated funds, basically at any time, entirely by executive fiat. Oh, there's a bill to spend stuff there. No, we're not going to do it. Okay, but think of all that. But now it's the Democrats who are in the driver's seat when it comes to shutting down the government. That is a pretty tough sell, especially considering Trump is using the shutdown to drumroll, govern like a king in the first Trump term. You know, I think Donald Trump's been unstable and, to Maya's right, unhinged for a long time. But in the first Trump term, there were people who, and we heard reports of this, people who kind of made a pact to say, look, none of us are going to let this guy go unsupervised. It's a dangerous world. We can't afford the kind of thing that could happen if he flies off the handle and there's nobody there to stop him. The people around him now don't care. They're either true believers who think that Donald Trump is on some kind of mission to save America from its own Citizens or they're opportunists, you know, just soulless opportunists who just don't care. And that is really the scariest part of all of it, because, you know, the two things, when I, as I watched that meeting, I had to think that there were people sitting there saying at this moment, and by the way, right now, at this moment, Nicole, as we speak, if the president is doing what he's supposed to be doing, he's carrying a little card about the size of a playing card that carries the codes to 1600 strategic nuclear weapons. The President, in the next 20 minutes, could kill hundreds of millions of people if nobody could stop him. And we never had to worry much about that until, you know, he started talking about the N word and moving submarines around and things that I don't think he really understands. But the other is that when he says to these generals and admirals, the enemy from within, he may think that's a great rally speech, you know, at some MAGA gathering, but to those generals and admirals, what he's saying is, your fellow citizens, the people you are sworn to defend and protect. And I think he just doesn't understand that.