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Episode 4970: A Conversation With Sam Tanenhaus And The Book Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America Pt. 2
Episode 4970: A Conversation With Sam Tanenhaus And The Book Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America Pt. 2...
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- [00:03]
Steve Bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. Reasons 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.
- [00:24]
Sam Tanenhaus
And where do people like that go.
- [00:26]
Steve Bannon
To share the big lie?
- [00:28]
Sam Tanenhaus
MAGA Media.
- [00:29]
Steve Bannon
I wish in my soul, I wish any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban. You've just had an explosion across the battlefield. That is American politics here in the imperial capital. You've actually had a senior editor of, I would argue one of the most, if not the most influential publication on a weekly basis before you had cable TV and podcasts and everything like this. The revered Time magazine, accused in an open hearing in front of the nation, arguably one of the most respected individuals that had been in government for a long time, had been aide de camp to Roosevelt, the first Secretary General of the United nations, just to get the kickoff, now leading the most prestigious ngo, the Carnegie Endowment of Peace, as being a Soviet agent. What happens?
- [01:39]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, Chambers goes through about eight or nine names and mentions some others well known, not as well known as his. And the others all go silent because, well, if somebody accuses you of something, accuse you of being a communist, you got to remember, Steve, this is an era where if you're accusing someone of being a communist and they're not, that's potential slander or libel, Right? Because it's not.
- [02:07]
Steve Bannon
Read them. Watch. When you watch the movie Oppenheimer, I mean, we went from allies, quote, unquote, to now mortal enemies, right? And not just. It was not just about geopolitics at the time. These are two distinct views of how one views humanity, the world, all of it. This is the story of Whitaker. Chambers goes from a hardcore, if not Trotsky, you know, Marxist, Leninist, atheist, to a Christian, that his Christianity informs every movement of his life. Right? And you see this whole battle right there, that's why this is so big. This, this consumed post war America, the war against. They called it the Cold War, but it got hot in many places. This is what consumed us up until all the way through President Reagan's. President Reagan's presidency.
- [02:54]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. Well, and. And Chambers insisted it was a moral battle that's what nobody wanted here. It's not just, it's not just moves, spiritual war.
- [03:03]
Steve Bannon
It's a spiritual war.
- [03:03]
Sam Tanenhaus
Spiritual war. It's a moral war. That's why, you know, when a friend of mine, I think of yours too, Pat Buchanan tries to say these things a long time ago, you know, he's hooted off the stage.
- [03:15]
Steve Bannon
Hang on for a second, hang on, hang on a second. How is one of the leading Jewish intellectuals in the country a friend of what they tell us today is the greatest anti Semite in the nation? Pat Buchanan. I revere Pat Buchanan, but to hear you say that you're a buddy of his is pretty shocking.
- [03:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, first of all, any journalist who interviews Pat Buchanan knows how straight he is, how direct, how uncensored and how helpful he will be. And you know, people are shocked by this was actually a friend of mine who told me a long time ago ago, before I interviewed Papyruckham, said he's a really nice guy. I didn't believe it then I met him and he is. But there's something else going on here too is now we're going to get to something that's in the Buckley book. If we want to switch over there.
- [03:59]
Steve Bannon
We see it is because Buckley now comes on the stage.
- [04:02]
Sam Tanenhaus
He does come on the stage very.
- [04:04]
Steve Bannon
Shortly, a bit player, but in the wings. But all of a sudden you're going to see, you're going to see the kernels of all this. This is why it's the revolution that changed America. We're now going to get in. It's more than Buckley. It's what Buckley sees down the road.
- [04:15]
Sam Tanenhaus
That's right. And Pat Buchanan, of course, is still a younger guy than Buckley, but he was raised in all this. Remember, he comes from Washington and he was raised in all this politics. And when Pat Buchanan had his big fight really with the neoconservatives during the first Iraq War, something I think you know a little bit about that first Gulf War and the way I treated it in my book. And if you go back and look at the documents and debates at the time, because it's recirculated right now, right now it's happening. There are accusations that if you are skeptical of Israel and the way it's conducting this war right now in Gaza, you are anti Semitic. And so they look for every opportunity to make that point. Well, if you go back to the debate Pat Buchanan had, you're talking about.
- [05:10]
Steve Bannon
The Gulf war in the 90s or.
- [05:12]
Sam Tanenhaus
The World War I, the first one in the 90s.
- [05:14]
Steve Bannon
In the 90s. I want people to understand this is not after 9 11. This is pre 9 11.
- [05:18]
Sam Tanenhaus
This is when the first Bush as president, the invasion of Kuwait, the threat to Kuwait. Maggie Thatcher tells Bush, you know, don't get wobbly. That's it. Don't get wobbly, George. Don't get wobbly, George. Right. It's not Skull and Bones, right, Bohemian Grove anymore. We got to do it. And Pat Buchanan says, why are we fighting this war for Israel? Right? And. Well, and he's denounced and smeared in many respects for that. But that was a battle about that war, which in retrospect, maybe Pat Buchanan was right about.
- [06:03]
Steve Bannon
What do you mean by that? That's so controversial. We're going to get. We may not get clicks, although I think we will out of the first part of this about Whitaker Chambers, which I think is brilliant. And people are going to see what. But right now, you're. You're going to go viral. So tell me why. What's the argument for why Pat Buchanan might have been correct to say, which if everybody says, hey, the good war that we fought over the last four years is the Gulf War, right, Because you were, you know, a little nation was invaded by a bigger nation. This is where America had to stand up. Also, it might have something to do with oil. But why was Buchanan. Because Buchanan really got the separation, kind of the beginning of this whole movement. This part of this movement really started with that whole powerhouse debate they had then.
- [06:50]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, you know, Steve, if you go back and look at the debates in Washington among, like, the major, like, intellectual players of that era, and I mean, like Irving Crystal, not his son Bill. Irving Crystal Jean Kirkpatrick.
- [07:07]
Steve Bannon
Kirkpatrick, yeah. I went to Georgetown after she started thinking she was a hammer.
- [07:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
And they're saying, why are we looking to start a new cold war in the Middle East? And Pat Buchanan had a line.
- [07:20]
Steve Bannon
And Irving Kristol was not just. He had been, I think, a Trotskyite. He was. And he was one of the guys lead the effort anti chemistry to make sure he got the Jews out of Russia. I mean, this guy was a hammer, right? When these guys are actually backing up Pat Buchanan, these are not intellectual lightweights. These are about as heavy a public national security intellectual as you can have.
- [07:38]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, I'll give you an example of this. Near the end of his life, when my wife Kathy, who got very close to Bill Buckley, as I did, we went to see him in his house in Stamford, 2008. Now we're turning the clock forward. And she said, to him. Well, Bill, is there any conservative writer now you really respect? He said Irving Kristol. It was the one, right? Not Bill Kristol. Irving Kristol. Irving Kristol and Gene Kirkpatrick. You go back and look at some of Pat Buchanan's early books, including the one he wrote on how the Republicans could build a majority. He wrote that he. Remember, he and Bill Rusher were writing. Now we're getting into the weeds.
- [08:15]
Steve Bannon
But I know the people who follow this away. This is. Remember, young people are thirsting for this information because none of this stuff is taught. You're talking about something that happened 30 years ago and it's never discussed.
- [08:26]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, that I, I get. I know it's true because I see it when I, when I go around and talk about this stuff. Well, you look at Pat Buchanan's early writing and you will see it's one of those early books is dedicated to one of his mentors, Professor Robert Irving Kristol. This idea, right, that somehow that intellectual elite declared war on Pat Buchanan over. That is untrue. They agreed with him. Charles Krauthammer, I remember him, I remember him saying, the isolationist position is totally defensible and consistent on intellectual and ideological grounds. And wait, so here's the line Pat had that really resonated with me later. He said, we already almost destroyed the empire over a strategically meaningless country, Vietnam. Why are we meddling in a strategically important one, the Middle East? I'll tell you another thing about this too fascinated me. I found it in the Buckley book. So after Buckley started National Review, 1955, it was not long before the Suez Canal crisis, right over oil, the end.
- [09:36]
Steve Bannon
Of the British Empire.
- [09:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
End of the British Empire end. Everybody favors the Brits, the French and for once the Israelis. National Review hated Israel early on. And your viewers and listeners should, should know this. I've got it in the book. National Review referred to Israel in 1956 as, quote, the first modern racist nation, unquote.
- [10:03]
Steve Bannon
And so was that Buckley's Catholicism, traditional Catholicism, or what was that? What, what, what brought that, what brought that to the forefront of National Review?
- [10:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
The Catholicism was one aspect. Another was came from a writer that people knew only as a pro, McCarthy, anti communist, named Freda Utley. And she had covered the Middle east and she said to Buckley, I'm going to write a piece that defends the group nobody else is looking at. There are these dispositions placed Palestinians there and they have a case to make. And she wrote a book about it. And there was one columnist in Washington, of all people. Mary McGrory, the liberal, picked up on it. Or it was Dorothy Thompson, that's who it was. Another great liberal columnist picked up on it.
- [10:54]
Steve Bannon
That's part of the Algonquin crowd.
- [10:56]
Sam Tanenhaus
And she said, freida Otley is making a case here. No one's paying attention to the Palestinians. So Buckley, she sends the story to Buckley and Buckley says, what do we do with it? And he says, I know what we'll do. We'll just invent a new column. We'll call it the Open Question. And this is the first one we're gonna run. So smart. And that's why Buckley was great. He could open up instead of this kind of, you know, whom do we denounce? Who do we exclude? You think, make the good argument and I'll run it.
- [11:28]
Steve Bannon
Well, that changes over time. We'll get to the part about we gotta exclude some guys here, the Birchers and the Objectivist. The Objectivist is a bizarro Enron cult, but the Birchers are dangerous because they're conspiracy wingnuts. But let's go back. Let's go back to when Buckley comes in on the. On the wing of the stage. It's at the end of the Alger Hiss part, but the beginning of the McCarthy part.
- [11:52]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yes. And the end. So.
- [11:54]
Steve Bannon
And by the way, one of the most fascinating parts of the book is that Buckley's transformation, personal transformation about. Because unlike Bush, who are kinetic family who kind of went to Texas and pretend they're Texans, Buckley's actually a Texan. I mean, his family, who kind of heart boiled all guys down in Texas, that they moved to Connecticut. And he was raised in Connecticut. But you know, Buckley here, one of the Transformers thing is when he has to go into the army, which he kind of tries to avoid for a long time during World War II, he's anti World War II. Yeah. What's controversial, he's very anti World War II. He finally goes in. But in being an infantry officer, even though just most of it's in training, it does transform him. And to be kind of more of a guy's guy.
- [12:39]
Sam Tanenhaus
Guy's guy. I'd add a second thing to that too, which really made sense to me when I went to Buckley's hometown, Sharon, Connecticut, which is what they call the northwest corner, Litchfield county, right near Dutchess County, New York and western Massachusetts. So I tell people when the Buckleys were declaring Roosevelt war in the roosevelts in the 1930s, they're declaring war. And the guy they saw at the Rhinebeck Horse show every summer like this. Very much an inside. This is the elites. This is the elites. Well, but I mention that because when my wife and I went to Sharon, Connecticut, not where Buckley lived as an adult, but where he grew up. And you can see the house there. That's where the Young Americans for Freedom first met. You can see the boulder with the statement on it and all this. And you walk to that town you see right across from the Buckley house is the oldest church in town. And in Connecticut towns, you really learn this. It's always the congregation church. Then next door is the Episcopal Church. High church, High church. Down the street, the Methodist Little Lower Church. You have to go practically into a back alley to find the Catholic church. And that's where the Buckleys worshiped. The household servants got in the cars with them and they drove to church together. So who's worshiping at St. Bernard's the Catholic Church in Sharon, Connecticut. It's the working class. That's who Buckley saw. Buckley was an altar boy. He and his brothers are altar boys. His father was an altar boy in Duval County, Texas. The one, right, the county that won. I have no air quotes here, but won the Lyndon Johnson Senate campaign in 1948. Buckley's grandfather was a sheriff in that county. So he comes out of that. Make sure they count him right. The living and the dead, they count.
- [14:28]
Steve Bannon
It by the pound. We're gonna take a short commercial break. I want to thank Birchgold for sponsoring this today. An easy way to do this is take your phone out and text Bannon B A N N O N. That would be me. At 989-898, you get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. It's not the era of Trump, it's the age of Trump. And you talk to Philip, Patrick and the team. Make sure you do that today. Good holiday reading on a Saturday afternoon. To do it all and to contact Birch Gold. We're going to take a short break. We're back with Sam Tenant House in a moment. Let me be blunt. Gold is up around 40% this year. That's not speculation, that's reality. And if a portion of your savings isn't diversified into gold, you're missing the boat. Here's the facts. Inflation's still too high. The US Dollar is still too weak, and the government debt is insurmountable. This is why central banks throughout the world are flocking to gold at record rates. They're the ones driving prices up to new record highs. But it's not too late to buy gold from Birch Gold Group and get in the door now. Birch Gold will help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax sheltered IRA. In gold, you don't pay a dime out of pocket. Just text Bannon B A N N o n to 989-898 and claim your free information kit. There's no obligation, it's just useful information. The best indicator of the future is the past. And gold has historically been a safe haven for a millennia. What else can I say? What else does Birch Gold need to say? The hedge against times of financial turbulence has always been gold. So text Bannon B A N N o n to 989-898 right now to claim your free information kit on gold. That's Bannon to 989-898 and protect your future today with Birch Gold.
- [16:22]
Sam Tanenhaus
Phil America's Voice Family Are you on Getter yet? No.
- [16:25]
Steve Bannon
What are you waiting for?
- [16:27]
Sam Tanenhaus
It's free, it's uncensored, and it's where all the biggest voices in conservative media are speaking out.
- [16:33]
Steve Bannon
Download the Getter app right now. It's totally free. It's where I put up exclusively all of my content 24 hours a day. Want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? Go to Getter.
- [16:42]
Sam Tanenhaus
That's right. You can follow all of your favorite Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posoba and so many more. Download the Getter app now.
- [16:49]
Steve Bannon
Sign up for free and be part of the newfound. Okay. If you really want to understand America and the conservative movement, and particularly if you have a college student or young person in their 20s that you think needs to get up to speed, this is the Christmas gift you want to get them. Buckley by Sam Tenenhausen. And by the way, if you ever get Whitaker Chambers for yourself, particularly if you're, especially if you're a Christian and you're saying, hey, in the world today, you know, it's so much, look anti Christian philosophy out there. You think it's pressure? Read the book of Whitaker Chambers. It is one of the most moving stories of I guess a convert that had lived Christianity against the pressures of the world. This book is amazing, Buckley. And I want to throw down a challenge. When Whitaker Chambers, the book Whitaker Chambers came out in the 90. Who was the biggest promoter of that book in media?
- [17:41]
Sam Tanenhaus
Don Imus. Remember him?
- [17:42]
Steve Bannon
Oh, he dominated the 90s. He dominated right for Rush.
- [17:45]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, the book was nominated for the National Book Award and it, and it came in a box and Imus got it and he started reading it and he started talking about it. And I didn't know this at first. I listened to the program, but I would hear it in the afternoon. I listened to this to him in the morning. But I also listened to the sports guys in the afternoon. I was working, I was riding at home and somebody called me up and I said, don Imus is promoting your book. And then it became a thing, you may remember, it became a joke. Remember, Charles McCord would do these things. I'm going to kill myself if you don't stop talking about Imus and about Tannenhouse and Chambers. Imus called me up, his wife called me up, this is it. And asked how she could get a custom made Woodstock typewriter to give Don for Christmas. Because the typewriter was the.
- [18:36]
Steve Bannon
We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that story. Hold on. Why? Why is the typewriter a story? You talked about the farm. Tell me about the typewriter, Nixon, the farm, all of it.
- [18:46]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, after the pumpkin papers, after Chambers.
- [18:49]
Steve Bannon
First testified, they say he's a liar.
- [18:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
They say he's a liar.
- [18:52]
Steve Bannon
The apparatus came down. This is why, if you're a Christian, you gotta read this book. Everything that he feared, why he was kind of a schizophrenic, turned out to be true. They were out to get him. As soon as he said this thing publicly. The entire apparatus in the world crushed this guy. Right.
- [19:07]
Sam Tanenhaus
There were three accusations that the party would use to smear somebody. One is to say he's a homosexual. That's a term that was used back then. Two, that he's mentally unstable. And three, he's an alcoholic. They said this about Chambers.
- [19:28]
Steve Bannon
Go back. I want to make sure people understand this. This is what the Russians would do to basically try to smear somebody. Right?
- [19:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
But they would do it through their.
- [19:36]
Steve Bannon
Agents, through their agents here, American agents. But one, you were, you were gay, you were homosexual. Two, you were mentally unstable, and three, you're an alcoholic. And in Chambers case, they try to do all three.
- [19:48]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. And they spread them around. And Chambers did happen to have a history of. Right. Homosexuality. The others were untrue. And so there's a really famous moment in the Hiss case. It's one that brings tears to the eyes of grown men. Steve. It's when they finally. Hiss is the only one of the accused who insists on answering Chambers. He says, no, these are. He sends a letter after Chambers is named, him and seven or eight others. His sends a note to the committee, the House Committee, and he says, I demand equal time. I Want to come before the committee and repudiate these lies have been told about me. So they say, well, come on in, Mr. Hiss. So he does.
- [20:35]
Steve Bannon
And what was his thinking? Understanding he actually was a spy. He felt, I'm Alger Hiss. I can go in front of and dominate. Where these guys are the worst witnesses in the world. Bentley and Chambers. I am Alger Hiss. This is. I can command any stage I'm on. I'll command the stage and show that, show that, show that. This. He's just jealous or he's mentally unstable or he drinks too much or, you know, he's just not. He's not a credible witness.
- [20:59]
Sam Tanenhaus
And the other thing he's got going for him, Steve, is that the HUAC congressmen are really held in low repute. It's the committee nobody wants to be on. They're the red baiters. They've done the Hollywood 10, right? Yeah.
- [21:13]
Steve Bannon
Ronald Reagan. This is Ronald Reagan's rise to power. The whole movie, the Way We Were.
- [21:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
Is about this film, about this moment, mainly this moment.
- [21:21]
Steve Bannon
Because they think anybody that come for you because you had what, Adolph Mengee, you had people in Hollywood come forward. But even the people that came forward and name names were smeared by the mainstream media. Being a rat, you were an informer. So there's the whole thing about being an informer. Even if you were accurate about these people being communist. Right. It was the whole stench of being an informer.
- [21:41]
Sam Tanenhaus
There were two blacklists and we only hear about one of them. We hear about the blacklist of the accused communists. We don't hear about the blacklist of the witnesses who never got work again because they came out and testified. Ayn Rand actually came out of that politics. But we get to that later because she was, as you know, I can't.
- [21:57]
Steve Bannon
Believe you take these views on everything. You're. It's. This is how politics has changed so much in the country. You're a secular Jewish liberal from the New York Times. You're saying things that. And a couple of years ago, the progressive. Let's say those are lies. You're just lying about. Eye of Stone is still, still. Remember, Altra Hiss is still a fight. It's still an intellectual fight. How did you get through your life by coming out and writing about this and actually telling the truth of the story?
- [22:26]
Sam Tanenhaus
You know, one of my.
- [22:28]
Steve Bannon
This is how much culture and politics have changed in this nation.
- [22:31]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, they have changed and they were starting to. Then, I mean, one thing that worked to my advantage was I started writing about chambers in the early 90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed. Remember there was that period when people were rethinking a lot of this and heroes were people like Sol Nitzen and.
- [22:50]
Steve Bannon
They open up the KGB files.
- [22:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
They opened up the archives and we.
- [22:53]
Steve Bannon
Opened up our archives.
- [22:54]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yes.
- [22:54]
Steve Bannon
So he's got the real story about.
- [22:56]
Sam Tanenhaus
What get the real story. And there was enough respect in that era for that kind of research.
- [23:02]
Steve Bannon
That salty Nitschen thought he got over here, he thought we were a mess. He thought we were too weak. Right. He got over here and said this is not going to save the West. What America has declined to. He's the first one to really like an Old Testament prophet told us about the weakness of the West.
- [23:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
He made the same argument that Buckley and Chambers and those can and later and those early great anti communists made. The country is weak. It has no moral spirit, has no fiber. We're repudiating our own identity. I mean all this stuff. Solzhenitsyn said that at Harvard, at commencement, at commencement, at commencement. I mean it's unthinkable today.
- [23:39]
Steve Bannon
Then he went to Vermont and he said this place is a disaster.
- [23:42]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, yeah, that's right. He went up to Vermont. Remember David Remnick went and interviewed him. David Remnick is a guy who gets a lot of. Of this stuff and. And we have some very interesting.
- [23:51]
Steve Bannon
Lenin's tomb is.
- [23:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
Lennon's tomb is fantastic. And I can't do it here. But. But I'll show you the note remnant sent me about this book in Chambers. He sent me a note not long ago said basically like this is the history nobody is told that needs to be told and will be there forever. He says forget everything else. Forget what the critics say, all this. But there's another guy who's really important to me is a guy I know not well, but I have written about him and I've met him a few times.
- [24:21]
Steve Bannon
Is Robert Carroll and the series on Lyndon Johnson before.
- [24:27]
Sam Tanenhaus
And the power broker and the power broker.
- [24:30]
Steve Bannon
When you want to learn about New York City.
- [24:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
When Greg Carter, Robert Moses hired me.
- [24:35]
Steve Bannon
This is a Robert Caro type.
- [24:38]
Sam Tanenhaus
I am pleased to say that more than one reviewer has said that. And what I'm really proud of.
- [24:44]
Steve Bannon
No detail about every aspect of life. That's what folks. It's a thousand pages, so you're going to get your money's worth. But it's a page turner because you're learning about American history as you go. It's not. It's the story of America as told through the actions the human agency of One person.
- [24:58]
Sam Tanenhaus
That's what I learned from Bob Carroll. You know, his books are called as, you know, the Years of Lyndon Johnson. So what I think of the books I write as being these two big ones.
- [25:09]
Steve Bannon
But you don't go to the public library. He's one of those guys at the New York Public Library that has the cubicle. There's like 10 guys. They can. They do it out, you know what I'm talking?
- [25:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, he doesn't do that anymore.
- [25:17]
Steve Bannon
I lived, I lived across the street from the New York Public Library. I loved it.
- [25:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
I. That's how I did some of chambers.
- [25:22]
Steve Bannon
We lived in Tesla's right next to Tesla's lab on Tesla Way. That's a real place. Yeah, the Engineers Club.
- [25:28]
Sam Tanenhaus
Right.
- [25:28]
Steve Bannon
It's been turned into a Senate co ops. Yeah, because those are the guys that couldn't get into the Harvard, Yale or the University Club because they hadn't gone to Ivy League schools. Yeah, they had, but you know, Westinghouse, Carnegie. So they started the Engineers Club. Tesla was part of that. And that's right across from the New York, New York Public Library, which is a magnificent. You just go over there and get lost in reading all day. And they were one of the groups in the basement, I think it is. They have a 10 writers they allow to be in residence to kind of get a little cubicle and work.
- [25:55]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, I never, I never got that. I never applied for. Probably wouldn't have gotten it. But when I was working on Whitaker Chambers a long time ago, I'm in my 30s, I would go to the New York Public Library and I'd see other like giants there. You'd see Norman Mailer sitting at a table just reading a book. You just couldn't believe what you would see back then. And those are the days, you know, they dig the stuff out of the archive and they send a tube, they bring up the book. That's where I first read Bill Buckley's magnificent essay on Whitaker Chambers in the New York Public Library. Nothing was digitized. It was in Esquire magazine. And I'll tell you something. You're asking me why do I do this stuff? I grew up in a household that didn't think a lot. Bill Buckley. And then a couple of things turned me around on him. And one was when I was working on Chambers, I went to the New York Public Library and I read an essay in Esquire magazine. It was actually the first piece Bill Buckley published there, though I didn't learn that much later called the End of Whitaker Chambers. It was A memoir about him interspersed with letters. And I realized this guy's like an exquisite writer. Why didn't anybody tell me this? You know, and you sort of get mad in retrospect. There's nobody in front of a classroom who's going to say, by the way, you know, I might want to look at Bill Buckley's memoir, Cruising Speed to see what great journalism is like. Nobody says this. You have to find it yourself.
- [27:18]
Steve Bannon
We're going to take a short break here. We're going to have to extend this a couple hours. So what we're going to do is have you back. This is our weekend show. We're going to have you back. We'll figure it out. Because Buckley, that's why he wrote God and Man at Yale, because he saw even then the professors, how they were trying to twist things, which was a traditional. You know, I've given this book as a gift to some of the most senior people in this administration who went to Yale, right? To say how shocking it is. Because right now, you know, they're taking it. Ever since COVID the great Pandemic, millions of Americans have started buying preparedness supplies, especially emergency food. And that's a very good thing. But there's a big mistake most people make with their emergency food supply. They don't have any way to cook it in a real emergency when the power is out or the grid is down. That's why our friends at My Patriot Supply created their Black Friday survival special. It comes with a 4 week food supply plus $150 worth of free gifts, including everything you need to prepare your emergency meals, like a cook stove, fuel and fire starters, plus a water purifier, bug out bag and much more. It's the complete survival kit your family needs to ride out natural disasters, civil unrest or anything worse. Also, it makes a great Christmas gift, but it's only available through Black Friday. So head to my patronsupply.com Bannon to check out everything that's included. With all the uncertainty in the world right now, we simply can't afford to be unprepared. So go to mypatronsupply.com Bannon and get prepared and get prepared today. That's my patriotsupply.com Bannon war room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon, wife focused on the typewriter. It was for a reason. The typewriter becomes. By the way, we're going to do another at least couple hours with Sam and we're going to. I'll figure the schedule out. Why is the typewriter the, the, the, the farm in Maryland. Why is all this important? And it leads to the beginning of one of the most important presidencies in this country. Richard Nixon's.
- [29:38]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, what happened was we're in 1940, 1948, 1948, summer of 1948, there's an election coming and the Republicans think they might lose the house in 48. So here, here's their chance.
- [29:50]
Steve Bannon
They want it quickly in 46 as people are kind of tired of the war. Like they turfed out Churchill and so you got, they won, they won that midterm and they take control. You have HUAC and. But now in 48, a lot of people in the country going, is this is what we're spending our time on?
- [30:04]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. And you know, the Republicans don't have the strongest candidate in Tom Dewey, and Truman's actually a good campaigner, so who knows what's going to happen. And you have coattails and you're swept out of power. So Alger Hiss makes his appearance and he's incredibly suave and debonair. And so there's a key moment and.
- [30:23]
Steve Bannon
He'S everything the hard right hates personified, but everything that, the kind of liberal mentality, particularly the urban mentality of New York City and San Francisco, it's what the high ideal has been of an.
- [30:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
Ivy League globalist and New Dealer. Right. You know, he came through the New Deal. He'd worked in all a lot of the key departments involved, as we said before in the United nations founding that, the Alta Conference summit, all this. Now he comes to form, very polished, smooth guy. And he seems kind of amused by it, by it all. Oh, Mr. Hiss, you know, so Whitaker Chambers is senior editor of Time magazine. Why is he calling you a communist? Said, you sure you don't, you were never a communist. And he's making it up. And, and Hiss says, well, I don't know anybody named Whitaker Chambers. I said, really? You don't even know him. And, and Hiss as well. I've seen pictures of him. I might even confuse him with you, Mr. Chairman, in this committee because the chairman's got this round face. The audience breaks up, right. Laughs. And he's passed it on the newspapers.
- [31:37]
Steve Bannon
One detail. He's under oath. Correct.
- [31:40]
Sam Tanenhaus
Under oath.
- [31:40]
Steve Bannon
He is oath. This is key. This is the leads up to the point.
- [31:43]
Sam Tanenhaus
He's under oath, graduate of the Harvard Law School. And there's a lawyer, a very smart lawyer, young lawyer, elected to Congress from California, Orange County, a total outsider. 30, 35 year old guy, former naval officer, former naval officer. And he's watching Hiss, and he doesn't like him either for all those reasons you mentioned.
- [32:10]
Steve Bannon
And he later says, because Nixon's an outsider with a chip on his shoulder, and he's looking at the personification of the establishment. When Nixon, that despise, that just treat guys like Nixon like nothing.
- [32:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
When Nixon was a young guy. We all know this has been reported in all the biographies. You can always tell the really interesting presidents because they get great books written about them, including Nixon. And Nixon, when he was a kid, was admitted, you know, coming from that little town, Yorba Linda, California. He's admitted to Harvard, but he's a son of a grocer. He can't afford to go there. So instead he goes to the local college, Whittier, and then he gets his law degree at Duke, finishes third in his class, and a law firm will hire him.
- [32:48]
Steve Bannon
Can't get a job.
- [32:49]
Sam Tanenhaus
Can't get a job. The FBI wouldn't hire him. He tried to get a job there. Nobody wants him. So here he is, he's got.
- [32:54]
Steve Bannon
He was not cut. The cut of the Jew. What they were looking like, they delayed. It's not just intellectual, you know, you're the non. You're the total opposite package.
- [33:02]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, he's got nothing going for him, but he's very, very smart and he has a great word. He says there's something mouthy about Hiss. He says he's talking too much, right? There's this thing where somebody asks you the question, give them the answer, don't make the joke about the chairman of the committee. And something sticks in Nixon's head. Also, he is talking to Robert Stripling, the very smart investigator who's been interviewing these communists for years. And he says to Nixon, he's saying he doesn't know a guy by the name of Whitaker Chambers. Chambers isn't going to call himself by his real name when he's an underground agent. He's going to go by an alias, right? So maybe if we look closely at his transcript, he's not answering the questions, he's evading them. So then a journalist guy named Bert Andrews, a very smart journalist for the Herald Tribune in New York. The Herald Tribune was the Republican establishment's New York Times. It was like Time magazine. But they had a smart journalist there named Bert Andrews who'd been covering these investigations, and he calls Nixon aside. He sees that Nixon means business here, and he says, are you really investigating this case? He says, what if Chambers is telling the truth? Let's just make this weird assumption that a Guy who's throwing up, throwing away a high paying job, a senior executive at Time magazine might not make this stuff up unless he's got a good reason for it. And that reason is he's not making it up, he's telling the truth. So I said, well, have you really looked at his. Have you seen whether the things Chambers said about him make sense? So they go out and they interview Chambers and they say, well, Hiss says you don't know him. They go out to Chambers farm in Maryland, right? He has his little farm, he and his wife are there, back to the earth types like old ex socialists, right? Only Chambers really does it. He doesn't just talk about it. He actually works on a farm with his kids and his wife milks the cows himself.
- [35:23]
Steve Bannon
And all this because now he's a Quaker.
- [35:24]
Sam Tanenhaus
He's a Quaker, he's a believing Quaker. And he's doing that when he's not going into Time magazine, he's actually going home, right, working in his farm. And they go to see him and Chandra says, well, I'm kind of surprised to see you guys when everybody else is calling me names. And they say, well, we want you to prove that you knew Alger Hiss. I knew Alger Hiss. Here are the addresses we lived at. Here's the car I loaned him when, or rather that his loaned me because I didn't, I needed one to get around so I could go back and forth and make the rounds. And he goes through all this stuff.
- [35:59]
Steve Bannon
He being a courier, that his actually loaned him a car so he could do this nefarious activity.
- [36:05]
Sam Tanenhaus
Important thing though, Chambers does not yet say that his is passing him documents. All he says is, yeah, we would meet in these cells. My wife Esther knew his wife Priscilla very well. And Esther, who is a painter and artist, said, oh yes, here's the dress Priscilla wore. You know, when we went to her apartment once, I had the baby there and the baby wet the floor and she brought this lovely little blanket. And Bert Andrews says to Nixon, either this guy is a fantasist or he really knew Alger Hiss because it's too detailed, he's got too much stuff. So there's a funny thing that happens. They start setting up more interviews. They do one with Hiss in the what's now the Grand Hyatt, the first Trump Hotel that back in those days was a Hotel Commodore. And they call his and Chambers in for meeting again, off the record now. So it's not.
- [37:05]
Steve Bannon
They're an executive session. Executive session because they understand and Nixon understands that what they have is a game changer. Game changer for him politically. He can come from a nobody to a national figure. Also, they could actually take down real communists.
- [37:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. And, you know, the story goes, and other HUAC guys said this later, Nixon was the only one who really nailed the communists, who really got the guy.
- [37:33]
Steve Bannon
This is why. By the reason this is all about what? This is why they hated him. They hate him to the mirror of his bones. And this is the reason they hated him.
- [37:40]
Sam Tanenhaus
You should see the letter Nixon wrote me by hand before my book came out, the Chambers book. Back in the 90s when I was writing first op ed pieces, I did one in the Times, which Nixon didn't read. Didn't read. But. But he did read the one in the Wall Street Journal and he wrote me a letter by hand. Who is the guy? I'm drawing a blank. Who wrote that great recent biography of Nixon, Furling or. No, the guy who also did. He's a friend of mine. I'm feeling embarrassed about this. It's a senior thing. He wrote a biography about Tip o', Neill, Jack Farrell.
- [38:19]
Steve Bannon
John Farrell, that's right.
- [38:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. Jack Farrell. He quotes that letter.
- [38:24]
Steve Bannon
It's a great biography.
- [38:25]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, really good biography. And he quotes the letter that Nixon wrote to me because I put it in the Hoover archive back when archives were interested in my stuff, and they're not anymore, but they were back then. Guy. A great guy. Robert Conquest arranged. I had no money, so I was able to sell the Chambers archive to the Hoover Institution. Well, any rate, so I have a copy of the letter that was written by hand. And so I'm going to paraphrase it. Nixon says something like, well, back in the days, a prestige media, you know, they were not going to listen to a guy like me. He's remembering back to 1948.
- [38:56]
Steve Bannon
Still with a chip on his shoulder.
- [38:57]
Sam Tanenhaus
Still with a chip on his shoulder, having been president. Well, that's right.
- [39:02]
Steve Bannon
Never give it up, man. You need that. You need that fire.
- [39:04]
Sam Tanenhaus
People hate it when I say it, but it's really true. Nixon's my favorite president. He said one of his.
- [39:09]
Steve Bannon
God, how do you even get into. Do they let you in restaurants in New York?
- [39:13]
Sam Tanenhaus
No, my own family doesn't understand that one.
- [39:16]
Steve Bannon
And I think I don't hear Dershowitz whining about his defense of Trump. You're going back to the railhead of this.
- [39:22]
Sam Tanenhaus
And I don't think you defended Pat Buchanan.
- [39:24]
Steve Bannon
You're defending Nixon. You just said Nixon's your favorite president.
- [39:27]
Sam Tanenhaus
I'm not saying I think he was the best president, though. I think much of what he did was a lot better than what he gets credit for. But he's my favorite one. He's the one I identify with. I've met a lot of people, a lot of literary people, who told me their parents liked Nixon, Often people from other parts of the other countries, because they'd say Nixon was the outsider, Nixon was the one they never gave a break to. Nixon's the introvert in the extrovert's profession. He doesn't have Trump's amazing public skills. Although, as you know, Nixon liked Trump and they were friends.
- [39:58]
Steve Bannon
Monica Crowley is now the ambassador in Portugal. That was Nixon's aide de camp for the ice.
- [40:03]
Sam Tanenhaus
I knew Monica way back when. You write all those books for Harry Evans. And so Nixon begins to realize there's something very powerful about Chambers. Remember, there are a few Quakers in this case, including Nixon.
- [40:18]
Steve Bannon
I didn't make that connection.
- [40:19]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. And.
- [40:20]
Steve Bannon
Wow.
- [40:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
Right? Wow. Priscilla Hiss was a Quaker. Alger Hisses.
- [40:24]
Steve Bannon
I didn't know that either.
- [40:26]
Sam Tanenhaus
There's a whole Quaker thing going on. Wow. They're always inside stories and things. If we ever get to Buckley and Gore Vidal, I'll tell you the inside.
- [40:34]
Steve Bannon
No, we're gonna hold that for the night. No, no, the Buckley stuff's got so much.
- [40:38]
Sam Tanenhaus
You will get gold and platinum. So here we are. And so they start gathering the. The evidence. So at one point, there's a really great moment in the. His case. Chambers had said, well, Alra and I were both. He used this great term nobody uses anymore. He said, we were amateur ornithologists, said, bird observers. Sounds like Buckley. Didn't we say bird watcher? Said, well, we do it on the bird observers. We do it here on the canal. And they say, oh, really?
- [41:08]
Steve Bannon
Yeah.
- [41:08]
Sam Tanenhaus
Chambers said, Alger once got really excited when we saw a rare warbler, a prothonitary warbler. And there's one guy on the HUAC Committee, guy named John McDowell from Pennsylvania, I think, who is a bird watcher. They bring his in and he says, Mr. Hiss, we know. Right. We get it. You know, you didn't know, Chambers. You've told us all that. But tell us a little bit about yourself. Are you interested in birds? And he says, oh, yeah. And McDowell says, you ever see a prothonotary warbler? He said, you bet I did. I saw one right here in the canal.
- [41:50]
Steve Bannon
And like, they'd heard the story before.
- [41:52]
Sam Tanenhaus
They'D heard it from Chambers, and they're thinking, there's no way this guy makes up that Alger Hiss had seen this bird that right. So it's little details like that is.
- [42:03]
Steve Bannon
A kind of meticulous that turn history.
- [42:06]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. And you know and I'll say we don't see that this level of like exactitude in our legislators now on the committees.
- [42:17]
Steve Bannon
Are you kidding me? We're gonna take a short break. Sam Tanenhaus the book is Buckley I want everybody to if you have a young person first I'll get it for yourself. It's amazing. If you want to see kind of the lead up up to President Trump and that's why death of conservatism. We'll talk about that next time. Is really got my interest piqued back after the financial crisis in 2009. When I read this book I go wow, this guy's nailed it. The problem with the Republican Party and Conservative Inc. Back then but Buckley's the book to get now. Want to drive some sales on this particularly give it young people in your family college in their 20s, you're sitting there go. You don't think they know much but they're thirsting for access to information. Buckley's the book. Short commercial break. Back with Sam in a moment. Hey, I realize you got many choices when it comes to who you choose for your cell phone service and there are new ones popping up all the time. But here's the truth. There's only one that boldly stands in the gap for every American that believes that freedom is worth fighting for. And that's the team at Patriot Mobile. For more than 12 years, Patriot Mobile has been on the front lines of fighting for our God given rights and freedoms while also providing exceptional nationwide cell phone service with access to all three of the main networks. Don't just take my word for it. Ask the hundreds of thousands of Americans who've made the switch and are now supporting causes they believe in. Simply by joining Patriot Mobile, switching is easier than ever. Activate in minutes from the comfort of your own home. Keep your number, keep your phone or upgrade. Patriot Mobile's all US based support team is standing by to take care of you. Call 978 Patriot today or go to patriotmobile.com Bannon that's patriotmobile.com Bannon use the promo code Bannon for a free month of service. That's patriotmobile.com bannon or call 972 Patriot and make the switch today. War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. Because this is a heavy book and it's magnificent. Reads like a novel. It reads like you're reading a Russian, it's like, it's like War and Peace because you're seeing the history, but you bring these characters to life. Not just Buckley, but McCarthy, Jack Kennedy, Claire Boothe Luce. You have these vignettes of these people and you realize why they made such a big impact in American history. The book is Buckley the Life and the Revolution that Changed America. And it leads you right up, up to the age of Trump. I want to finish. We're going to have you back on in this coming week, but I want to have you because we could do this for hours. I want to finish the pumpkin story because you see Nixon, you see Whitaker, Chambers, Hiss, the whole establishment. This is one of the biggest moments in post war history about this committee.
- [45:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, well, what happened is they start seeing the evidence and they think, okay.
- [45:16]
Steve Bannon
The bird watching thing gets the guys in committee realize this guy's lying under oath, he's purging himself.
- [45:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
And then they start doing the research. And that's what they were good at back then. Steve, we've been talking about this before. In those days, the Congressional committee would really do the work. And they started, not like today. They were serious people, serious people. They're hunting down car leases. They see Chambers at one point said Hiss had given him a car, which they found. And Hiss admitted that he'd given him the car, but he said Chambers had known him under a different name. He'd known Chambers under a different name, George Crosley. And all this stuff is starting to pile up and they realize that, well, they've got one thing. They know that Hiss is lying about whether he knew Chambers. But how does that prove that he'd known him as a communist? And so they say to Chambers, look, we get it. We get it that, yeah, Hiss is lying. We know it. Now we can call him up in front of a committee again and say, did you know Whitaker Chambers? And he might have to say, well, maybe his memory had slipped, but he'd known him. So what? And so there's a great confrontation there. This is one that brings tears to grown men's eyes, is they have, they have a big public meeting now in the caucus room. House caucus room. Television cameras there, Steve. 1948, at that point, 10,000 people in America own TVs.
- [46:45]
Steve Bannon
But the ones bars. Bars have them.
- [46:48]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, bars have them. So they go and they watch and there's his again. And he's denying he knows Chambers. And, and he looks at him, Chambers is sitting there and his looks at him with this kind of contempt. And then they bring Chambers up and they said, look what he's saying about you. Saying that the insinuations are out there, that they're. Now, they don't say this publicly what the insinuations are, but the press world knows what they are. The media establishment, very small in Washington, much smaller town. Everybody knows the communists and liberals they respect are saying, well, I knew Chambers at Time magazine. The guy's a total paranoid. You know, my copy would come in from China, he'd turn it upside down. He's some kind of anti communist fanatic or, you know, he seems to come in at strange hours. I think he's out drinking all the time. So they start spreading all these lies about him, say, so what about this? Why are you going after Alger Hiss? Why have you chosen to persecute this man? And Chambers then says, what you would expect him to say now is what we hear President Trump and people around say, folks, you right, but that's not what Chambers does. Chambers says in testifying against Mr. Hiss, people are saying that I'm acting out of some grudge or personal animosity toward him. He said, I'm not. I knew Mr. Hiss and I liked him. I still like him. But he and I are caught in a tragedy of history, and so help me God, I have no choice but to testify now. And, Steve, you know your religious history. He says, I can't do otherwise. He's doing Martin Luther, right? Ichkan nicht anders. I can't do otherwise. So then they say, all right, we get it, we believe you. Nixon and the others are saying, there are headlines everywhere. This is dominating all the news, but you've got to prove he's a communist. So, okay, now Chambers is afraid that he's not going to make his case and also the other side's going to come after him. And he remembers something, that when he defected from the party before 1939, in 1938, he kept some material he had. He called it his life preserver. And he gave it to a relative of his wife's. She kept it in a dumbwaiter in Brooklyn. She. And they go. And he goes with this young guy. They dig through the dumb waiter and they have a manila envelope, and inside it are documents. And those are typed documents that are secret, classified information. And by this time, Hiss has made the stupid mistake of suing Chambers for slander. Chambers has to defend himself. And he looks at his lawyer and he says, well, I've got something different for you now. This is how one of my chapters ends. And he says, what is it? Chambers says, espionage. And that's when he delivers the documents. So now it gets to the HUAC people.
- [50:10]
Steve Bannon
They have to Nixon.
- [50:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
To Nixon. They have handwritten documents and type documents. And they say, do you have anything else? Chambers says, all right, come out. You can come out to my farm and I'll show you something else I've got. So at night they drive out to Chambers farm in Maryland, Westminster, Maryland. He walks them out. It's winter, it's December now 48. The election's already been held. Republicans are not going to control the House anymore. And somebody, either his people or Chambers is going to be indicted for perjury. Chambers takes him out to a pumpkin patch and he pulls out a pumpkin with a hollow, with a right jack o lantern with a hollowed out middle. And he pull. He said, gentlemen, I think this is what you're looking for. They're tin canisters of microfilm that he's got from Algeria.
- [51:04]
Steve Bannon
We're going to bring you back in this coming week. This has been amazing. The book is Buckley. We've only done the lead up to it. The Buckley stories will just blow your mind. Where do people go? Do you have social media? Do you have a website?
- [51:15]
Sam Tanenhaus
I have a website.
- [51:17]
Steve Bannon
Sam tenenhouse.com all one word. The book is Buckley. Today on a Saturday afternoon, maybe the day you go out to a bookstore and get it or go to Amazon and order it. I'm probably sold out at your local bookstore, but if not go to Barnes and Noble, check it out or local. We love little the small independent bookstores. Go check it out or go to Amazon. Get the book. Give it as a gift to friends. You've got to basically your children, your grandchildren, make sure they fully understand what America's gone through. The man in the revolution, Buckley is the book. Sam Tenenhouse, so honored to have you in here. Look forward to having you back next week. You're actually a right I realized something about 2/3 away thing, you're actually a right winger.
- [51:59]
Sam Tanenhaus
You're right wing.
- [51:59]
Steve Bannon
We're going to talk about it later. Other people have accused you that too. Guys, have a great weekend. We're going to be back here at 10am Eastern Standard Time on Monday. I'll be up on getter on social media all weekend. Putting up on another action packed weekend. All my thoughts and observations. See you back here Monday. 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, MoneyGPT, 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.