
Episode 5541: Are We Heading Towards Boots On The Ground ...
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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. Prison's not got a free shot on 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 (Host)
And where do people like that go
Steve Bannon
to share the big lie? MAGA Media.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
I wish in my soul, I wish
Jim Rickards
that any of these people had a conscience.
Steve Bannon
Ask yourself, what is my task and
Ben Berkwam
what is my purpose?
Steve Bannon
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
Antonio Graceffo
War Room.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban.
Steve Bannon
Okay, Friday, the 24th of July, year of Lord 2026. This hour is packed. We may be. And even in the process of going to a much broader kinetic activity in the Middle east, we're going to make sure we understand all of that and what the implications are. By the way, brilliant piece written on the Houthis today. Over at Gateway Pundit, we got Jim Hosman. Great getting the author to us. We're going to be breaking down some fundamental issues that have to be addressed. Not, not this, not running around. They had this powwow the other day and they leaked out. I don't know, Politico, they tweeted out somewhere that they were telling President Trump, hey, here's what you need to do. Here's what we're going to run on the big beautiful bill. And no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. That's great. We fully support that. And even more should be done. Just like border security. Voters have a tendency, it's human nature. I don't like it, I don't agree with. But voters have a tendency, once you check a box, they're kind of on to the next thing. Yes, it helps you for your authenticity and it helps you for the guy, you know, promises made, promises kept, that's all great, but they kind of want to go down the punch list and, and let's go to the next thing. One of the crisis we have in this country nobody wants to talk about is this labor force participation by able body seamen. Working age men. Working age men. It is a crisis. Everybody wants to kick it under the carpet and just say something else. You want to solve a lot of the problems in this nation and do it quickly. Let's get all able bodied men back to work and not just in some low level job. Let's get them back to work in something they can build a life around, build a family around, build a career around. You solve that problem and that problem can be solved and can be solved. I'm not saying easily, but if the steps to actually have a big impact on this immediately and start to get some momentum. What we call victory begets victory is on immigration. All the phony and scam immigration, legal immigration, which are all con jobs and scams, including H1B visas, shut it down now. Send everybody here on HB1 visa and their entire family back to their source country. Tell them we appreciate the effort, but guess what? We rethought this thing and this is not working for us. And quite frankly, you know, you don't have an education better, you don't have job experience better to fill that billet. So it's all a con job. It's all a scam. You're all going home and only make those jobs available to a certain group of people. Who are that group of people? Wait for it. American citizens. American jobs for American citizens. Let me repeat this. American jobs for American citizens. You stop, you start to deport not you make it easier for the illegal aliens to stay here. No, that is amnesty, okay? Full on amnesty. It is never going to happen. We will never, ever, ever agree to that. The American people reject that out of hand, no matter how it's glossed over. Daca, all these different programs, they all have to go because this is a program by the ruling elite to crush wages of working class people, particularly Hispanics and African Americans. And so you say, well, why would they do that? They want a more compliant, a more compliant citizenry here that is fully dependent upon them for government handouts, for other aspects of staying here and to get jobs. It's got to stop. And we can make it stop. Is it easy? No. It's going to take focus and it's hard. But we've done hard things before. We've never been beaten. The only time we've been beaten is in 2018 when people took their eyes off the ball. If you go back and look, we have never, ever, ever, ever been beating, including in midterms. And if we get the intensity up and the way you get the intensity of say, hey, look, upon further review, these are the core values and these are the core policies. These consultants running around with these TV ads, these consultants now, oh my gosh, man, Dami's a Marxist. He's a communist. That ain't gonna work. That ain't gonna work. First off, if you take him head on. You're dealing with a generation hasn't been taught what real capital is. I haven't seen the fruits of capitalism because they're not, quite frankly, in the system. And Mandami is sitting there going, I'm gonna give you free rent and I'm gonna give you free food. People are going to vote against that right now. That solves their affordability problem, doesn't it? I'm gonna give you free stuff and I'm gonna get some other people to pay for it. No, you have to get to the root cause of this and you have to take it on. If you blink, you're going to lose your country, full stop. Ben Berkwam, you've been at the tip of the tip of the spear. You and Oscar Blue Ramirez put yourself in harm's way because you guys went down to the Darien Gap. You went down to Central America, you went down to Southern Mexico. You were on the border for years. You were on the train, right? The Beast. You were sitting there going with the cartels and the money and the human trafficking and the sex trafficking and all of it. All of it. You saw it up close and personal and you warned the American people about it. And guess what? The American people paid attention. It was the Rev Network in war room that was the tip of the spear and saying, hey, here's what it is. We're not Fox going to go down three years afterwards and sit down on the rio Grande in McAllen, Texas, and say, oh, you know, Governor Abbott's put up a thing that's all phony. That's all that phony crap from Fox. You got down and did the hard work, put yourself in harm's way and assisted. President Trump, laid a foundation so he could change the nation. So, brother, you're spending time back down there and people call me up time. Why you got Berquharm back down the border? Isn't that solved? No, no, the border part is basically solved because of President Trump. You still got to hit it every day. The interior enforcement, the internal enforcement, the interior enforcement is not. And that's what we have to confront now. Ben Burkhram, your thoughts? An observation, sir.
Ben Berkwam
Yeah, Steve, I just was on the phone with Tom Holman. God bless Tom Holman, God bless ice, God bless all of the warriors that put their lives on the line every single day to uphold and defend the oath that they took to this Constitution and the citizens of the United States. And bottom line is this. We have the biggest problem that we have in this country are the people that are attacking ice, going after ice, trying to prevent ICE from doing their job. Across this nation, we have over 100 injunctions against ICE doing their jobs in sanctuary cities across this country. We have politicians in every state across this country trying to obstruct ICE from doing their jobs. And sadly, on our side, we spend as much time on our side fighting ourselves as we do actually fighting the enemy. Every chance this is my message to the American people. Every chance that you get to go out. I wear my ICE hat everywhere I go. I wear it in airports, I wear it in cities. I was in Philadelphia last week. I wear it when I go to Portland. I wear it when I go to San Francisco. Everywhere I go, New York. Every chance you get to tell America that you love ice, that you stand with ice, that you want every illegal deported. Yeah, we may start with the really bad guys, the bad hombres, but every illegal needs to be deported. And as Mark Morgan said, every business that hires illegals needs to be prosecuted. You start doing that, you start doing worksite enforcement, we're gonna see not only the best numbers, by the way, we're seeing the best numbers we've ever seen. June was the record. June was the highest number of ICE detentions that we've ever seen in American history. July is on record, on pace to beat that record. But the ICE agents, the heroes of ice, and the leaders of ice, Tom Homan and the rest of them, need the American people to stand up as one voice and say, we support ice. We want every illegal deported. Because at the end of the day, the politicians in Washington, D.C. are, most of them have zero balls. Most of them have no spine. They rely on you. And they care about polling more than they care about American citizens. They need to know that they're going to be out of office, not because they're doing more ICE operations, but because they're not doing enough ICE operations. They need to know that. That we voted to deport every illegal, not just some of them. And when people get shot by ICE because they try to run over ice, they need to know that we have ice's back. That is the bottom line.
Steve Bannon
Once again, I want. This is very important in this sense, believe it or not, they took off. Here's where they took off. They don't want to answer. They don't want to do any work, and they don't want to answer hard questions. They're going to do these codes. Trust me. They're not going to spend August having town halls, okay? They're not going to spend August coming back and hearing what you had to say in your district. You know, hell no. No, they don't give a damn. They're going trips overseas. So I just. When you meet your congressman or have a chance to see your congressman, just give me the one or two questions that you think that people ought to ask or the statements that they want to make. What are you. And not being confrontational to say, hey, look, I want to be. I want to be brutally frank. If this doesn't happen, you don't have my support. So what should they say, Ben?
Ben Berkwam
Very simple. Very, very, very simple. Two things. If we don't have secure borders, we don't have a country. If we don't have secure elections, we don't have a country. What are you doing to pass the SAVE Act? And I don't want to hear hyperbole about it. When are you going to vote to do that? I want to see it on record. And number two, what are you doing to support ice? I want you to support more ICE operations, not less. I haven't seen you. And I would say this directly to them. When was the last time you did a press conference? When was the last time you went on the steps of Capitol Hill and said. And had huge ICE banners? We have all these idiots and antifa. And all these scumbag judges across America attacking ice. You have these idiots in the cities across America saying, defund and abolish ice. Where are the politicians? Where are the American citizens with their God Bless ICE signs. We need to see them on the steps of the Capitol and saying, you know what? You're upset about ice. We're doubling down. We're tripling down. We've just begun the operations to secure this country. Now get behind us. We're going to do it. And the biggest part of this, ICE has no control over this. What is the Justice Department doing to prosecute these terrorists, these traitors that are obstructing ice? We should have the largest RICO case in American history to prosecute the judges, the activist organizations, and all of these individuals that are working together. This is a RICO case.
Steve Bannon
Mandami should be. You should send ICE into New York. The first time they're confronted by any of the city. Mandami, hang on. Should be arrested immediately in the denaturalization process program. You want to get tough? Let's get tough. Denaturalization and getting back to Uganda where he came from. Okay, you want to do the biggest part theoretical. I don't want to hear these Congressmen running around and saying, you got to read Karl Marx. I ain't got to read anything. I get to see what's happening United States today from these Marxist Lenin as jihad is what they're doing. Look at their actions and let's confront them on their actions. Let's denaturalize Mandami. It ain't that hard, trust me. And he lied on his application, Steve.
Ben Berkwam
That's it. Go ahead, play offense. Stop being pussies. Excuse my language. Play offense. We're sitting here worrying about what somebody says. We're worrying about what the next attack against isis. Play offense. Take the fight to them. That's what President Trump. That is the, the crypt, that's the kryptonite against the left. That's what President Trump understands. Play offense every single day. Take the fight to the enemy. Stop waiting for them to attack you and then worry about what you're going to say. Take the fight to the enemy.
Steve Bannon
And by the way, save acts the same way in the fight there it'll be with John Thune. Let's have a throw. Since the Senate's in town, they're gonna stick around. Let's have a throwdown right now on Senate leadership. Caroline Levitt says yesterday said, hey, President Trump's running out of patience on this deal. And Thune's got the gall to come back and say, hey, you got a phone. Pick the phone and make some calls. His job is not to get the votes. He's President of the United States. He's got a couple, three things on his plate. His job. It's your job to get the votes. If you can't get the votes, you're not leader. Then step down. And next man up, let's get somebody else can do it. Ben Berkwam, tell me about your book. Your book's coming out. It's going to be a massive hit like revolution was. Because you get down in the trenches and talk about a journey that quite frankly, you go from drug degenerate to a born again Christian and really manifest God's work. God's spirit. Do your work, sir.
Ben Berkwam
Yeah, look, it's available already everywhere. For pre order. You can do that at Barnes and Noble. They got the link. You can do that at Amazon. My, my ask for you guys is to go do that today, pre order your copy today, order a few extra copies for your friends and family. This is my journey. Ten years from the pits of hell to standing and fighting for America. I went from going to a place where I the only options I saw were prison or death to being given new life and a new start. And that's why you see what I do what I. That's why I do what I do. I, for my family, I was given a new life. Every single day is a blessing. And so I try to use that every single chapter of this book. It's unlike any other book I've ever seen. It's my story. But every chapter has QR codes so you can actually watch the videos I'm talking about. And every chapter has a different aspect of fear that I've had to overcome in my life to get to where I am today. My prayer is that it becomes a war cry, especially for the young generation to stand up and take this country back and take the world back. We need everyone in this fight today. And that's really what the purpose of the book is. It's not really about my story. You were in there, Steve. We got some great patriots that are included in there. None of that really matters. If it doesn't inspire action, none of it matters. And that's my request. Order the copies, give it to your friends and family and we'll see you on the road. We'll be selling it and signing copies across America very soon.
Steve Bannon
Ben this is the way we get the intensity up. The problem we have is an intensity gap. They're jacked up because they see the end of Trump and Trumpism. That's right. If we get jacked up as much as we've been in the past and we will do it, folks, you get, you get int. You get the intensity back. We're going to win, we're going to hold serve is what I say. Berquam real quickly. Social media where they go
Ben Berkwam
at real AM Voice. A new episode of Lawn Border will be out next Saturday on America's Voice News. My personal is at Ben we wouldn't
Steve Bannon
be celebrating America 250 if it wasn't for a strong foundation set by the framers. Hamilton built American's financial foundation on the principle of sound stable money, a principle later embodied by the gold standard. However, we abandoned that discipline in 1971 and have since seen inflation erode the dollar's value. What is the foundation of your savings? It is gold or something that can be shaken, disrupted or devalued. Birch Gold Group has been helping Americans solidify their savings with gold for the past 15 years. They help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into a tax sheltered IRA and gold. Learn how gold fits into your portfolio by texting my Name Bannon B A N N O N to the number 989-898. You'll receive a free no obligation info kit with an A plus rating with a Better Business Bureau and countless five star reviews. Let Birch Gold help build your foundation with gold text. My name banded to 989-898. That's Bannon to 989-898. Build the foundation of your savings on something permanent. Gold has been a hedge for mankind for 5000 years of mankind's history. Do it and do it today.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
Steve Bannon
Now more than ever, the turbulence we're going to talk about in a minute in the Middle East. Birch Gold, take your phone at 9 8-Bannon-9898. You get the ultimate guide. You can also get access to the end of the dollar empire, which you should understand. Eight free installments of ninth coming up. Most importantly, get to talk to Philip, Patrick and the team, but try to get Philip back up tomorrow. Last Saturday was amazing. We talked about the debt, how it's driving interest rates. Interest rates. Here's reality. Not so hot as we say. Birchgold.com find out why gold's been a hedge against fiat currency, I don't know, 5,000 years or other forms of currency. For 5,000 years been a hedge. Check it out. Ben Berkhwam. We actually slammed into the break right there because there's a little delay because you're out in the field once again, your coordinates, the content coming out and where they get the book.
Ben Berkwam
Thank you, Steve. Yeah. Hey, one last thing for the people out there. Tell your representatives, if you don't support ice, I will not support you. I will not vote for you if you don't vocally support ICE. You can find me at Real Am Voice AmericasVoice News. Our next episode of Law and Border will be next Saturday. And I think it may be the most important episode we've ever done. It's a montage across America of the attacks against ICE and our support for ice. You gotta watch that. Next Saturday, my personal social. Ben Berquam frontlineamerica.com a substack, frontline America. And again, we're going in. If you guys can do this, download or pre order the book Step Into Fear. You can do that anywhere. Just Google it. You can do it on Amazon, you can do it on Barnes and Noble, you can do it at Skyhorse. Pre order the book, get an extra few copies for your friends and family, especially young people you have in your life. Step into fear. And we'll see you out on the road. We'll be signing copies as we go. God bless you, Steve.
Steve Bannon
You tell home, you tell tell home in the war, we got his back. And what you just said right there, you go up to your congressman very politely say, let me be blunt. You don't support ICE and don't give me the happy talk. You support it. If you don't support ICE for interior enforcement, and that means mass deportations, you don't have my vote. Very simple. That'll get their attraction because that's what they're concerned about. Berkwam, thank you. You can continue on your way now, sir, on your journey. So, McCabe, I think when you look at assets moving around, President Trump's looking at a range of alternatives. We're actually going to have Antonio Graceffo on who did a magnificent piece about the Houthis over in Jim Hoff's Gateway Pundit. We'll have him on momentarily. But I want to get your sense, it feels that something's up in the range of alternatives is tending towards the kinetic, sir.
Neil McCabe
Yeah, that's absolutely right. You know, yesterday, of course, there were whispers here on campus that the reason why President Trump's trip to the EPA went off early and closed early was because they wanted to rush him back to the Situation Room. And then, of course, you watch how the bombing has progressed so that the targets moved from sort of the economic infrastructure to the command and control military targets, the naval bases, the port facilities and like trying to isolate Bandar Abbas. And so the American way of war, Steve, is to prepare the battlefield and we'll build up right in front of our enemies. We'll let you watch us build up. And then when we have all our boxes checked, then we launch. And a Pentagon official in the last few days actually confirmed to me that there is going to be a step up in Iran in this war. And I think also you look at the timetable, we're now on the other side of July 4th. We're on the other side of the World cup, basically. We're looking at from here to Labor Day. And we still got, you know, Cuba on the docket. So I think now there's a frustration with the president where President Trump wants to close this out. He already told Axios that he wants to step up a massive bombing campaign. You already have the president saying that because the Houthis are acting up with the blocking the Red Sea, which is, of course, that gateway to the Suez Canal, that he's going to hold the Iranians responsible for that. And I think everything is lining up to bring this thing to a close. I will say too about the Marines. The Marines in the last two or three years actually gave up their tanks because they wanted to return to the fundamentals. Their sort of genesis was running small wars, raiding islands, storming beaches. And so taking those islands in the Strait of Hormuz or taking Carg island in the north, you know, that's not the same as Vietnam. That's just taking an island and holding it for tactical and operational purposes so that the strategic work can be done somewhere else. And the Marines are ready to do that. You have the USS Boxer and it's Amphibious Readiness Group. You have Tripoli and you have two fl, two big super carriers.
Steve Bannon
I'm not saying, I'm not saying it's like Terrawa and Peleli, far be it. But here's the thing, once you start doing this. Okay, let me just say it a different way. Where we've done these massive strategic bombing campaigns. Last time I looked where it worked kinda was in Germany and in Japan. And even there it took the Red army on one flank and Patton and Montgomery on the other to bring it to a close. After we bombed them back to the stone Age. Dresden, Berlin, all of it. And guess what folks, we're still there in Japan. The firebombing of Japan leading up to the nuclear bomb was like unparalleled in history. Lemay and these guys, unparalleled in history. The concept was take the torch to the enemy. Even then we were looking at a 4 million man invasion with 1 million casualties. When we dropped the hot one on us, a hot one on them that we only had two, in fact, we had to drop the second and they still, that took. It took two to make them surrender. And even then there were members of the Japanese imperial staff said tell them to bring it. We saw what happened in Iwo Jima, we saw what happened to Tarawa. The Americans don't have the stones to withstand that. Okay, guess what, we're still in Japan. The other time we tried strategic bombing was in Vietnam. And hey, guess what? I'm not saying we lost, but we certainly didn't beat. Although we defeated them, a lot of the North Vietnamese, militarily, we certainly didn't win the war. We left after we turned it over to the South Vietnamese. My point, when you do this, you have to understand if you go and do the level of kinetic bombing and what they're talking about in this strategic campaign and you go in and take carg Island. I just hope somebody's telling. The President, states, you're going to be there for a long time. And I say a long time. I mean, like a decade. You do the type of destruction they're talking about to get to the strategic outcome that they're talking about is now you're in it, and now you're in it with no easy extraction. So this thing is highly complicated. I just hope, you know, we had. I don't know if we do. We have Keith Kellogg. You know Keith Kellogg? Who? I like Keith Kellogg a lot. He's a good man. But I think he was on Fox yesterday. They're arguing for a ground invasion. You know, he and Keane want a ground invasion of Iran. And my point is, hey, if Keane and Kellogg ought to do it. Volunteer for the idf. You're both retired. Volunteer for the idf. Okay. Volunteer for the idf. And let's take. You take lead a tank column up to Beirut. Do I have the. Can I go ahead and play it?
Antonio Graceffo
Let's play.
Steve Bannon
Let's play Cat. Let's play Kellogg for a second.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Here is a concern I do have for Iran, though. You have played sports. I've played sports. We've watched sports. And you let a team hang around a baseball team the ninth inning, or football team in the fourth quarter, we were clearly the better team. You should have closed them out in the first quarter, not the fourth or the first inning, not the ninth inning. And the longer they stick around, the more dangerous they become. And that's kind of where we're at right now. I think the President's going to close it out. He should close it out. There's a few things he should do. I think one is on negotiations. Let's not negotiate. I'm not negotiating with these guys. We're going to dictate the terms over the war. And it is a war that's going on right now. We're going to keep taking out their leadership. The whole policy about decapitation, we need to continue that. If that means taking out Bahiti or Rachi or anybody else like that, that's fine, because it destabilizes the regime. The other part, because it gives you leverage, is I would take the islands of Carg island and Lara island, which is like. It's further to the east, but it's like the command and control center of the Gulf. And you take them to give the President leverage. Now I own something you don't have anymore. We'll give it back to you at the end of this war if you need it. Or we're just going to keep forever. The other thing I think we should be doing is look, let's go. And if it takes a presidential finding or something like that, let's start figuring out how we can help the Iranian people organize the resistance against the theocratic regime. We've done it before. We did it in Afghanistan. Our troops are really good. Our, our agency is really good and do something like that. You can start a province at a time and just start to take provinces the time. And if the Iranian people want to have freedom, then they need to rise up. We're not going to do it for them. And by the way, when people talk about troops on the ground.
Steve Bannon
Yep. Keith, you got to get a better example in Afghanistan. Come on, man. I don't, I haven't seen the guys yammering to, to negotiate. Maybe they are, they keep saying, hey, they're begging for a deal, they're begging for that. But I, I see the half hearted attempt one is that you have destroyed the command and control structure so much we don't really know who's out there anyway. McCabe, I want you to stick around because I want you to hear our next two desks. We got Antonio Grafcheffo from, got a great piece up in a Gateway pundit. And also I've asked Jim Rickards to join us here in the next block. Real quickly in thinking through these alternatives. Is the word out that something's going to happen this weekend?
Neil McCabe
It's tough with the White House correspondents dinner tonight, Steve, so I can't imagine you would want something big to set to break while all the reporters are in their tuxedos and eagles.
Steve Bannon
Oh, I think Trump, I think, I think Trump would, I think that'd be a pure Trumpian move. The lack of respect he has for him. I totally forgot. Somehow I forgot to get my ticket for the White House correspondents, which is always one of my favorites. I, I can't even imagine we're doing this again. Anyway.
Neil McCabe
Deal.
Steve Bannon
You stick right there at the White House. I'm gonna get these guys on. We're gonna talk about the Houthis. We're talking about. Jim has got some thoughts about what's going on, but yes, I think, I don't know during the White House correspondence dinner or the, they've had a tendency to do big things on Saturday night. Might not be this weekend, but as you just saw right there with Keith Khaled, there is a broadening out of discussion about all, all this. So we'll be right back and Take a short commercial break. My Patriot Supply. They've set up a landing page just for the war room posse. Prepare with Bannon.com you get a $250 off in commemoration the 250th anniversary of the birth of the greatest nation on earth on the six month emergency food supply. They've never given this before. 250 bucks off the emergency six month food supply. You will be blown away by the quality. Most importantly, you talk to their consultants and advisors. When you go to preparewithbannon.com they will walk you through the entire process. The preparation industry now is called the common sense industry. Be prepared. Short commercial break Back in the worm in a moment. You know, just a few years ago if you told someone you were stocking up on emergency food, they would have called you a tinfoil hatch conspiracy theorist. Not anymore. We've all seen supply chain chaos, devastating natural disasters, inflation, war, civil run rest and preparedness has gone mainstream. That's why we're so excited to partner with My Patriot Supply, America's original Patriot Preparedness company. Right now they're celebrating America America's 250 with one of the best deals they've ever offered. $250 off their best selling six month food supply available now at preparewithbanded.com now that is a homepage they gave us just for the Warren Posse. Preparewithbanded.com this is the exact same survival brand trusted by over 3 million American families. Now why is that? Because they deliver 2,000 calories a day. Their food lasts up to 25 years without refrigeration and it contains no, I repeat, no GMOs or artificial colors or artificial flavors. And you can count on it to keep your family fed no matter what the emergency is. Even at full price, it's still the best decision you'll make for your family with a $250 discount. It's a no brainer. Go to our own homepage with my patriot supply, that is preparewithbannon.com to get your emergency food kit today. That's preparewithbannon.com do it and do it today.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. Yep.
Steve Bannon
Preparation is no longer, you know, a tinfoil hat with a propeller on it. No, it is common sense. Don't take it from me. Just go on the site and talk to some of the advice and content and look at all the depth of product they have and the depth of information. Preparewithband.com it's set up just for the war room. Preparewith bandit.com Go check it out today from my patron supplier, which is created the industry and still the leader in the industry, Antonio Greo. An amazing piece greeted us this morning on Gateway Pundit. The title is the Houthis Path into Iran's War. Can you walk our audience through your analysis of this?
Jim Rickards
Sir,
Antonio Graceffo
the Houthis are one of the three primary proxy armies that is funded by Iran, that is backed by Iran. So that would include Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. And the Houthis then their main say that their main function, main activity is restricting shipping by attacking ships that, that pass through that area. They when the war first started, when the conflict first started between the United States and Iran, the Houthis, like all the other Iran allies, made bold statements, are going to support Iran. You can't attack our brothers and so forth. But very interestingly, they did not jump into the war straight away. They had one or two engagements over the last five months and then they were quiet, actually wrote some pieces on had also, which was why I really thought that they were going to sit this one out. And then suddenly, just in the last few days, they jumped back in with another attack. And I think given the fact that Donald Trump has made it very clear that he's willing to use force and retaliation, I think it was a bad move on the Houthis part. And I'm not exactly certain why they did it. But if you'll notice, all of Iran's allies kind of took to the hills since this fighting started. Hezbollah, you know, was actually ordered not to attack Israel at one point. You know, China hasn't jumped in. You know, Russia hasn't jumped in, you know, overtly, you know, China's supporting behind the scenes and so forth. But, but even that is muted. But suddenly the Houthis have decided that, you know, they want to be bombed.
Steve Bannon
Well, is it isn't the reason one of the reasons? They know they got to spread out. I mean, talk about the Red Sea. Their objective is much easier than the pirates on the coast of, around Hormuz, right. Trying to close the Strait of Hormuz, the entrance to the Red Sea, around, around, you know, Yemen and all this is much tighter, much closer to the Saudi Arabian Peninsula and the, all the way up to the Suez Canal. You can block a major, probably arguably the most major or one of the most major, particularly for Europe, you know, waterways there. And these people are tough. The Egyptian, Egyptians under Nasser, the great Egyptian nationalist his Vietnam was, I think they lost 40,000 troops against the Houthis. The Saudis have been beaten by the Houthis, uae, who pound for pound, is the best fighting guys over there. They haven't been that successful. The British weren't that successful. These are tough hombres, right? I mean, these people are kind of dug in. I call them like the Scotch Irish in Appalachia. They're mountain folks. They're mean as all get out. They're very clannish. They really not an ally to anybody. They're now for the Iranians because they're getting weapons and funding. Right, and not being driven off the Arabian Peninsula. But one of the reasons that they're now in the fight, don't they see the fact that we've got two carrier battle groups up there with no support from Europe, no Royal Navy support, no French Navy, no Italian navy. We got two carrier battle groups that President Trump has said, hey, I'm locked in on that naval blockade. Isn't this going to take us getting another carrier battle group over there to free this up? And they gave as good as they got last summer. Sir, your thoughts?
Antonio Graceffo
Yeah, no, I agree with everything you said. And the issue with this conflict, both with the Houthis and with Iran, is that it lends itself to asymmetric warfare. You know, it doesn't take many minds to be released or many drone attacks to make a straight impassable. And you can launch these things from, you know, rubber boats or fishing boats or small, you know, tiny, tiny boat, pretty much anything that floats. So this is a surreal problem. If they had a navy and they, they launched their formal navy against our navy, obviously they would just get decimated, but the problem is that you would have to stop every single small boat from going out in the ocean and you'd have to recover every mine that they lay, which is also very difficult to do. So that is one reason why they've been successful, why they've been able to survive. And, and as you said, they're also tough and they're entrenched. And interesting point that you made, though, was about allies, and I totally agree with you that Iran, actually, that whole axis, they're not really allies. It's just that some of their objectives align and particularly when they're opposing the United States and or Israel, then they align and they kind of work together and support each other, but they're not true allies. Would also explain why the Houthis stayed out of the early part of the war. But you're also right that now that we're spread out thin, a lot of the world believes that we're Spread thin and bad things are going to start happening all over the world because we can't respond to them.
Steve Bannon
Hang on for one second. I'm bringing Rickards and Tony. By the way, the piece is great. I want Mo and Elizabeth Grace push it out. I want everybody to read this today. And head tip to Jim Hoffman team over Gateway for putting out just cutting edge analysis. I also want to remind people the first week this is what a tenuous grip the American military and intelligence community have on this area of the world. The very first week of President Trump's or the first two weeks of President Trump's first term. If you remember, the military wanted to go in with this Special Forces thing with some sort of operation that would help the combat aircraft, I think of the Saudis get better targeting, et cetera. And that was where we lost, I think a couple of the Navy seals. President Trump went to Dover. There, you know, it was incidentally, the father said some terrible things about the president. The president did have members of the family come to that first. Not State of the Union, but that first speech they do in the first couple of weeks after the inauguration, which is the address to update a joint session of Congress. That all happened then. And hey, guess what? Let me be blunt. All the information given to the president of the United States was wrong, okay? Dead wrong. So don't think the American military and the intelligence community gets such a strong grasp on this. That part of the world is. They're kind of feeling their way through the darkness. Jim Rickards, you know this better than anybody. Rickards, you got. The Houthis are. They're very opportunistic. They're now in this fight. They're looking and they. And what the Houthis see is they read the Times of London and they read the Daily Mail and they know that the Brits got no stomach for a fight down there and no ability. They sent one destroyer early on. It broke down in the Mediterranean and it's in the yards in Crete. The French aren't there. The Italians are not there. And they understand the Americans are getting more stretched out. Your thoughts? As Keith Kellogg's telling us, we should use Afghanistan as a shining example of a success story to get involved again. Yo, Keith, how can you pitch Afghanistan? Jim Rickards.
Jim Rickards
Yes, I think you and the prior guest, Antonio Graceffo, you got the Houthis exactly right. Are they aligned with Iran? Yes, but they're not puppets. They're not going to march in lockstep whenever Iran says do this or do that. They look out for themselves. They look out for their own interests. There is some benefit to them from shutting down shipping in the Red Sea. They are getting funding and weapons from Iran, but they're not. They'll only go so far. They're not going to operate against their own interests. They're much more concerned about Saudi Arabia and uae, and you mentioned that. So are the Houthis helping Iran right now? Is it. Is this a major economic impact? Yes, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they're marching in lockstep with. With Iran. Number one, as far as General Kellogg's comments, we all respect General Kellogg and his career and accomplishments, but he. I don't know what he's talking about. He said, take Carg Island. Stop right there. Carg island is an oil depot. So the oil goes to Carg Island. That's where they fill up their, you know, their large crude carriers because it's deep enough. You can't get those. Those ships that close to the shore in Iran, who cares? We have a naval blockade. We can stop the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf if we want to. So let Iran fill up all the oil tankers they want. For that matter, I'd say fill them up because we're just going to steal them or take them when we feel like it's, or let them go if the terms are acceptable. So as long as we have a naval blockade, which we do, and as long as Iran is shutting down the Straits, which they are, then who cares about Carg Island? This is sort of really retrograde thinking. And if you do take Carg island, which we could do, it's just a big fat target to kill Americans. So forget Carg Island. We have better tools, specifically the blockade for dealing with that. In Afghanistan, we left in disgrace thanks to Joe Biden. It didn't have to be that way, but it was. Nothing was accomplished and the Taliban was. Are back in charge after 20 years. So I don't think that's an example of anything.
Steve Bannon
Jim, here's my concern is that I understand we can go up the escalatory ladder and be much more kinetic. And some of the options being looked at are that. And you know this, you're hearing the same talk that I am. But my point is that when you go that kinetic, it ain't that easy to leave. We're still in Germany, we're still in Japan. We're now a big trading partner with Vietnam. In Vietnam, it didn't work. And the other two had worked, but only when he put in ground troops afterwards to make sure you could close the deal. If you go kinetic. What they're talking about, infrastructure, electricity, water, the bridges. I got it. You can do that. The Navy and the Air Force have been magnificent about picking targets and getting them done. But it's just like taking the weapons from Hezbollah and Lebanon. You're there. That's a 10 year project. You're there for the foreseeable future, not just this administration, whatever comes next. And people have to understand these are not in and out. These are just the nature of these type of wars. It's not in and out. Your thoughts?
Jim Rickards
That's exactly right. Except there's some very important new news I want to spend a minute on. Method. By the way, a lot of credit. The war room posse has been ahead of the curve all along. You, your other guests, you know, I try to contribute, but my point is we've said things since February, since the beginning of March, since the beginning of the war that were left out on Wall street, left out on Washington, and time and time again they've been proven right. So let's, let's keep it up. The posse, I think, gets this and he's getting better information than probably the CIA and the Pentagon as far as method is concerned. I think this is important because I don't like to say things without people understand where it's coming from. I use what's called Bayesian technique. Now, statistics geeks like Ben Bernanke, Johnny Yellen, they're like, give me data, data, data, and then I'll form a hypothesis. With Bayes, you don't have enough information, so you form the hypothesis first. But you could be wrong. But you test it. And then as the data comes in, it either gets stronger or weaker. If it gets weaker, you throw it away. And that's hard. You got to say you were wrong. But if it gets stronger, you can run with it. Now what we've said is that negotiations are a waste of time. I don't want to repeat all that, but we've said that many times. That's not going anywhere. And that's been proven out. Now we're into escalation. And I said, you just said, yeah, it doesn't work. We bombed Vietnam for 10 years. We didn't win. So in my last interview with you, we said, okay, but there is an end. There is an end game. There's a way to make this not a forever war. And I said, go in and dig out the highly enriched uranium. Be division strength, you know, Army Corps of Engineers, a Lot more casualties, but you could do it. Now here's the news. The US has deployed the B1 bomber. Now it's interesting again. It was there before, but it's come back interesting in a couple of respects. B1 is not a stealth bomber, but it has a huge payload. 242000 pound bombs or dozens of cruise missiles. So really heavy payload can destroy a lot of targets. The fact that it's not stealth means we're not worried about Iranian anti aircraft capability. It doesn't exist. But this is not the forever war. This is what's called a softening up operation. You know, the war in the Pacific before the Marines landed, Iwo Jima, Okinawa or Peleliu, the USS Iowa, New Jersey or California would sit there and fire 16 inch guns for two or three days to soften it up. That's what we're doing. Okay, so if you're softening up, what's the main strike? What's it going to be? And here's the new news. The US finally, finally deployed a hypersonic missile. It's called the Dark Eagle. Now we've deployed it in Guam. The range you get, it's classified, but you get different numbers. 21, 21, 75 miles or 2,000, well, a little over 2,000 miles. You can't hit Iran from Guam, but you can hit Iran from Diego Garcia. A straight line from Diego Garcia to Tehran, 2,350 miles that this missile can go. You know, it can go that or further. So you can put them in Diego Garcia and hit Iran. Now here's, here's the significance of it. You have to understand what a hypersonic missile does.
Steve Bannon
Hang on, hang on one second. Let's go to a break. I want to make sure you have plenty of time to this. I got Rickards, I got Antonio, and I've got still Neil McCabe at the White House and Tage girl is going to join us. We're going to get it all done.
Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Promise. Short break.
Steve Bannon
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Stephen K. Bannon (Host)
Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban.
Steve Bannon
Jim Rickards, you're your payoff. They don't want to talk about the special for strategic intelligence, Right?
Jim Rickards
So the hypersonic missile, the Dark Eagle is not just another missile. And by the way, we know what they do because the Russians were ahead of the United States. US thankfully, has caught up. But the Russians have the Reshnik missile. It lands at 10,000 miles per hour. Now, what you do with the Russia means hazelnut in Russians. It looks like a tree. When it deploys weapons, we now have the Dark Eagle. The Dark Eagle has a cruising speed of Mach 5. But the descent speed for the glide path, for the actual weapon, 13,000 miles per hour. That's Mach 17. But here's what they do. You can configure them different ways, but you don't put explosives in them. You put an extremely dense metallic core. The exact composition is classified. But just think titanium or something like that. When that core hits at 13,000 miles an hour, it doesn't blow up. It creates the land. The terrestrial equivalent of a tidal wave. The Earth literally shivers and just kind of makes a tidal wave and destroys everything. When the Russians used this in Ukraine, the Ukrainians went in for damage assessment. There was nothing left. They found dust. It wasn't even like broken buildings. Whatever, it turns it to dust. So here's the point. We're not in a forever war path. Fortunately, this is a softening up operation, probably to deploy the Dark Eagle, a hypersonic missile on the location of the Russian. Sorry, the Iranian highly enriched uranium. If you do that, we don't have to dig it up. We'll never get it. They'll never get it. It'll. It's not even like buried deep underground. It'll just be. It might as well be in the center of the earth. It'll be impossible to get and that'll be the end of it. Then we can, maybe we should, maybe
Steve Bannon
we should have started with this instead of taking the bait from Netanyahu to do a regime change because that's what we did. Let's be honest, what, how we get this. By the way, when I got Jim Rickards talking payloads, I kind of get a feeling it's going to be a kinetic weekend. So Jim, we're going to bug you again. But until then, how do people get strategic intelligence?
Jim Rickards
Thank you. We have a great offer. Steve, it said that our landing page is rickardsintel.com it's rickardsintel.com and my team, we got the lowest price ever 1776 so $17.76 for three months of strategic intelligence. We put a lot into it. I write all the lead articles, things we talked about in your program. We'll have them, you know, in, in full length, full Technicolor and strategic intelligence. RickardsIntel.com 177630 day money back guarantee. You don't like it, call us up, you get your money back. But, but the vast majority of our readers re up and stay with the publication. We're very, we're very pleased with it.
Ben Berkwam
Okay.
Steve Bannon
It's a great offer and we look forward to I'll talk to you after the show. We'll look forward to getting it back up. But this weekend may be a big weekend. Thank you. Jim, thank you for changing schedule to come on. Antonio, great article about the new front opened by the Houthis. I want everybody to read it. You've got more information. What's your social media to people Go and catch up with your thinking.
Antonio Graceffo
You can follow me on the Gateway Pundit and at Twitter. Antonio Gro, the Brooklyn Monk. That's one of my, one of my handles online.
Steve Bannon
And you also put things up on the great Epoch Times also, correct.
Antonio Graceffo
I write for Epoch Times. I do a lot of China analysis. I spent seven years in China and yeah, 25 total in Asia. Plus now Ukraine, one of the best anti CCP guys.
Steve Bannon
It's amazing. Antonio, look forward. I'll talk to you after the show. We'll have you back on. Great work on the Houthis. Read it folks. These are bad hombres. They're tough hombres. McCabe, you're going to stick around. We'll get you back up at 5. What's your social media until then?
Neil McCabe
You can find me on all the socials at reporter McCabe.
Steve Bannon
Steve, if you've got I know you Know Keith Kellogg very well. If you see Keith, you see General Kellogg wandering around, make sure you grab him for an interview. Okay, we'll see you back here at 5. I will.
Neil McCabe
I'll also say that General Kane, Tuesday at the hearing told Senator Reid that air power has its limits.
Jim Rickards
Wow.
Steve Bannon
Coming from an Air Force general. Not too shabby. Real quickly, McCabe, are you going your black tie tonight at the correspondence dinner? Are you like us, You're a working man. Going to be working, gonna be working the war over the weekend or are you going to the dinner?
Jim Rickards
I don't know.
Neil McCabe
I don't come from that kind of money, Steve. I'm just gonna have a quiet evening at home.
Steve Bannon
Thank you, sir. Well, we hope it's not. We're hoping not going to kinetic tonight. It's like President Trump, like he gets all the White House correspondents there, starts lighting the place up over in Tehran. That could happen, but there are a lot of discussions going on. You just heard from Rickards. Okay, Taj Gill, two things. You respect General Kellogg like we do. He's a great man. 82nd Airborne, head of IT. Great man. Your thoughts on Carg island and your thoughts on General Kellogg since I think you were had a trip or two in Afghanistan. Using Afghanistan as an example of a path to victory for the United States of America, sir.
Tage Gill
Yeah, I'll start out with Afghanistan. We did, we did a great job on the ground tactically. But strategically, it just went on and drug out for, you know, almost 20 years. We got to go into these places, fight, win and leave. We don't need to stay there and do the nation building. And then the wars, they, they, they take on a life of their own. They cycle up, cycle down, cycle up, cycle down. And in the Meantime, you have USAID, the State Department and every other NGO over there trying to rebuild the country and put McDonald's and, you know, Western ideology in these countries. They don't want it, they don't need it, and we don't need to be there. We need to go in, do our mission, and then leave. And then if we need to go back, we can go back later. But we don't need to have these sustained footprints in these countries in the Middle east where they hate us forever. It just, it drains our treasure, drains our blood. And it's bad. It's so. And then Carg Island. Here's the deal with Carg Island. First of all, we don't even have any Navy shipped in the Persian Gulf right now because they'll get shot with hypersonic missiles. So all of our forces are in the Gulf of Oman. So if we go into Carg island, we're going to have to fly them in on helicopters or V22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft or parachute them in. And that's fine. If we can get those guys in without getting shot down taking the island, that, that, that's no problem. But then comes the, the problem of holding the island. So we will be under a constant barrage of drones and hypersonic missiles from the Iranians. Remember that whole entire coastline of the Persian Gulf that Iranian that Iran owns has caves that are, have hidden doors and they're buried deep into granite. So the whole entire coastline has caves where they can launch surface boats and drones. And our troops will be under constant barrage. It'll be just like the Ukrainians and the Russians shooting drones back at each other. That's, that's the problem. Taking it is not the problem. Holding it is a problem.
Jim Rickards
Hang on.
Steve Bannon
We only got 30 seconds. I'm going to have you back at 5. About warped this. Where do people go right now? Now where they go right now to read all the reviews and order some warpath. Where they go?
Tage Gill
Warpath Coffee is a website use promo code. War room as always. Just go on there and read the reviews. 19,000 five star reviews. It is the best coffee out there. People absolutely love our coffee. And we just restocked the K cups. That's our number one bestseller is the Dark Roast K Cups. We're out for the last month. We just put a bunch back in. So if you.
Steve Bannon
I told you that Kate Caps. Okay, we'll have you back on at five. Love you brother. See you then. Charlie Kirk show Next Poso Gruber bowling and then back to the war room at 5 o'.
Jim Rickards
Clock.
Steve Bannon
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Podcast: Bannon's War Room
Episode: 5541: Are We Heading Towards Boots On The Ground
Date: July 24, 2026
Host: Stephen K. Bannon
Featured Guests: Ben Berkwam, Neil McCabe, Antonio Graceffo, Jim Rickards, Tage Gill
This episode takes a deep dive into the intensifying situation in the Middle East, focusing on potential U.S. military escalation toward a kinetic (boots on the ground) campaign, the role of Iranian proxies like the Houthis, and broader issues of U.S. border security and interior enforcement. With commentary from front-line journalists, military analysts, and policy experts, the discussion weaves together immediate geopolitical threats, U.S. political divisions, the labor force crisis, and the future direction of the country under potential Trump leadership.
[00:49 – 11:13]
“You solve that problem…get all able-bodied men back to work in something they can build a life around…American jobs for American citizens.”
— Steve Bannon [01:49]
“Every illegal needs to be deported…Every business that hires illegals needs to be prosecuted.”
— Ben Berkwam [08:04]
[09:16–14:30]
“If we don’t have secure borders, we don’t have a country. If we don’t have secure elections, we don’t have a country.”
— Ben Berkwam [10:00] “If you don’t support ICE and interior enforcement…you don’t have my vote. Very simple.”
— Steve Bannon [18:10]
[19:10–24:01, 24:05–46:51]
“The American way of war is to prepare the battlefield…build up right in front of our enemies…then we launch.”
— Neil McCabe [19:45]
“When you do this…you have to understand if you go and do the level of kinetic bombing…you’re going to be there for a long time. And I say a long time, I mean, like a decade.”
— Steve Bannon [22:17]
[30:30–39:17]
“It doesn’t take many mines to be released or many drone attacks to make a strait impassable… you’d have to stop every single small boat.”
— Antonio Graceffo [33:52]
[39:17–46:51]
“The Dark Eagle… has a cruising speed of Mach 5, descent speed for the glide path, 13,000 miles per hour… When that core hits, it creates the terrestrial equivalent of a tidal wave… destroys everything.”
— Jim Rickards [45:13]
For more from the episode’s featured analysts: