Steve Bannon (4:39)
Here's your host, Stephen k. Banner. Thursday the 6th of February in the year of our Lord 2025. Right there, that's the problem. It's called controlled opposition. Guys sitting there, conservative, former army officer, he runs Evangelical Big Network and saying how great. USAID, it's a group of criminals. They've supported the NGOs that had the invasion of the border. They supported all the nonsense coming out of Europe here and here, to suppress conservative voices. It's a cutout for the CIA. It has to be shut down, all of it. And President Trump's going to test this testimony. I actually oppose putting it up into the Secretary of State. He's right. State has kind of controlled this in the CIA. It's a CIA cutout, a big part of it. It's a slush fund. It's caused nothing but damage. The people over there, many of them are criminals. You have to shut this thing down. It's not even a question. Not even a question. And he's one of the. You've seen the personification of the problem right there. This is how this thing metastasized. Don't ask me. Ask Eli Crane. Don't ask me. Ask Matt Gaetz. Ask those people, mtg. Ask those people, the courageous few, the Andy Biggs of the world that in the middle of the night would argue, as this audience saw into the wee hours of the morning, these subcommittees on appropriations, and this was a classic one, and couldn't get Even close to 50% of the conference vote with them. Just an absolute, absolute disgrace. And this is going to be a, is this going to be a throwdown on usaid? Let's have it. Let's go for it. A couple other things I'm going to go to. You got, you heard Ben Burko in the background trying to get him set up. We got a great thing for Ben. I got to go to Katherine O'Neill. Let's say a couple things. I don't know if we have the, if we have the tweet, if we can put it up or if you can tell me we can put it up. There's a tweet out there from Elon Musk talking about there's billions of dollars in fraudulent payments still going from the Treasury. Senior officials at treasury tell me that's a bald faced lie. They've already kind of won this thing about having them read only but they're telling me they're not billions of dollars going to fraudulent organizations. They have no earthy idea what that means. And President Trump and the people in the White House I think got to get on point here because the Secretary of Treasury particularly what we're going to go into, folks with all these cuts and all this turbulence and all of it, you know, the two people they're going to look to to be steady eddies are Russ vote whose vote on confirmation going to be later tonight. I think of my crack staff can tell me that, that we've pushed for the numbers 202-224-3121. Although I think Russ, we got the votes. But last night they spent all night saying he was the most dangerous man in America. And Scott Bessant, those two are kind of your steady eddies. And the fiduciary, you know, responsibility of the secretary of treasury should not be questioned by anybody in administration unless they have hard facts. And they had hard facts, they ought to go to the Secretary of Treasury. What I've been informed at the highest levels of treasury is they have no earthly idea what this is. And to put that out there is grossly negligent and grossly irresponsible, particularly in the situation where Scott Bessant's got to be a guy at Treasury. So I don't know $7 trillion of government securities, I think the price of gold is going up. Now Scott Bessen gave an interview on Bloomberg and said, hey, President Trump's committed to a strong dollar, a strong dollar. And you know that brings certain elements to it. It obviously makes your exports tougher, makes Them more expensive. But we're strong. You know, we've always been a strong dollar country. So he's dedicated to a strong dollar. Said that today. Great interview on Bloomberg. Talked about this situation with Doge and talked about these, these guys that have read only. But when the secretary of treasury goes up there, you can't put out something that says they have knowingly have billions of dollars of fraudulent payments and haven't done anything about it. I'm just Treasury's telling me that that's not the case. And let me be blunt on something else. March 14th approaches. We can't look away on this. We have to, you know, are we going to have another CR or what you're telling me Capitol Hill is that we're going to kick the can down the road, have a one year cr and that one CR is going to be Joe Biden's numbers. That's what it is. It was created back in the summer of last year. It kind of was. It got us through, you know, as Joe Biden's numbers got us through the last crisis, the end of September, got another crisis in, in December this year. This is Biden's math is that we're going to have the first year of President Trump's presidency is going to be off of Biden's budget, Biden spending. Is that. Is that where we are? And so to get down to it, and I think Doge, I like what they're doing. I think they're putting numbers together to try and get the engineering diagram where cash is. But look, you don't need to go over the National Oceanographic Institute. Right. I'm sure Woods Hole or whatever they manage may be not efficient. And we're going to get some efficiencies that's like in the summer, get across the Potomac and Mike Cernovich, I love you, brother. You've been with us there from the beginning and. But it's not about clearances. They ain't getting enough clearances. And they get people get some clearances. We need cuts at Defense. Let's stop, let's stop kidding ourselves right now. We're not having an adult conversation. Let's have an adult conversation. We were promised a trillion dollars. Well, first off, we were promised $2 trillion in cuts. I did not say that. That's what the doge guy said. $2 trillion on a $6.5 trillion budget. Not over 10 years on that budget. Then it was a trillion dollars on that budget. Fine, it's a trillion dollars. We'll get there somehow. At least directionally. It's okay then. It was not this fiscal year. It's 2026. Well, that's not okay. We need to do this now. We have to address this as a country. We cannot continue to spend. We cannot continue to look away. We cannot keep kicking the can down the road. It's time for an adult moment and to be able to have a conversation where you're. Because you're not going to get to entitlements. And I don't include Medicaid in that and I don't include any of the ways fraud and abuse can be found in Medicare because I'm sure there's a lot. But the type of numbers we're talking about $2 trillion. Or, and, or because you're going to add to what President Trump said today, Populous tax cuts of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security are going to add bigger to the deficit war room. We love those cuts. We want more for working people. That's a great start. President Trump should be a hat tip to him because nobody else in the past has ever thought about that. But into discretionary spending, you're going to have a firestorm. You had a firestorm last week and kind of quasi blinked a little bit, let's be honest. Blinked a tad. TAD pulled back the memo, but not the content of the memo. The guys in Doral, all the Republican congressmen are freaking out because the constituents are calling. That's just to find out where the money is in the system. Now we have to have cuts. You cannot cut a penny from federal spending unless you start in the Defense Department. Let me say this again. Let's have an adult conversation. Unless you start in the Defense Department, you cannot have any cuts. So the Doge team, you're up the national, you know, oceanographic, wherever the hell you're at, it's all good. Do it. But until you cross the Potomac, it's not real. Until you cross the Potomac. This is like McClellan's army, right? Until you cross the Potomac and go over into Northern Virginia to the Pentagon and put a team and hey, we'll get them. We'll get them as much. You know, they don't need classifications and high security clearances to go through most of the budget. There are black programs or all that. Yes. And you can get them. They should have them. If not, guess what? Maybe we round error that. You know, maybe we just round up to it. Let's get into the materials command. Let's get into the Pentagon. Is rife with incompetence. The Pentagon is rife with duplication. The Pentagon is rife with corruption. Corruption. The defense industry is up to the eyeballs of corruption. Next to the biopharma medical industry in D.C. it's the most corrupt. The most corrupt. And so we're just going to sit there? You tell me we're just going to sit here. We're just going to sit here and not avoid that. And people that are putting out these, oh, Pete Hex is the. No, Pete Hex is not going to control. Pete Hex got to run the building right now. And yes, he's got a budget. He's going to look at it. We're talking about Doge. If you're not prepared to do it, just say you're not prepared to do it. If you're not prepared to do it because you got a conflict of interest and that conflict of interest is your space company, SpaceX, fine, just tell us. And if the reason you don't want to do it is the financing you're doing on SpaceX, and I'd like to know the status of that financing. Has a financing close and is it built? I just like a simple thing. Has a financing closed recently and was that financing around numbers that are in The NDAA of $900 billion? Inquiring minds. I'm asking for a friend. I'm asking for a friend, let's stop the games and let's get down to. We're not going to cut the budget until we address the Pentagon. And if you think we are, you're kidding yourselves. And I come at it from somebody that served their country. And that country wasn't South Africa. That country was the United States of America. And my daughter went to West Point and served her country. And that country is not South Africa. That country was the United States of America because that's her real country and this is my real country. I'm not floating around on kind of some, you know, tourist visa and picking a country every couple of years. So let's get, let's get serious. Because all I see when you ratchet down, look at that performance line also, are we not if we're not going to have any cuts by March 14, any recommended cuts, please just tell people now. So then we say, okay, guess what? We can't do it. Let's get a CR and have a CR for the year and work off Biden's numbers. Let's just do it. Let's do it. We're big boys and girls. That's what they're talking about anyway, it's an open secret on Capitol Hill. This is what they're talking about. So don't have some big drama at the end and, oh, we're going to shut the government down. Not shut the government down. Let's just get it out now. Let's have a conversation. Let's get it out now. Let's do it. But still, the fact remains, and the wealthy should understand this, if you don't want your taxes raised to close the gap, to get to Scott Bessen. Not my number. It's Scott Bessen. He's confirmed as Secretary of Treasury. He said to get down to 3% of GDP as your deficit. Hell, in France, they turfed out a government. This is why the front national guys are even there. They turfed out of government, trying to get down and put it on the backs of people instead of all the foreign aid, and they threw that government out. Getting down from 6.5% to 3% is not an easy task. I don't even like the 3%, but it's a start. Besant's giving you a start. And the supply tax cuts aren't going to kick in. The growth is going to be there, just like it was in President Trump's first term. Tremendous growth, up to 3, 3.5%, I think, in 19. But that takes a couple of years to kick in. Remember, hello, the tax cuts came in 17. We're passing 17 and 19 is when it started hitting in last time I looked. That's a couple of years. What are we going to do in the interim? What we're going to do is cut spending. If we can't cut spending, let's face it now, and if you don't go, if you don't cross the Potomac and you don't go to that big building that's right next to Arlington National Cemetery, you're kidding yourself. And so if we're kidding ourselves, let's just have a conversation. Said, oh, it's okay. It's. We're going to find some, you know, waste, fraud and abuse in the boats they're commissioning at the National Oceanographic Society. And we're going to shut down USAID, which I think is amazing. And that's 40 or $50 billion a year. And that's a start. That's a start. We'll find waste, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid and Medicare. I'm sure there's tons of waste and fraud over there. But programmatically. Programmatically is where you're Going to get cuts. And we have to have this conversation on this $900 billion defense bill that's got pork all in it. It's got corruption all in it. It's got incompetence in it. Good God, folks, we just. We didn't win two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spend $9 trillion or net present value from also the care of the wounded and the psychologically damaged and destroyed. So it's not like we're sitting here and it's the Royal Navy in the. In the 17th century, right? Or it's not the victorious American army signing the surrender documents on the deck of the Missouri. That's not what we have now. We don't know how to win. Where's hell? That's the reason Pete Hex is over there. But let's have an adult conversation. If we're not going to cut it, just tell us. That's fine. We're big boys and girls. But if you want to stop the financial crisis, if you want to stop it as an adult, you got to cross the Potomac and tell me what's going to happen in the Pentagon, because you're going to leave it at $900 billion. Write this down now. You ain't going to get one penny of cuts socially. There's not. You look at those Republican congressmen. You think they can take that heat? Are you kidding me? If you looked at this crowd, that's what's going to stand up to the firestorm that's going to come. Are you kidding me? These guys can't stand up to anything. Mike Johnson is going to stand up to that. They went down to the conference and it came up with $318 billion over 10 years. I ain't talking about 10 years. I want to know this year. I want to know next year. I don't have time, nor do I have interest in anything in the third year beyond this year and next year, this year and next year. Am I clear? That's what I want to see, and I want to see it out of the Pentagon. And if you're not prepared to cut, then it's not serious. We should tell the President of the United States it's not serious. And then somebody should have a conversation about whose taxes we're going to raise to close the difference, because you ain't going to grow your way out of here in the next two years, full stop. And if my math is wrong, then somebody show me, because I've looked at every different version of it, and I think I'm right. And I'm the guy that called the two trillion dollar deficit. Everybody's skipping around. Oh, we got the biggest conservative wins. I say if you lost your mind, it's going to be two train a year. It's obscene and absurd, ridiculous and we don't have time to. When Volcker and Reagan saved the country and choked out the debacle that was in inflation and what happened to the country in the late 1970s, the early 1980s when rain came in 80, 81 and choked it down. That took courage and guts and the ability to take a political firestorm. But we're not that country now. Then we were a manufacturing superpower. We had virtually no debt on our balance sheet. The financial condition was totally different. We had, we could leverage things. We can't do that now. No debt, virtually no debt and a manufacturing superpower and a highly educated blue collar workforce that is not these United States of America. So somebody, you either cut it or you tax it. You figure it out. You either cut or you tax. I'm all for cuts, but we got to get serious. And if we're not serious, then somebody should tell the President is not serious on the cuts. Let's go then to the taxes. You'll see some people's heads blown up. You tax these wealthy, you tax, you tax the corporatists, you tax the lords of easy money, the sociopathic overlords. All of a sudden you start seeing cuts coming south of the Potomac. The place is called the Pentagon. It's easy. You can't miss it. It's big, large, incompetent and corrupt. Pete Hexis knows this. I'm sure in his first couple of days that he saw it. Kathryn, the Christian, the E on the Christians, also the pressure and what happens in the White House. You were there. What are these folks going through right now in this intense period? And tell me about this Christian executive order that I think is magnificent. But hey, it tells you where you are in the year of our Lord 2025. You got to put an executive order down. You got to put the head of the doj, the attorney general in charge to ring out the anti Christian and hating on Christians and Christian out of a government that Christians pay for every day. Ma'am.