WarRoom Battleground EP 706: Winning The Culture War 2.0; Going After Amoral Judges

Summary

Podcast Summary: WarRoom Battleground EP 706: Winning The Culture War 2.0; Going After Amoral Judges

Podcast Information:

• Title: Bannon`s War Room
• Host/Author: WarRoom.org
• Description: WAR ROOM: Pandemic is the first and most comprehensive program to bring the most up-to-the-minute information on the news of the day. Stephen K. Bannon brings medical experts, politicians, business leaders, and those on the front lines for a comprehensive look at the latest news from all and provide their insider insights.
• Episode: WarRoom Battleground EP 706: Winning The Culture War 2.0; Going After Amoral Judges
• Release Date: February 12, 2025

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1. Introduction and Setting the Stage

The episode kicks off with a heated exchange featuring Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, highlighting tensions within the current political landscape. Trump expresses frustration with media narratives, stating, "All these networks lying about the people" ([00:13]). Bannon echoes the sentiment, emphasizing that "the people have had a belly full of it" ([00:27]).

2. Attacking the Administrative State and Deep State

Steve Bannon delves into President Trump's recent actions aimed at dismantling what he terms the "administrative state" or "deep state." He highlights Trump's appointment as chairman of the Kennedy Center's board and his subsequent removal of most board members as a strategic move against entrenched Washington elites ([01:03]).

Notable Quote:

• Stephen K. Bannon ([01:03]): "We're going to break it all down for you. Pretty amazing stuff."

3. Roger Kimball on Gramsci and Cultural Institutions

Roger Kimball joins the discussion to provide historical context, referencing Antonio Gramsci's theory of the "long march through the institutions." Kimball explains how Marxist ideologies have infiltrated various cultural and educational institutions to undermine traditional American values.

Notable Quote:

• Roger Kimball ([02:47]): "Antonio Gramsci... the institutions he had in mind were the educational institutions, the cultural institutions, the churches, the museums..."

4. Exposing Fraud and Abuse in Federal Agencies

A significant portion of the episode focuses on uncovering corruption within federal agencies, particularly USAID. Bannon and Kimball discuss the misuse of taxpayer funds, citing examples like the allocation of millions to dubious projects such as "condoms for the Taliban" ([02:47]).

Notable Quotes:

• Roger Kimball ([05:20]): "We are beginning to see what the engine room of the administrative state is."
• Stephen K. Bannon ([36:58]): "We have massive amounts of fraud that we’ve caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in what, two weeks..."

5. Strategies to Reduce the National Deficit

Elon Musk and Roger Kimball discuss the dire state of the national deficit, projecting it to reach $2 trillion. They propose cutting the deficit by half through competence and caring, emphasizing the need for deregulation to foster economic growth.

Notable Quote:

• Roger Kimball ([39:07]): "What are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from 2 trillion to 1 trillion? And it's really two things, competence and caring."

6. Cutting Corruption in the Treasury and Pentagon

The conversation shifts to specific federal departments. Musk highlights the inefficiencies and corruption within the Treasury Department and the Pentagon, advocating for stringent audits and accountability measures to prevent wasteful spending and fraudulent activities.

Notable Quote:

• Stephen K. Bannon ([45:11]): "We have to catch it. And the only way we're going to catch it is to look for it."

7. Elon Musk’s Role in Uncovering Fraud

Elon Musk discusses his involvement in identifying and addressing fraud within government operations. He underscores the importance of transparency and the challenges posed by activist judges who attempt to impede these efforts.

Notable Quote:

• Elon Musk ([39:01]): "We have found fraud and abuse. And it's abusive because most of these things are virtually made up or certainly money shouldn't be sent to them."

8. Addressing Conflict of Interest and Accountability

A critical segment addresses potential conflicts of interest, particularly concerning Musk's role and his company's contracts with the Pentagon. Bannon assures listeners of their commitment to transparency, stating that all actions are publicly available for scrutiny ([32:36]).

Notable Quotes:

• Stephen K. Bannon ([32:36]): "All of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything... they'll say it immediately."
• Elon Musk ([40:31]): "I always abide by the courts... and we'll appeal."

9. The Path Forward and Upcoming Initiatives

Bannon outlines future plans to continue the fight against government corruption, emphasizing the establishment of accountability measures and the importance of public support. He references historical moments like the Cuban Missile Crisis to illustrate the current administration's proactive approach.

Notable Quote:

• Steve Bannon ([55:42]): "I will tell you, that's a lot like sitting there having brief President Trump, him throwing out ideas. You're seeing a very unique... President Trump thinking it through as it's happening. That was extraordinary."

10. Concluding Remarks

The episode wraps up with a reaffirmation of the mission to restore democracy by reducing bureaucratic influence and ensuring that government actions reflect the will of the people. Bannon emphasizes the necessity of cutting the national deficit and combating corruption to secure America's future.

Notable Quote:

• Stephen K. Bannon ([38:56]): "That's a fantastic scenario for the average American."

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Key Takeaways:

• Combatting the Deep State: The administration is actively working to dismantle entrenched bureaucratic structures believed to undermine American values.
• Uncovering Fraud: Significant efforts are underway to identify and eliminate wasteful spending and fraudulent activities within federal agencies.
• Economic Reforms: Cutting the national deficit through competence, caring, and deregulation is a top priority to foster economic growth and reduce financial burdens on citizens.
• Transparency and Accountability: Ensuring all government actions are transparent to prevent conflicts of interest and build public trust.

Overall Insight: This episode of WarRoom Battleground showcases a concerted effort by President Trump, Steve Bannon, and allies like Elon Musk to challenge and reform what they perceive as corrupt and inefficient elements within the U.S. government. Through strategic appointments, rigorous audits, and public discourse, they aim to reset governmental functions to better serve the American populace.

Transcript

[Donald Trump]

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. Christians, I got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people.

[Steve Bannon]

The people have had a belly full of it.

[Donald Trump]

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.

[Elon Musk]

It's going to happen.

[Roger Kimball]

And where do people like that go.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

To share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

[Donald Trump]

Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

War ROOM here's your host, Stephen k. Ban.

[Steve Bannon]

Tuesday 11 February Yerviller 2025 we're going to play this, that just came out of the Oval Office, this kind of press. President Trump, Elon Musk was there. We're going to break it all down for you. Pretty amazing stuff. First, though, I want to get one of the biggest blows the President gave to the administrative state, imperial Washington, the deep state this week was to name himself chairman of the board of the Kennedy center and then announce that he's thrown out most of the board of directors. And he just went on a couple of riffs about how upside down the Kennedy center had gotten. The Kennedy center is high church in the imperial capital, is really the, I call it the clubhouse. People said you're wrong.

[Donald Trump]

It's the church where they worship.

[Steve Bannon]

The secular humanist Rick Grenell, one of President Trump's closest advisor, a good buddy has been, is already in charge of the la, you know, overseeing the la, was it refurbishment, rebuilding, rejuvenation. He's on top of that and now he's been named the interim head of the Kennedy Center. I'm going to try to get Rick on here in the next day or two. Roger Kimball joins me. Roger, when I talk about the Kennedy Center, I want to go back and pull back to my old partner Andrew Breitbart. And really an inspiration for him was this Italian, Gramsci. Tell us who this guy is. Why is he important? Why is some obscure Marxist who became, I guess, a fascist or leader, you know, all back in what, the twenties? Why is he such an important theoretician? And we're a huge believer on the show that ideas have consequences and his ideas had big consequences that actually roll through. Why Donald John Trump took control of the Kennedy Senate, sir?

[Roger Kimball]

Yes. Well, Antonio Gramsci was, as you say, an Italian Marxist and he helped popularize the idea that in order to foment the revolution, one needed to take over the institutions. So you were saying just yesterday that Donald Trump has embarked upon a forced march through the institution. Gramsci talked about the long march through the institutions. And the institutions he had in mind were the educational institutions, the cultural institutions, the churches, the museums, all of those places where the elite would congregate and promulgate their toxic ideas to the young and watch them grow and become ever more poisonous. And that. We've certainly seen that in this country. And you mentioned the Kennedy senator. So this is a. I think the person who said it was like a church is. That's a, That's a good, that's a very good analogy. It is a place where the beautiful people congregate and they, they go there to admire each other and to put on shows. Just this last July, they had a show called Drag Queens for Divas or some such title. So that's what they're promulgating. It's not only Gramsci, it's also the people he influenced, like the Frankfurt School Marxist Herbert Marcuse, who was very important in, in refining these Marxist ideas for the American intelligentsia. Angela Davis, for example, was one of his students at Brandeis, and he had the insight that we would bend together, Marx and Freud. And that was a very poisonous combination that we see unfolding everywhere. One of the remarkable things about the recent revelations about the USAID is you look at their grants, you know, billions of dollars and how many of them, really quite a large number of them, are going to fund all of these sexually exotic enterprises across the world, you know, so LBGTQ things in, you know, suriname or the 50, you know, billion. $50 million, I think it was $15 million for condoms for the Taliban. It's a long list of very, very strange things. Why is it, why is the American taxpayer paying for all of this stuff? When the people who are living in North Carolina and who were devastated by Hurricane Helene and they're still out of their houses there without, you know, water and so on, what did the government do for them? Nothing. And that's where we are now. We are beginning. We've taken the scab off this unbelievable amount of money that, that comes from us and is going to basically support the enemies of our culture. It's not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. It's millions and millions and millions of the taxpayers money going to fund what Mike Benz calls a CIA front and a money laundering. Observation. We know. Finally, we're beginning to see what the engine room of the administrative state. So when we find out, for example, that some of these Treasury Department revelations, we find out that they're not de. Duplicating Social Security numbers. So there are many people who have the same Social Security number. They're just being passed out to. To migrants so that they can get, you know, get into the country, they can get jobs and so on. It's amazing. Then you have a district judge who said, oh, this is terrible. We have to squash it instantly. So we'll have a temporary restraining order that has nationwide effect. Where he gets the authority to do that is an interesting question that should be looked into by the Supreme Court very soon. But it's basically what they're saying is, you have uncovered this corruption, and we don't want this transparency. These people are like vampires. The sunlight is fatal to them, and we now know that. And so we have to turn on the sunlight. We have to cue the sun, as I said in that movie, and reveal in the dark corners of this incredible web of. Of corruption, just what is going on. And I think that, you know, I was expecting great things from Donald Trump, but he has exceeded even my high expectations. The velocity and the depth of what he's doing is, I think, simply extraordinary. And he's got to keep the pressure on because, believe me, these people are going to go after him, and he can't let up. He cannot let up.

[Steve Bannon]

What is your fear on that? Roger, you're a man of a lot of wisdom. What is your fear about this? I know you're very excited about the scale of it, the depth of it, the velocity of it, the urgency of it. What is your fear out there? Because you and I talk, every day is like Christmas day for us, right? There's like 10 boxes under the tree every day. What is your fear?

[Roger Kimball]

Well, you remember this last July, somebody tried to assassinate Donald Trump. Then somebody else did. I fear the rekindling of the lawfare establishment. What is law? Lawfare is warfare by another means. What. What Donald Trump had to go through these last four years would have killed most of us. It's. I mean, the fact that he was able to not only survive, but. But thrive. Indictments In, I think, four or five different jurisdictions, a totally spurious 34 felony count conviction in New York, fines of hundreds of millions of dollars. They wanted to bankrupt him and send him to jail for the rest of his life. It was quite extraordinary. And those people have not. They're not gone yet. Letitia James, the Attorney General of New York, and her partner in crime, Alvin Bragg. They're still there. They're still being funded by George Soros. And I hope that this time at least, we have an attorney general on our side. Pam Bondi seems to me, I don't know her, but she seems to me to be quite tough. And I think that she might be a big help in this. And I hope that Kash Patel will be confirmed for the FBI. If we get, if we get cash, I think we'll be in pretty good shape. But do not underestimate these people. They're evil and they're determined. So we have to be equally determined to oppose them.

[Steve Bannon]

You're a New Yorker, right? How, I mean, how do we get. In a situation that source runs the deal. Bragg is as radical as they can get. And Bragg, folks, I got news flash for you. He's running unopposed. And the elections are next year, so. And I think the primaries are in the spring. Letitia James oversees it. They've got a perfect system up there. How did this happen? And I realize it's a progressive left. Manhattan is a nutcase, but you've got a lot of conservatives up there. How do it get to a situation that they literally have in the financial capital? It's not like if this is Peoria or St. Paul, Minnesota or something like that. It would be bad, but it wouldn't be terrible. You're in the financial capital of the world, of the greatest financial power in the world. And they control the courts. They control it, yes. And every transaction, all data goes through there. All commercial data, trade data, financial data.

[Donald Trump]

The biggest, the Federal Reserve.

[Steve Bannon]

Like I said, the bridge of the ship is in Washington, in the Federal Reserve and the treasury, the engine room in the Commerce Department. The engine room is in New York City. It's in Manhattan. And that gives them jurisdiction. How did thishow did we allow these radicals? I mean, these people are so far off the hook that it's incredible. How did that happen?

[Roger Kimball]

Well, you know, I think it's the same way that the corruption of the universities happened. People are, many people are well disposed toward their fellows. They think, well, you know, they can't really be as evil as some people say. You know, they mean well. You know, they talk about justice, they have a lot of good language, but actually they are evil. And I think that part of our problem, the whole culture war, metabolism has been that people who are, could do something are just. They're timid. There's a reason that Aristotle says that courage is the most important virtue, because he says, if you don't have courage. You can't practice any of the others. And people don't want to be involved. They don't want, they don't. They've been seduced by the rhetoric of virtue. Why is it that the left has a virtual monopoly on the rhetoric of virtue? You know, they're beginning with the word liberal. There's nothing liberal about the left. I mean, they're illiberal, they're intolerant. It used to be that tolerance was the primary liberal virtue, but that was a long time ago. Now they specialize in intolerance. They look at 1984, George Orwell's novel, and see it not as a, a scarifying admonition but as a kind of how to manual. That's why they've become, they've enrolled themselves in the party of censorship, where you have people like John Kerry saying, well, maybe if the election goes well, we can finally get rid of the First Amendment. You remember that this summer? Amazing people would say things like that. That's, I think that's why.

[Steve Bannon]

Roger, where do, how do people get to you? How do they get you a new criterion? How they get to your books? How do they get to your columns?

[Roger Kimball]

Yeah, I'm easy to find. I have an X account which is just my name and I'm the editor of the New Criterion. There's a website there and I'm just unveiling a personal website. So I've got a lot of my stuff there too as well.

[Steve Bannon]

What's the personal website?

[Roger Kimball]

It's actually, it's rogerkimble.org because a bass player in Massachusetts glories in the name, glories in the handle.

[Steve Bannon]

Rogerkimble.com rogerkimble.org for all you non bass players. Roger, thank you so much, brother. Fantastic. Fascinating. Roger Kimball, one of our leading intellectuals, public intellectuals in maga. Okay, we're going to play in its entirety. Just came hot off the press, this amazing presser availability signing executive as President Trump.

[Donald Trump]

I will be back to break it.

[Steve Bannon]

All down at the end of it. Let's go ahead and rip.

[Donald Trump]

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[Elon Musk]

Dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. And I think it's very important. And that's one of the reasons I got elected. I say we're going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick and that corrupt. And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corrupt, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth much more than that in just a short period of time. We want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don't want you to do that. So maybe we have to look at the judges because that's very serious. I think it's a very serious violation. Violation. I'll ask Elon Musk to say a few words and we'll take some questions. Elon, go ahead.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Sure. So the at a high level, if you say, what is the goal of Doge? And I think a significant part of the presidency is to restore democracy, this may seem like, well, are we in a democracy? Well, if you don't have a feedback loop. Okay, we'd have to. If you. Sorry. Tell you gravitas can be difficult sometimes. So if there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, and then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their electability representatives in the form of the President and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy, we live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop and that the public, the Public's elected representatives, the President, the House and the Senate decide what happens as opposed to a large unelected bureaucracy. This is not to say that there aren't some good. There are good people who are in the federal bureaucracy, but you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that is responsive to the people. That's the whole point of a democracy. And if you looked at the. If you looked at the founders today and said, what do you think of the way things have turned out? Well, we have this unelected fourth unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways currently more power than any elected representative. And this is not something that people want and it does not match the will of people. So it's just something we've got to fix. And they've also got to address the deficit. So we've got a $2 trillion deficit. And if we don't do something about this deficit, countries going bankrupt. I mean, it's really astounding that the interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot. We spend a lot of money on defense. And if that just keeps going, we're essentially going to bankrupt the country. So what I really want to say is, like, it's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt.

[Elon Musk]

And also, could you mention some of the things that your team has found, some of the crazy numbers, including the woman that walked away with about 30 million? Right.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, we do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have ostensibly a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position, which is what happened to usaid, we're just curious as to where it came from. Maybe they're very good at investing. Which case we should take their investment advice, perhaps. But just there seems to be. Mysteriously, they get wealthy. We don't know why. Where does it come from? And I think the reality is that they're getting wealthy at detachable expense. That's the honest truth of it. So, you know, we're looking at, say, well, just if you look at, say, treasury, for example, basic controls that should be in place that are in place in any company Such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually pay it. None of those things are true currently. So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building. So you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got comment fields that are also blank, so you don't know why the payment was made. And then we've got this truly absurd, a do not pay list which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do not pay list. And we're talking about terrorist organizations, we're talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation can take up to a year to get on the list. And even once on the list, the list is not used. It's mind blowing. So what we're talking here, we're really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present that haven't been present. So you say like, well, how could such a thing arise? That seems crazy when you understand that really everything is geared towards, towards complaint minimization. So then you understand the motivations. So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously. But if people don't receive money, they do complain. And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest. So then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that's why everything just. They approve all the payments at treasury because if you approve all the payments, you don't get complaints. But now we're saying that no, actually we are going to complain if money is spent badly. If your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and frugal manner, then that's not okay. Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely on things that matter to the people. I mean, these things, like it's just common sense. It's not, it's not draconian or radical. I think it's really just saying, let's look at each of these expenditures and say, is this actually in the best interest of the people? And if it is, it's proved. If not, we should think about it. So, you know, there's crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security. And we've got people in there that are 150 years old now. Do you know anyone is 150?

[Elon Musk]

I don't.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Okay, they should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out. So, you know, that's the case where, like, I think they're probably dead, it's my guess. Or they should be very famous, one of the two. And then there's a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identifying information. Well, why is there no identifying information? Obviously we want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it and that they receive it quickly and accurately. I'll tell you another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like, we are trying to sort of right size the federal bureaucracy, just make sure that this obviously needs. There needs to be a lot of people working for the federal government, but not as many as currently. So we're saying, well, okay, well, let's. If people can retire, you know, with full benefit benefits and everything, that, that would be good. They can retire, get their retirement payments, everything. And then we were told, this is actually, I think, a great anecdote because we were told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It's manually calculated, then written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine. And I'm like, what do you mean a mine? Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork. And you look at a picture of this mine, we'll post some pictures afterwards. And this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955. It looks like it's like a time warp. And then the speed, then the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes and then nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy? There's like a thousand people that work on this. So I think if we take those people and say, like, you know what, Instead of working in a mineshaft carrying manila envelopes to, you know, boxes in a mineshaft, you could do practically anything else and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way. So anyway, so I think, you know, that's an example, like at a high level, if you say, like, how do we increase prosperity is we get people to do. To shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles. And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's the actual goal. Everyone's very quiet, by the way. People don't think it's quiet.

[Press Member]

Your detractors, Mr. Musk?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I have what?

[Press Member]

Including a lot of Democrats.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I have detractors.

[Press Member]

You do, sir?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I don't believe it.

[Press Member]

Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non transparent way. What's your response to that criticism?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted to have a majority of the public voting for President Trump. We won the House, we won the Senate. The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The President spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major government reform. And that's what people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for. And a lot of times, you know, people that don't get what they voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that's what democracy is all about.

[Press Member]

Mr. Musk, the White House says that you will identify and excuse yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have. Does that mean that you are, in effect, policing yourself? What are the checks and balances that are in place to ensure that there is accountability and transparency?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I don't think there's been, I don't know of a case where an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization. So, you know, the kind of things we're doing are, I think, very, very simple and basic. They're not, you know, what I mentioned brings, for example, about treasury just making sure that payments that go out, taxpayer money that goes out, is categorized correctly, that the payment is explained, that organizations on the do not pay list, which are takes a lot to get there, that actually are not paid, which currently they are paid. These are not individual judgment decisions. These are about simply having sensible checks and balances in the system itself to ensure that taxpayer money is spent well. So it's got nothing to do with like say a contract with some company of mine at all.

[Press Member]

But if there is a conflict of interest when it comes to you yourself, for instance, you've received billions of dollars in federal contracts when it comes to the Pentagon, for instance, which the President I know has directed you to look into. Are you policing yourself in that? Is there any sort of accountability check and balance in place that would provide any transparency for the American people?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, all of our actions are fully public. So if you see anything you say, like, wait a second, hey, you know what? That doesn't, that seems like maybe that's, you know, there's a conflict there. It's not like people are going to be shy about saying that. They'll say it immediately, you know, including you yourself. Yes, but it's transparency is what builds trust. Not simply somebody asserting trust, not somebody saying they're trustworthy, but transparency. So you can see everything that's going on and then you can see, am I doing something that benefits one of my companies or not? It's totally obvious.

[Elon Musk]

And if we thought that we would not let him do that segment or look in that area, if we thought there was a lack of transparency or a conflict of interest. And we watch that also. He's a big businessman, he's a successful guy. That's why we want him doing this. We don't want an unsuccessful guy doing this. Now, one thing also that Elon hasn't really mentioned are the groups of people that are getting some of these payments. They're ridiculous. And we're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse. I would say those two words as opposed to the third word that I usually use, but in this case fraud and abuse, it's abusive because most of these things are virtually made up or certainly money shouldn't be sent to them. And you know what I'm talking about. It's crazy. So. But we're talking about tens of billions of dollars that we've already found. And now a judge is an activist judge, wants to try and stop us from doing this. Why? Why would they want to do that? I campaigned on this. I campaigned on the fact that I said government is corrupt and it is very corrupt. It's very, very. It's also foolish. As an example, a man has a contract for three months and the contract ends, but they keep paying him for the next 20 years, you know, because nobody ends a contract. You get a lot of that. You have a contract that's three, a three month contract. Now normally if you're in a small, in all fairness, it's the size of this thing is so big. But if you have a contract and you're in a regular business, you end the contract in three months. You know, it's a consultant. Here's a contract for three months, but it goes on for 20 years. And the guy doesn't say that he got money for 20 years. You know, they don't say it. They just keep getting checks month after month. And you have various things like that and even much worse than that, actually much worse. And I guess you call that incompetence. Maybe it could be corruption, it could be a. Deals made on both sides, you know, know where the guy gets the money. He kicks. I think he has a lot of kickback here. I see a lot of kickback here. There's a lot of kickbacks, tremendous kickback, because nobody could be so stupid to give out some of these contracts. So he has to get a kickback. So that's what I got elected for. That and borders and military and a lot of things. But this is a big part of it. And I hope that the court system is going to allow us to do what we have to do. We got elected to, among other things, find all of this fraud, abuse, all of this horrible stuff going on. And we've already found billions of dollars. Not like a little bit billions, many billions of dollars. And when you get down to it, it's going to be probably close to a trillion dollars. It could be close to a trillion dollars that we're going to find that will have quite an impact on the budget. And you'll go to a judge where they handpick a judge. And he has certain leanings. I'm not knocking anybody for that, but he has certain leanings and he wants us to stop looking. How do you stop looking? I mean, we've already found it. We have a case in New York where a hotel is paid $59 million. 59 million because of. Because it's housing migrants, illegal migrants, all illegal, I believe.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

And they were being paid twice the normal room rate at 100% occupancy.

[Elon Musk]

Unbelievable.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

So it's a racket. Can I ask a question, if I may? Sort of just going for the President's comments at a high level. What, how exactly? What are the two ingredients that are really necessary in order to cut the budget deficit in half from 2 trillion to 1 trillion? And it's really two things, competence and caring. And if you add competence and caring, you'll cut the budget deficit in half. And I fully expect to be scrutinized and get a daily proctology exam. Basically, my soldiers camp out there. So it's not like I think I can get away with something. I'll be scrutinized nonstop. But with the Support of the President. We can cut the budget deficit in half from 2 trillion to 1. And then with deregulation, because there's a lot of sort of regulations that don't ultimately serve the public good. We need to free the builders of America to build. And if we do that, that means, I think we can get the economic growth to be maybe 3, 4%, maybe 5%. And that means if you can get a trillion dollars of economic growth and you cut the, the budget deficit by a trillion between now and next year, there is no inflation. There's no inflation in 26. And if the government is not borrowing as much, it means that interest costs decline. So everyone's. The mortgage, their car payment, their credit card bills, anything, their student debt, the monthly payments drop. That's a fantastic scenario for the average American. I mean, imagine they're going down the grocery aisle and the prices from one year to the next are the same. And their mortgage, all their debt payments dropped. How great is that for the average American? That's right.

[Elon Musk]

We had no idea we were going to find this much. And it's open. It's not like complicated.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

It's not public, if it please. It's a lot of work.

[Elon Musk]

We can't believe it. A lot of work. A lot of smart people involved. Very, very smart people. But it's. You're talking about anywhere maybe $500 billion. It's crazy, the kind of numbers you talk about. You know, normally when you're looking at something, you'll find you're looking for 1 out of 100 here, you're almost reversing it. You look for one that's good and you can look at the title and you say, why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? And the public gets it. You know, the public gets it. You've seen the polls. The public is saying, why are we paying all this money? This. For years this has gone on. Yeah, go ahead. Wait, go ahead.

[Roger Kimball]

Senator Rand Paul today said that Doge.

[Press Member]

Cuts will ultimately need a vote in Congress.

[Roger Kimball]

Do you agree with that?

[Steve Bannon]

Is that the plan?

[Elon Musk]

I really don't know. I know this. We're finding tremendous fraud and tremendous abuse. If I need a vote of Congress to find fraud and abuse it be, it's fine with me. I think we'll get the vote. Although there'll be some people that wouldn't vote. And how could a judge want to hold us back from finding all of this fraud and finding all of this incompetence? Why would that happen? Why would even Congress want to do that? Now, Congress, if we do need a vote, I think we'd get a very easy vote because we have a track record now. We've already found billions of dollars of abuse, incompetence, and corruption. A lot of corruption.

[Press Member]

If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you?

[Elon Musk]

Well, I always abide by the courts, and then I'll have to appeal it. But then what he's done is he slowed down the momentum and it gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. You know, if a person's crooked and they get caught, other people see that and all of a sudden it becomes harder later on. So, yeah, yeah, the answer is I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we'll appeal, but appeals take a long time. And I would hope that a judge, if you go into a judge and you show them here's a corrupt situation, we have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. Do you want us to send this corrupt check to a person, or do you want us not to give it and give it back to the taxpayer? I would hope a judge would say, don't send it, give it back to.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

If I can add to that, what we're finding is that a bunch of the fraud is not even going to Americans. So I think we can all agree that if there's going to be a fraud, it should at least go to Americans. But a bunch of the fraud rings that are operating in the United States and taking advantage of the federal government, especially in the entitlements programs are actually foreign fraud rings. They're operating in other countries and actually exporting money to other countries. We should stop that. And this is big numbers talk about 100 to 200 billion dollars a year serious money.

[Press Member]

Mr. Musk, you said on X that an example of the fraud that you have cited was $50 million of condoms was sent to Gaza. But after fact check this, apparently Gaza in Mozambique and the program was to protect them against hiv. So can you correct the statements? It wasn't sent to Hamas. Actually, it was sent to Mozambique, which makes sense why condoms was sent there. And how can we make sure that all the statements that you said were correct so we can trust what you say?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, first of all, some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected. So nobody's going to bat a thousand. I mean, any. You know, we will make mistakes, but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes. So, you know, if the I'M not sure we should be sending for $15 million worth of condoms to anywhere. Frankly, I'm not sure that's something Americans would be really excited about. And that is really an enormous number of condoms if you think about it. But you know, if it went to Mozambique instead of Gaza, I'm like, okay, that's not as bad. But still, you know, why are we doing that?

[Steve Bannon]

Can you talk a little bit about.

[Roger Kimball]

How closely you're working with agency heads as you're directing these cups? Do they have, how much input do.

[Press Member]

Agency heads have when you're making these decisions?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yeah, we work closely with the agency heads and yeah, so there are sort of checks in place. So it's not just us just going in and doing things willy nilly. It's in partnership with the agency heads. And I check previously with the President to make sure that, you know, this is what the President wants to have happen. So, you know, we talk almost every day and I, you know, I double check things to make sure. Is this something, Mr. President, do you want us to do this? Then we'll do it.

[Press Member]

USAID has been one of your main targets. Are you concerned at all that some of the cuts or that shutting that agency altogether may lead to diseases or other bigger problems starting in other countries that then come to the United States?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yeah, so that's interesting example. So that's something where we work closely with the State Department and Secretary Rubio and we have, for example, turned on funding for Ebola prevention and for HIV prevention. Yes, correct. And we are moving fast. So we will make mistakes, but we will also fix the mistakes very quickly. Is it seen as a worthy cause?

[Press Member]

Usaid?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I think that there's some worthy things. But overall, if you say what is the bang for the buck? I would say it was not very good. And there was far too much of what USAID was doing was influencing elections in ways that I think were dubious and do not stand the light of day.

[Press Member]

I can just ask a follow up to the Pentagon contracts. If you have received billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and the President is directing to look into the Department of Defense, is that.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yes. Which we definitely need to do and are going to do at the President's.

[Press Member]

Request, does that present a conflict of interest for you?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

No, because you'd have to look at the individual contract and say, first of all, I'm not the one filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX or someone who will be putting for the contract. And I'd like to say if you see any Contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer. Let me know, because every one of them was.

[Press Member]

The President said the other day that you might look at Treasuries. Could you explain that a little bit? What kind of fraud? And that question goes to both of you. What kind of fraud are you expecting to see or do you see right now in U.S. treasuries?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I think you mean the Treasury Department as opposed to treasury bills, or you.

[Press Member]

Also referenced Treasuries on Air Force One the other night.

[Elon Musk]

Go ahead.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, as I mentioned earlier, really the first order of business is to make sure we're actually collecting. Sorry for this. I thought my son might enjoy this, but he's sticking his fingers in my ears and stuff. It's been hard to hear sometimes. Hey, stop that. So the stuff we're doing with Treasury Department is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't exist already. So, for example, like I mentioned, just making sure that when a payment goes out, it has to have a payment categorization code. It's like, what type of payment is this? You can't just leave the field blank. Currently many payments, the field is left blank and you have to describe what's the payment for some basic rationalization that also is left blank. So this is why the Pentagon. When's the last time the Pentagon passed an audit? I mean, a decade ago maybe, or ever really. And we want to just. In order to actually pass audits, you have to have financial information that allows you to trace the payments. So, you know, and once in a while the treasury has to pause payments if it thinks the payment is going to a fraudulent organization. Like if a company or organization is on a do not pay list, we should not pay it. I'm sure you would agree. Like, if it's quite hard to get on that payment do not pay list, it means that this is someone that is like dead people. Terrorists, known fraudsters, that kind of thing. We should not pay them, but currently we do, which is crazy. We should stop that.

[Elon Musk]

And by the way, hundreds, thousands of transactions like that, you know, we have a big team and for the sake of the country, I hope that the person that's in charge and the other people that report to me that are in charge are allowed to do the right thing, namely make sure everything's honest, legitimate and competent. But we're looking at, just when you look at usaid, that was. That's one. We're going to look at the military, we're going to look at education, they're much bigger areas. But the USAID is really corrupt. I'll tell you it's corrupt, it's incompetent and it's really corrupt. And I can't imagine a judge saying, well, it may be corrupt but you don't have the right, you got elected to look over the country and to, as we say, make America great again. But you don't have the right to go and look and see whether or not things are right that they're paying or that things are honest that they're paying. And nobody can even believe there's other people, law professors, they've been saying how can you take that person's right away you're supposed to be running the country. But we're not allowed to look at who they're paying it to and what they're paying. We have massive amounts of fraud that we caught. I think we probably caught way over a lot of billions of dollars already in what, two weeks. And it's going to go to numbers that you're not going to believe. And much, as I said, much is incompetence and much is dishonesty. We have to catch it. And the only way we're going to catch it is to look for it. And if a judge is going to say you're not allowed to look for it, that's pretty sad for our country. I don't understand how it could even work.

[Press Member]

On the buyout program, can you personally guarantee that?

[Elon Musk]

Which one?

[Press Member]

The buyout program, the offer to federal workers. Can you personally guarantee that the workers who opt in to resign now will.

[Elon Musk]

Be paid through some of them money? But they're getting a good deal, they're getting a big buyout. And what we're trying to do is reduce government. We have too many people, we have office space, it's occupied by 4%, nobody showing it to work because they were told not to. And then Biden gave them a five year pass. Some of them, 48,000 of them gave them a five year pass that for five years you don't have to show up to work. And let me tell you, this is largely much of this stuff is because of Biden. It's his fault. He allowed this country what he did on our border, what he did on our border is almost not as bad as what he did with all of these contracts that have come out. It's a very sad day when we look at it. I can't even believe it, but many contracts just extend and they just keep extending and there was nobody there to correct it. And that cannot be. I can't imagine that could be held up by the court, any court that would say that the president or his representatives, like secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State, whatever, doesn't have the right to go over their books and make sure everything's honest. I mean, how can you have a country? You can't have anything that way. You can't have a business that way. You can't have a country that way. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

[Roger Kimball]

Thank you. Press. Thank you.

[Press Member]

Press headed out.

[Elon Musk]

Mark Togel will be at the White House tonight at about 10 o'clock. If you want to come over, you can say hello to him.

[Press Member]

Did the US Give anything in return?

[Elon Musk]

Not much, no. They were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually. I hope that's the beginning of a relationship where we can end that war and millions of people can stop being killed. They've lost millions of people. They lost in terms of soldiers, probably 1.5 million soldiers in a short period of time. We got to stop that war. And I'm interested primarily from the standpoint of death. We're losing all those soldiers. And they're not American soldiers, they're Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. But you're probably talking about a million and a half. I think. I think we got to bring that one to an end. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

[Steve Bannon]

I want to show you, I want to tell you how extraordinary that is. And it's, and I love the way we've got opportunities now to show this. You never saw this during Biden's time, but we didn't really do that level of what's happening now when I was there. And I think it's fantastic. I will tell you, that's a lot like sitting there having brief President Trump, him throwing out ideas. You're seeing a very unique. I want you to think back, like the Cuban Missile crisis or President Kennedy or President Eisenhower or President Johnson about Vietnam or Richard Nixon and think about, I know it's in black and white, but you remember it. Some of you, towards my age, the boomers, right. Remember that even the younger people, the decisions you're seeing, actually President Trump thinking it through as it's happening. That was extraordinary. Kind of an explanation from Elon Musk about what's happening at Doge. And it's a little bit like they're going in and doing an audit of payments and receivables and there's questions about data and all that. But you see that what they're looking for waste, fraud and abuse. And they're saying there's going to be big numbers. So we'll have to see. My point on this is the 14th's a date and that's a date. You know, we already have breached the debt ceiling. We can't technically raise any more debt. We have extraordinary measures going on. Scott Besance is balancing that. That can be handled. The 14th, we can't. There's no more money authorized after the 14th. The CR ends then. We've got to converge these processes. I'm not sure anybody's like term of the processes. I'm going to break down the middle. I heard some numbers in there. I just got to say I'm not sure these numbers are realistic. We're talking about 5% growth. The CBO says 1.8% growth. The difference, I don't know if we've hit a 5% growth in 20 or 30 years. I'd have to check it out. But this has to be realistic and it has to get on with it. I think this is tremendous. I think what Doge is doing, the opportunity, because it's kind of shattered the Washington norm and that's why it's such an important thing to take advantage of, particularly President Trump right now as a disruptor. But I think what was so powerful about that for 30 minutes you see President Trump thinking this thing through and kind of talking out loud. So pretty extraordinary. Also so many other huge events. This situation in Gaza and President Trump's kind of throw down on that. Jay Semenico I want to make sure also we're into this trade war right now. The beginning stage with China, the supply chains. Rosemary Gibson's historic book that talked about how China controlled all the active pharmaceutical ingredients in generics. 100% first time it was exposed to the American people. Dr. Sean Rollins and the team turned it into a business. Jacemedical.com Go to the website, put in ban and you get a discount. Look at the Jace case, but look at all of it. Make sure you're comfortable where you stand with the medicines that you need in case anything happens. We're always about be prepared. Also Paradigm Press, Rickards war room.com get the best of Jim Rickards. I'm gonna try to get him back on here the rest of the week. Rickardswarroom.com you get access to strategic intelligence if you like capital markets and geopolitics. This one's for you. Jim Rickert's fantastic, of course, Birch Gold into the Dollar Empire. Modern monetary theory. The idea that broke the world. We're also going to be bundling these in a very special way here shortly. Birchgold.com you heard Philip Patrick on the first hour. Talk to the folks at Birchgold. Find out why gold is at an all time high and where it may go. Elon Musk said it. He was kind of preaching the gospel of the worm. They have to cut the 2 trillion dollar deficit. We cannot afford it. It's got to be cut at least in half. Minimum. We'll pick it back up tomorrow morning. Going to be some big votes. Get ready to go to work at 10:00am Eastern Standard Time. In the war room.

[Donald Trump]

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[Donald Trump]

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