WarRoom Battleground EP 721: Holding The Line Against Reckless Spending

Summary

War Room Battleground EP 721: Holding The Line Against Reckless Spending Released: March 11, 2025 | Host: Stephen K. Bannon | WarRoom.org

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Overview

In Episode 721 of Bannon's War Room, host Stephen K. Bannon delves deep into the pressing issue of government spending, scrutinizing the mechanisms behind political funding and the strategic battles shaping America’s fiscal future. The episode features insightful discussions with political strategist Natalie G. Winters and naval geostrategist Cleo Pascal, addressing topics from electoral funding tactics to national security threats posed by foreign naval activities.

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1. Unmasking Reckless Spending and Political Funding Tactics

Timestamp: 00:14 - 05:28

Stephen K. Bannon opens the episode with a passionate critique of the current political regime, highlighting the deceitful practices of mainstream media and political operatives. He emphasizes the urgent need to "save the country" from what he perceives as systemic corruption and reckless spending.

Natalie G. Winters joins the conversation, exposing the intricate web of political funding through ActBlue, a prominent Democratic fundraising platform. She introduces the concept of smurfing, wherein large sums of money are funneled through seemingly small donors to bypass legal limits and influence political outcomes.

Natalie G. Winters [02:03]:
"This is full-blown open borders agenda. There’s no whitewashing it, no euphemistic way to put it."

Winter’s analysis reveals how NGOs are strategically funded to support actions that align with the Democratic Party’s open borders policies, undermining border security and depleting resources of agencies like ICE. She underscores the coordinated efforts to legalize and support illegal immigration, thereby destabilizing national security.

Stephen K. Bannon [05:28]:
"Exactly, exactly, exactly. And this ties all into USA."

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2. The Tension Between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk

Timestamp: 05:28 - 18:21

Bannon shifts focus to the internal conflicts within the MAGA movement, particularly the strained relationship between him and Elon Musk. The discussion touches upon Musk's influence on federal government policies, which Bannon argues threatens the very foundation of MAGA’s populist agenda.

Unknown Analyst provides a critical perspective on Musk’s alliance with Trump, highlighting concerns over Musk’s decisions impacting federal agencies and voter sentiment.

Unknown Analyst [11:59]:
"Donald Trump's decision to side with Elon Musk and the new American oligarchs has created one of the biggest political fault lines in our politics right now."

The analysis points out that Musk’s policies, such as slashing federal budgets, could alienate MAGA’s core supporters by endangering essential services like the VA and Social Security, thereby posing a political threat to the movement.

Unknown Analyst [17:54]:
"If Bannon had prevailed, the MAGA movement would right now be diversifying along genders, along age, along all ethnic."

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3. Geostrategic Defense: Countering Chinese Naval Expansion

Timestamp: 36:18 - 46:42

In a pivotal segment, Bannon welcomes Cleo Pascal, a naval strategist, to discuss the emerging threat of Chinese naval activities in the Caribbean and Pacific regions. Pascal elucidates how China is leveraging commercial fronts and corrupt practices to establish a strong naval presence, posing significant threats to U.S. national security.

Cleo Pascal [36:18]:
"It's not just offshore. It is getting right into the mechanisms of state and using bribery and repression to distort the society and make it very difficult for others to operate there."

Pascal emphasizes the strategic importance of the Panama Canal in preventing Chinese naval forces from easily accessing and infiltrating the Caribbean and Central American regions. She argues that control over these maritime chokepoints is crucial for maintaining hemispheric defense.

Cleo Pascal [43:47]:
"Unless you can get to the first or second island chain, unless you have that denial and maneuverability within that heartland, the US Isn't safe."

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4. Political Struggles and the Risk of Government Shutdown

Timestamp: 47:06 - 54:03

The episode returns to domestic politics, with Bannon and the analysts discussing the precarious situation in Congress regarding the continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government. The CR aims to prevent a government shutdown but faces significant opposition from Democrats who view it as a facade allowing unchecked spending.

Unknown Analyst explains the challenges Republicans face in passing the CR without Democratic support, citing key figures like Rand Paul and Mark Warner who oppose the bill.

Unknown Analyst [48:00]:
"What I don't think right now, folks, as tough as the House looks like, I think the bigger problem could be in the Senate."

Bannon voices concerns that failure to secure adequate funds could lead to a government shutdown, exacerbating economic issues and undermining public trust in the administration.

Stephen K. Bannon [49:44]:
"This CR is not the best, but it may be the best of a bad lot."

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5. Strategic Recommendations and Future Outlook

Timestamp: 46:11 - 54:37

Cleo Pascal advocates for immediate action to counter Chinese influence by pushing for investigations into corrupt practices linked to Chinese investments in U.S. territories. She recommends deploying the FBI in strategic locations like Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands to dismantle these covert operations.

Cleo Pascal [46:11]:
"Sending the FBI into the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and into Guam and starting to do investigations into who is taking money from those Chinese casinos."

Bannon reinforces the need for a robust hemispheric defense strategy, emphasizing that reassessing and expanding strategic priorities beyond traditional Eurocentric perspectives is essential for national security.

Stephen K. Bannon [43:47]:
"This is what Trump is thinking through right now. This is what people that came before us thought about one of the Things I remember as a young naval officer is the sacrifice when you take your eye off the ball."

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Conclusion

Episode 721 of Bannon's War Room presents a comprehensive analysis of the intertwined issues of political funding, internal conflicts within the MAGA movement, and emerging national security threats. Through articulate discussions and expert insights, the episode underscores the urgency of addressing reckless government spending and fortifying America's strategic defenses against foreign adversaries.

Notable Quotes:

• Stephen K. Bannon [00:14]:
  "This is the primal scream of a dying regime."

• Natalie G. Winters [02:03]:
  "This is full-blown open borders agenda."

• Cleo Pascal [36:18]:
  "It's not just offshore. It is getting right into the mechanisms of state."

• Stephen K. Bannon [43:47]:
  "This is what Trump is thinking through right now."

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For more insightful discussions and updates, visit WarRoom.org.

Transcript

[Steve Bannon]

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people's not got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people, the people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen. And where do people like that go to share the big lie? MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War ROOM here's your host, Stephen k. Banner. Monday 10 March Overlord 2025 before you lose our battery pack at the White House because we've been up all day, want to go back to, want to go back to. Natalie. Natalie, I want to just hit rewind just for a minute. This is so important because what's supposed to be a simple kind of intermediary between people, small donors, want to give money and candidates and you said smurfing. I want to talk to you about that tomor we don't have time tonight because, you know, there are no more $20 givers to the Democratic Party there. You know, they go to a person's door, knock on it, said, hey, you make 35,000, you just gave 18, $18,000, right, to some radical Democrat. How shocking is this that they really are a conduit for kind of this phony money that comes from God knows where to really fund the invasion of our country through all these unpatriotic NGOs. Ma'am.

[Natalie G. Winters]

I think the most shocking thing about this story is really just the scope of it, like we were getting to in the previous show, right? This isn't just some one off organization. This isn't just some gotcha ngo. This is from start to finish, right? From even when the fact if you know it would be illegal alien is in their, you know, hometown home country, even in terms of plot, plotting and planning their trek to the United States, these NGOs are involved in that vertical. Then when they actually interact, when they actually attempt to breach the southern border, you have groups that are giving out, doling out aid in the form of water and services. Then once they're actually interacting or obtained or caught by border patrol, which by the way, all the activists and PACs and candidates that ActBlue is, you know, concurrently funding are also working to deplete that agency, those officers of their funding. But we can, you know, set that aside for a second. Then, like I was saying, Catholic Charities, all these notorious, notorious groups that are flying these legal aliens into the interior of this country, oftentimes at taxpayer expense, while some of their budget is being, you know, buttressed, right, by funds coming from ActBlue, which pretends to be, you know, sort of vaguely democratic, but this is full blown open borders agenda. I mean, there's no whitewashing it, there's no euphemistic way to put it. Then once these illegal aliens get to their final destination, whatever town, maybe your town, that they're flown into, you, all these legal firms and legal resources that are available to these individuals for free, whether it's trying to avoid deportation or getting their green card, their citizenship application, some of these groups explicitly stating that they work with criminals that need FBI background checks. But then even on the other side of it, right, they're working right now, a lot of these groups are actively suing President Trump in court over his efforts to curtail the Biden nightmare that was that invasion. They're operating ICE Emergency response hotlines, they're operating know your rights campaigns, training illegal aliens, coaching them how to lie if they come face to face with an ICE officer, with an ICE agent, with Tom Homan himself, right? Then on the other side of it, you have these people organizing massive demonstrations, massive campaigns, coaching Americans how to advocate and lobby their congressmen to, quote, end deportation and end detention. And if you get into the ideologies that undergird so many of these groups, and this is, like I said, not one off, these are really, really radical groups who sort of all have the same typography and same euphemisms that they use and same stated agendas. It's very weird. It's all sort of cut from the same cloth because it's all the same donors, right? It's all the coordinated effort, but they advocate for the most radical things, whether it's liberation, abolition, they want detention to end entirely. This is not me, you know, drawing connecting dots. That is stated mission statement for many, many of these groups. And like I said, you can go to my, my Twitter, my ex and you can see the thread. But there are dozens, dozens of groups that are working that are partnered with ActBlue, taking their funds. So the same people who are, you know, the elusive MSNBC viewer, that doesn't exist. But Steve, I think you also hit the nail on the head and it's something I'll dig into tonight. But Just like these people have been smurfing. Right. The contributions to actual Democratic candidates. I think the question becomes if they've been doing similar smurfed contributions to a lot of these border NGOs as well.

[Steve Bannon]

Exactly, exactly, exactly. And this ties all into usa.

[Natalie G. Winters]

I am not suicidal and I'll put it at that. Yeah.

[Steve Bannon]

Natalie, how do people. Where do people. Now you've got one of the longest. You've got one of the longest threads you've ever put up. I understand Twitter's been in and out today. They say they're getting. They're getting attacked by some foreign entities or some individuals, some non state actors, maybe state actors. So that's a little sketchy. But this is the longest thread you said you've ever put up.

[Natalie G. Winters]

Yeah, we've already hit, I think, like 13 or 14 million views. So we've prevailed over the DDoS attacks. But I encourage everyone to go read it. I just think it's important to drill down as much as we hear terms like, you know, open borders thrown around or the invasion, when you actually put not just NGOs to the sort of architect, the architecture of all this. And more importantly, Steve, these people have names, they have faces, they have addresses, they have phone numbers. Not advocating for anything wild, but I'm just saying the people who have coordinated this need to be held responsible. And you can't get accountability if you don't call people out. So I think this is an important thread for a host of reasons, but first and foremost because it helps us understand who's been coordinating this invasion.

[Steve Bannon]

Natalie will be back with us from the White House tomorrow. One more time, Natalie, where do people go on your social media to get all this?

[Natalie G. Winters]

Natalie G. Winters on X Instagram. All the places. Get her. Thank you for having me. I look forward to seeing all tomorrow.

[Steve Bannon]

Fantastic. See you tomorrow. Important and Grace and modus. Go ahead and push this. Very, very important and quite frankly, disgusting, because this is about the destruction of your country. It was, it was. This is. You know, Bensman and these folks kept saying, hey, this is not chaos. This is very well organized. And now you're seeing one of the conduits for money, for cash money. Now it's going to get tomorrow. Exactly where did that money come from? Because I don't believe it's small donors. She's going to walk you through what smurfing is, which became prevalent at ActBlue. And this shows you they were acting against the interests of the working class in this country, the middle class. And people didn't give money for this. This came from other sources. So the president. There's another very disturbing tweet out right now, basically saying that the president is having to get involved, that the Senate. The big hang up now is the Senate. The Senate. And they're actually saying Republican senators. We know that Rand Paul's already said that he's not voting for the CR tomorrow. I haven't heard inklings of other people. I know there's a lot of hate and discontent about this, but President Trump right now is, I believe. And I thought the whipping. He was whipping votes and talking to people directly on the House side, because there's a lot of people very, very, very upset about this. About. They're upset about two things. The principle is they're upset about the process that President Trump was promised things. And the American people and the MAGA movement, the Republican Party, were promised a process that would get back on track. And we had the process that worked. That was single subject appropriation. Because when you have a single subject appropriation bill, guess what? You have time to get down in the State Department or the affiliated group of a thing called usaid, and you get to sit there and go, well, why in the hell? Why are we financing all this? Which is really the destruction of our country? We'll go back and I'll ask Eli Crane and his staff. We'll get a couple of gates and Eli Crane's in the middle of the night, 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning, hammering at the subcommittee level and being outvoted all the time. This has been an issue from day one. And people said, hey, we're gonna get this back on track. We're gonna do this. And what happened? We're now in a jam where we gotta say, hey, we'll get them next time. Well, people are tired of, we're gonna get them next time. Now, we understand particularly for the president to implement his agenda. What we don't want is a government shutdown. They're dying to do it. And I keep saying that I think the hang up was gonna be on the Democratic side of the Senate. And Tim Kaine, who's supposed to be a moderate. Tim Kaine just came out and I think said, under no circumstances will he be voting for this. So the Senate's gonna be a real jam and we might have to do some work tomorrow. We're gonna get more information. As things come in, I know people are not happy. I don't expect you to be happy on this one because it's not much to be Happy about this is one we may have to push down the field just to make sure that we're not strung up in my fear about. Look, we don't mind government shutdowns. We think they're positive in this regard. It's President Trump running the deal. And if you go in, if you shut the government down, I haven't heard a plausible way how you're going to unshut it. How are you going to open it back up? And they would love to have President Trump strung out. And so we have to take that. Just practical politics. I know it doesn't sit well, and it doesn't sit well with me. Particularly what sticks in my crawls is that Doge, particularly the work Doge has done. And it hasn't been trillions of dollars, but it's been something and it's something significant. And they do have some more cuts in there. I think they got 10 billion of kind of offsets or some social programs in order to raise some things. And it's not a lot of money. You know, you get so jaundice here or so, you know, just hardened by the fact that it's 10 billion here, 100 billion there, 50 billion there, is some increase in the defense budget. I think there's a little bit about deportations. And they had to have some cuts. They found some cuts on the social side, I think is $10 billion. Well, I said, why don't you include the Doge cuts? And I've been told consistently, because the Democrats will not vote for it in the Senate, if you do that, you're going to force a government shutdown. So you have to. You have to kind of take one for the team. Now, that being said, I said from the beginning, I think you're going to have a huge problem in the Senate anyway, because I don't see these Democrats, they like keeping the government open when it's Democrats with the taps on spending the money. When you got, like, someone like President Trump and he's got Doge all over the place, they're going to look to shut it down. And I just think the Senate Democrats are going to be impossible to deal with. We'll have to see. We'll just have to see. I know President Trump is pretty engaged. I'm getting reports, I'm seeing tweets that he's actually whipping, and that means making phone calls to people in the House. I assume he's going to be on the Senate in a moment. Let's go ahead and play. Okay, we got a couple things afreed Zakar, but I want to play msnbc, our favorite Went at It all in this afternoon. Let's go ahead and play that and I'll make some commentary and observations at the end.

[Unknown Analyst]

Donald Trump's decision to side with Elon Musk and the new American oligarchs has created one of the biggest political fault lines in our politics right now, one that puts Donald Trump on the other side of two of the biggest and most animated grassroots political movements of the last decade, stuff that resonates with a large swath of the American public, including Democrats. It also reveals the tensions between what Donald Trump has promised to do for the millions of people who voted for him and what he is actually doing with Elon Musk as his wingman. Elon Musk and Donald Trump's decision to stop, slash and burn large chunks of the federal government threatens to completely wreck agencies that serve the needs, financial and otherwise, of millions of Trump's own voters, millions of Americans who depend on those agencies, everything from the VA to Social Security. And it's all under threat. It's a political threat, though, now as well to the MAGA movement. And at least one MAGA architect is saying so. Steve Bannon, New York Times, reports this quote. I don't want to say it's an anchor or a lodestone, bannon said on Friday of Musk on his show War Room, which is watched closely by a number of Trump allies as well as by the president himself. Quote, it's not that yet, but it's trending that is starting to affect everybody. That is just weeks after Steve Bannon called Elon Musk a, quote, truly evil person, end quote, and a, quote, parasitic illegal immigrant, end quote. That description is based on reporting denied by Musk that he overstayed his student visa while working on his first company. Now, for his part, Elon Musk called Steve Bannon a quote, great talker but not a great doer, accusing him of getting nothing done. Brand new reporting from the New York Times that the war of words between these two men has not gone unnoticed by Donald Trump. From that new report, quote, Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement. In mid February, the president told Mr. Bannon that he wanted him to lay off the attacks on Musk and for the two men to sit down privately. According to two people, that meeting has not happened yet and it is not clear when or if it will. Steve Bannon is not alone in fearing that Trump and Musk's pro American oligarch agenda is alienating wide swaths of voters. New York Times reports this. The billionaire's signature slash and burn style and showy spending cuts have reverberated far beyond the the Capitol, making even lawmakers from deep red states begin to sweat. That's because Elon Musk is deeply unpopular. One poll found that 34% of Americans approve of Elon Musk's role in the federal government. And there's little room for that to improve. Only 3% of Americans say they have not heard of Elon Musk. It is a golden, nearly unprecedented opportunity for the Democratic Party. They are eager to find ways to publicly oppose Donald Trump. Senator Chris Murphy telling the New York Times this quote, it's an easy story. Elon Musk and the billionaires have taken over the government to steal from the American people, to enrich themselves. That's the message. It is true, it is persuasive. And if we repeat it over and over again, they won't win. And I think that what, what Steve Bannon awoke was, and this is a longer conversation, but I spend copious hours thinking about it. The Republican base was up for the taking because the Bush years obviously focused on two wars that grew very unpopular and traditional free trade. Those messages and those ideas were never animated or updated in the campaigns of John McCain or Mitt Romney. And so the Republican base was roiling the discontent, dissatisfaction and disaffection from its leaders. Steve Bannon is the architect or the organizer of all that discontent with traditional elite Republicans. Trump sort of was the plug that just plugged into the wall. But the person who sort of pointed to all those voters out there is Bannon. And I'm not trying to aggrandize. I find his politics and his associations and his commingling with white nationalism and white supremacy odious. But in terms of powering the voters that are animated by Trump, it has nothing to do with an American oligarchy. Nothing. It may be authoritarian, curious, but it is still allergic to an oligarchy, which is what Trump and Musk have ushered in.

Yeah, you know, I didn't have it on my bingo card that I had to choose between Steve Bannon and Elon Musk today. But, but you point out it, but you do point out that this fundamental tension here that Steve Bannon articulated what became the populist appeal of Donald Trump. And frankly, he's speaking out, saying, look what Elon Musk is doing here. This is not what we were talking about. We were talking about a working class populist revolution. Elon Musk has many skills, but he is politically tone deaf. And it is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out, because Donald Trump obviously feels very, very beholden right now to Elon Musk and the resources that he can bring to the administration and maybe to the midterm elections. But the symbolism could not be worse from the point of Steve Bannon's point of view, where he said, look, we're going to be a working class party, we're going to be a populist party, we're going to be against the elite. Here you have Elon Musk, who has many, many skills, but political sensitivity is not among them.

Well, and I think it goes even further for the Democrats. I think if Bannon had prevailed, the MAGA movement would right now be diversifying along genders, along age, along all ethnic. I mean, and instead it has completely hit a wall where the MAGA base is having to grapple with the fact that they elected a king whose jester is named Elon Musk.

[Steve Bannon]

That is not true. We are growing and expanding every day exactly along the lines she said there at the end. President Trump is a populist nationalist to his core. He's anti globalist. He has been from the very beginning. And this is one of the reasons this movement has gotten such velocity. To have the come from behind victory in 16 against the neoliberal, neocon Clintons and essentially destroy them, to take them really out of politics after that, they've been crippled as a political mafia. And then they have the 2020 election stolen with 74 million votes, almost 11 million votes more than we got in 2016, which is just absolutely epic to have that election stolen. And then the years that President Trump was in the wilderness, reading, studying, meeting people, thinking for what he's come back with in this plan to really restore America to a form of greatness is nothing short of breathtaking. What he's doing in the scale he's doing it at is absolutely breathtaking. And you don't need Elon Musk to be politically, you know, astute. His role and function here is for this Doge is to find waste, fraud and abuse in a six and a half trillion dollar budget that everybody admits is out of control. Now, what we're left with today is the fact that the CR that we have to pass on a temporary basis, right, to get us to the end of the fiscal year, unfortunately doesn't have the cuts that Doge has found. And we have financed those until such time as either with a impoundment coming from the White House on their theory of this unitary executive and. Or the Senate or Congress comes back and rescinds what they passed. And you can do that. Both of these are quite complicated. The empowerment's more straightforward. But given what the Supreme Court has basically ruled with President Trump on foreign aid. There's $2 billion President Trump wants to cut off. And now we're hung up in the courts. And the Supreme Court, at least right now, along the lines that they see have not put it on the emergency docket. This gets down to the whole judicial trying to. Trying to do judicial insurrection by these radical judges. Mike Davis has told you about and told you was coming against President Trump's agenda. To me, it's quite simple, is that Doge has to continue on and actually has to ramp up. I have said was the lone voice with all the fanboys of Elon Musk was the lone voice that said he's got to cross the Potomac and get to the Pentagon. The Pentagon is the Mack Daddy of waste, fraud and abuse. The people over there would admit it. Hell, I think there's two trade. I think they haven't passed an audit, I don't know, 30 or 40 years. But they actually say there's $2 trillion of assets, $2 trillion of assets they can't account for. They're the first to admit it. They're unauditable. This is where dosh should be the best. Plus it gets to the reality check of what we have to do. You want to not have bad financial news or economic news like we had 10 days ago about the fourth quarter's inflation going from 2.2% to 4.2% upon further review. You want to have. You want to actually stop inflation from getting embedded into the system of what is happening with this massive federal spending that now at higher interest rates, has to be refinanced at higher, higher and higher cost. That now the cost itself is the actual interest we pay without paying a penny to the face amount of the debt without paying a penny to. That is Now, I think 1.2 or $1.3 trillion. That's the gross payment. I know we netted out from interest that come in. But you really can't look at it that way. You have to look at it as a financing charge, not net of what you're taking in. That's another. That should be another revenue stream you have to get eventually to do something that's quite painful. It's going to be very hard because the nation is addicted, the political class is addicted. And the countries kind of become addicted. But part of this is the economic distress of what's happened with our economic model. And that gets back to what President Trump is trying to use the tariffs for. President Trump is not. The tariffs is just not simply to stop fentanyl. It's a huge part, and that's why it's an emergency. But the tariffs are also rethinking, rethinking what the economic model is and what he's saying, hey, we're a premium market. For years, we've been ripped off from everybody. The Canadians, the Canadians rip us off big time. India rips us off big time. EU rips us off big time. Our allies, Korea and Japan, this is the problem. Everybody we're propping up, underweighting their national security. At the same time on commerce and trade is sticking it to us. President Trump saying, hey, guess what? We're going to sort that out. It's going to be reciprocity. We're going to level that playing field. In addition, it's a premium market. If you want to get into the United States, you're going to have to pay a premium. Just like for a sporting event or for a concert, you're going to have to pay a premium. This is the payoff for Burke's little platoons. You provide the civic society that's created this. There should be a payment to it. And lo and behold, he offers them a deal and says, hey, by the way, if you reassure your manufacturing that we had here when we were manufacturing superpower from World War II all the way to the early 1970s and 80s when we started to gut ourselves, you know, once an eagle stricken by a, an arrow said, by my own hand am I stricken? That's what happened here. We gutted ourselves, our elites gutted us, and people stood by and the Republican Party kind of, I don't know, looked the other way. That's what's controlled opposition. What President Trump is doing is reshoring jobs. Not a couple, three here. Hundreds of billions of dollars. It's almost, I think, seven or $800 billion in 45 days. And this is not from a bunch of Schmendrick companies you never heard of. This is from Apple. This is from Taiwan. Semiconductor manufacturing. This is from Honda. This is the premier. This is platinum level companies putting in big dollars to bring major facilities back here. Number one, they understand that energy costs and supply chain and logistics and all that, it makes sense. You're going to pay higher labor costs. And guess what? They're going to try to be Gutting labor with artificial intelligence. Wait for that. That's another problem that's got to be dealt with. But in fact, I think Apple, with the 500 billion, they're talking about 20, 20,000 jobs. That's not a ton of jobs for $500 billion. But that's a problem we can deal with. Number one, is to get the manufacturing back here. And that's why. And there's going to be some turmoil. I've said this over and over again. All of this is just not going to be smooth because you're kind of redoing many things at the same time. Number one, geostrategically, what is he trying to do? He's trying to end the shooting part of the Third World War, which will already end. This is far bloodier. Far bloodier. Far, far. At any scale, you look so much worse than the beginning of World War II. It just is in scale, in viciousness, in the annihilation factor. Far, far, far worse. He's trying to handle that at the same time, reposition us for hemispheric defense and deal with this financial mess that he was handed. Oh, and at the same time deconstruct the administrative state. No president in the history of the nation, including Roosevelt, with World War II and the Depression, has had to handle what President Trump has had to handle. And I'll go through chapter and verse and we're here to support that. But he is not an oligarch and does not support oligarchs. He's trying to build out a broadening coalition, a 1930 type coalition, like FDR did when he had tycoons on Wall street and Harvard professors. He had hardcore crackers down in Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama. When I was a boy, you know, only thing I remember, we were Democrats, we were Southern Democrats and everybody was the Southern Democrats. We didn't even know Republicans existed. They were like these good government types wandering around Boston and towns like that. President Trump, it's Herculean. It's never been done before in American history. It's never been done before in the history of anywhere. And it's gonna be a fight. We understand it's gonna be a fight, but he is the leader. Like I said, 100 years from now, they're going to remember Trump and Maga. All the rest of us will be forgotten by history. How do I know that? I study history and I can tell you, all the people that worked on these things, they're forgotten. It's the MAGA movement, the most important political movement in the history of this nation in Donald John Trump, our 45th and our 47th president. Short break. Back in a moment. 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If we can put the Mack Daddy up for a second about the Caribbean, something we've had people on here for years. The Committee on the Present Danger of China, our naval experts, Captain Fennell, of course, Frank Gaffney and the team. Look at that right there. Is going to turn the Caribbean into a lake. Okay, I want to bring in Cleo Pascal right now. Cleo Pascal joins us. Cleo, you're a naval expert. Naval strategist, geostrategist. You talk a lot about Pacific, but I want to take you to the Caribbean and then back through the Panama Canal. What is our risk? This is why President Trump, on his idea of hemispheric defense, is maniacally focused on the Panama Canal. Was Secretary of State Rubio's. Secretary of State Rubio didn't go to London, didn't go to Berlin, didn't go to Paris or Rome or Geneva or to Moscow or Beijing. He went to Panama to check out that canal. And we know that Larry Fink and his team at Blackrock ended up buying it from Hutchinson. At least the operation of the canal itself. Now, hey, is that great? It's not the greatest, but at least it's marginally better than having the Chinese Communist Party controlled through Hutchinson. Whampoa, your thoughts, ma'am, on the Chinese and the strategic thinking that took to turn the Caribbean into a Chinese. I mean, this is so far more advanced than what the Russians try to do in Cuba in the Cuban missile crisis. It's almost shocking because it's much more thorough and fundamental. And then you understand the value of the Panama Canal, particularly to cut off the Chinese navy from the three island chains, you know, from coming in and taking away the Pacific as the great natural barrier. Cleopassel, the floor is yours.

[Cleo Pascal]

Thank you. Yeah, so one of the things that you see, the way that they get in is through this commercial front, right? So they say, we're here for economic development. A lot of these places really do need economic development, but it always has this strategic element to it. So we're going to help you build a port, but the port just happens to have specs that are very helpful for PLA Navy operations, for example. But the third part, which is also always there is criminal activity. So they're smuggling things in through the port. They're buying off the local customs guys. They might think that they're just doing it for drugs, even though the drugs are incredibly socially destructive on their own. But we also don't know what else they're smuggling in. And a lot of this comes in through, under the rubric of the Belt and Road Initiative, the bri, which to me stands for the Bribery and Repression Initiative, because what they're actually exporting is a system of operations. So this bribery and this repression infects the systems, infects the target countries, and then basically gives the CCP over a length of time, maneuvers of control and leverage. You see it very clearly in places like Solomons, where suddenly Coast Guard can't land, Vanuatu Coast Guard couldn't land. So all these things start to happen. They're just below the radar. I don't like the term gray zone. I prefer the Philippines term of icad, illegal, coercive, aggressive and deceptive to describe what's going on. But basically, it's not just offshore. It is getting right into the mechanisms of state and using bribery and repression to distort the society and make it very difficult for others to operate there and for local, honest people to be able to fight for their own sovereignty.

[Steve Bannon]

How does this tie with their plan in the Pacific? You know, you got the three island chains, which are a natural barrier for the United States, and then you have the. The vast desert ocean of the Pacific. Of course, you correctly say, steve, I think you really mean the American heartland. We'll talk about that another time because that's a big surprise. We got some people. But President Trump sees this. He sees this as a hemisphere of defense. Why is the concern of the Caribbean tied back through the Panama Canal to what they've done in Polynesia? What they're trying to do in the third island chain, ma'am?

[Cleo Pascal]

So we're gonna go to heartland now whether you like it or not, because they can't get to the Caribbean unless they control or can pass through the Pacific. Right? They don't transport, they don't magically appear in the Caribbean. That's why the Panama Canal is so important. But also that's why the islands are so important. And there has been this big hole in American strategic thinking around the center of the Pacific. And this is what led up to World War II, right? The US had the Philippines and it had Guam, so it thought it could contain Japan off the Asian coast. And I have a map if you want, but basically, Japan, through its control of the Japanese mandate, had control of what's now the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, Palau fed States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands. So it controlled the heartland, the strategic heartland, the pivot, the geographical pivot of history in the center of the Pacific. We've been sort of brainwashed to a European strategic map. That Eurasian landmass was a Ukraine. It was a Mackinder invention. He was European. The world island was Eurasia, Europe and Africa. America was sort of on the periphery, but for the concerns of North America, our brain has been distorted by these Eurocentric maps. If you put the Pacific at the center of the map, then you can see that unless the US has control over or has strategic denial over the Central Pacific, the US Isn't safe. And it's not just the periphery. It's not just the Philippines or The treaty allies, the first or second island chain, unless you can get to the first or second island chain, unless you have that denial and maneuverability within that heartland. And that includes up to the Aleutians. I mean Billy Mitchell was talking about this in the 30s. If you have control over Alaska, then you can control a lot of that zone as well. So it's the Aleutians and then down through that Central Pacific, that is what is at play. And everything that we're seeing in the Caribbean, we're seeing the Chinese do in those islands, including in U.S. territories. I testified before Congress last week and the representative from Commonwealth and Northern Marianas who was on the Commonwealth Ports Authority Board of Tinian. Tinian is where the US is rehabilitating those airfields, those Northfield airfields. She approved the setting up of a Chinese linked casino on that dual use port. And her questions at that hearing were all about how to increase Chinese tourism. Chinese can arrive in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas now without a visa and from there they're legally going to Guam and elsewhere. And her framing was unless this continues and unless we get direct flights from mainland China into the Commonwealth and Northern Marianas, then their entire economy is going to collapse. That's the only solution. Chinese tourists are the only solution. And those Chinese tourists have been illegally buying US driver's licenses, illegally selling drugs, distributing drugs found on the bases. So we're starting to see the same sort of infiltration that you're seeing in the Caribbean seeing in American territory in the heartland, with the goal of, I think reestablishing the sort of control that the Japanese had in the center of the Pacific, which puts them in a position to strike Hawaii. And we had that incident where Keating, Admiral Keating at the time was testifying and said, one of the Chinese guys said, you know, you take Hawaii east and we'll take Hawaii west. I think that's what they actually want to do.

[Steve Bannon]

You know who also knew this was Seward, which was Lincoln's Secretary of State about Alaska. The post revolutionary generation and Founders generation that really from the Mexican War to the Spanish American War, thought through strategically and geostrategically what this hemisphere could be when you broaden out the definition of it, because we've thought too much in tiny that California is the coast. It may be the coast of the, of the continental part, but it's certainly not the coast. When you think of geostrategically defense. And this is what Trump is thinking through right now. This is what people that came before us thought about one of the Things I remember as a young naval officer is the sacrifice when you take your eye off the ball. Would you read the run up to the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese high command, they were so focused on this from the early, from the early 19, you know, 1910, 1915, before the First World War, about the Pacific and about what they would need to do to basically control the mainland of China. They would have to back off. They knew they would have to back off the United States. How are you going to back off the United States? You've got to take those island chains and make it prohibitively, strategically too hard for the United States to come back. And of all the sacrifice that took place, what, 80 years ago to do this, it was done for a reason. There was a purpose, a strategic purpose for that. Cleo.

[Cleo Pascal]

Yeah, there was. And, you know, and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, that's the Battle of Saipan. I mean, one of the most just horrific battles in Tinian. Obviously, that was Japanese territory for 30 years. And there are 100,000Americans died in the Pacific theater after having made the mistake of ceding that heartland, that strategic heartland to Japan. It has been and continues to be a location where if somebody else controls it and has that sort of malign intent, the US Is not safe. And that includes trade. I mean, the early Americans knew there was a great expedition. America mounted an expedition through the Pacific from 1938 to the, I think, 1942, sorry, 1838. And the understanding was the trade was going to be dependent on that as well. So it is been a part of America's strategic profile for almost two centuries. But we've been sort of brainwashed by this European analysis to not pay attention to it.

[Steve Bannon]

This is one of my biggest problems with the Atlanticists. This is they kind of narrowed it into Northwest Europe. It's so much broader than that. Before I go, Trump sees this right away. That's why the Panama Canal has been the first thing he talked about in his second term. How tough is it going to be for us to roll out the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Navy since they've kind of welded themselves into the Caribbean, Ma'am.

[Cleo Pascal]

Well, the Caribbean and the Pacific have the same issue. But I would start with sending the FBI into the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands and into Guam and starting to do investigations into who is taking money from those Chinese casinos and going after that. I mentioned that braided thing, right? You've got the commercial, the strategic and the corrupt. If you go after the corruption, if you start really Making it hurt. If people take the Chinese money, then you can start to balance out the unrestricted warfare battlefield. So that's a very easy first step. It's something that the US should be doing anyway. And just for that hemispheric defense, it's Panama. You can say Greenland to Panama to Guam to Alaska. That's your diamond. But just Panama to Greenland isn't gonna do it. You need the Guam and you need the Alaska.

[Steve Bannon]

Yeah. The other side, Claire, we're gonna spend a lot more time on this. We got a couple of surprises we're gonna talk to people in a couple of weeks about. Where do people go in the interim, ma'am, to get all your testimony in front of Congress and also all your writings.

[Cleo Pascal]

I'm on X, just my name, Cleopascal. Leopascal. And you can. There you go. And you can see me getting trolled by a lot of people who think that Chinese tourism is the solution for the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana. So enjoy the fun.

[Steve Bannon]

Cleo, you're the best. A hammer. Thank you, ma'am. Show so great because I get to sit here and get so many fascinating people that are so dedicated to this country and to freedom and to liberty. There's a big old firefight happening on Capitol Hill right now, folks, and tomorrow we're going to get into it. But I want to play. I think we got Jake Sherman over at msnbc. Jake Sherman from Punchbowl. Let's get an update.

[Unknown Analyst]

Republican leaders are moving ahead today to try to avoid a government shutdown on Friday, taking their funding bill to the Rules Committee to set up a floor vote tomorrow. As Punchbowl puts it, Congress is walking up to the line of another political crisis. Once again, the stopgap spending bill would keep agencies funded through the end of September, setting up a confrontation with Democrats who say the plan amounts to nothing more than a blank check for for Elon Musk, the focus of Democrats anti administration ire. President Trump trying to keep his party in line writing on truth social. All Republicans should vote yes and no dissent. Joining us now, Jake Sherman, co founder of Punchbowl News and an MSNBC political contributor. Former Congressman Charlie Dent is back with us. So, Jake, bottom line, can Republicans get this done by going it alone?

They sure think so, but I've heard that many times before. So here, here's the basic. And Mr. Dent will know this as well. But when there's a continuing resolution, one of these stopgap funding bills this one is about is until September, the end of September. It basically includes it carries over a bunch of the former spending priorities of the former administration or the last fiscal year in this case, that is the former administration. What Democrats say is that by not writing new spending bills, they're ceding authority to the administration to spend money how they want. So there's two, there's two kind of situations here. If Republicans could pass this thing alone in the House, then they could do whatever they want and they could, they could put whatever they want in the bill and hope that the Senate, Democrats, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate pick it up. If they can't and they need Democratic votes, then they need to do something that Democrats want. They need to give something to Democrats. So if I had, listen, I've had a lot of conversations with both leaderships, the Democratic and the Republican leadership this morning. I do think that they, that the Republicans believe they could get it through with just their own lawmakers. There's only one hard no right now, Tom Massie, who said he would have had, he would have to have a lobotomy today in order to vote for this bill. And I don't, as I noted, I don't think lobotomies are still commonly practiced. So it sounds like Mr. Massey will be a no.

Another quote from Tom Massie if it passes this week. The CR obligates Trump from now until September to spend the same amounts of money on generally the same things Biden spent money on in his last 15 months in office. Is that the kind of fact that could blow things up for the speaker?

[Steve Bannon]

Well, that's a true statement from Tom Mask. And yes, he is a hard no. By the way, having served on the Appropriations Committee, we used to have a word for a year long continuing resolution failure. That means Congress is not doing its job. I mean, a year long continuing resolution in many respects does, does kneecap the administration. We're going to play more of this tomorrow. Here's the bottom line. Burchett's maybe a soft nose, a lot of soft nos that I think will be flipped if the president talks to him. I don't think right now, folks, as tough as the House looks like, I think the bigger problem could be in the Senate. You just had Warner just come out. Mark Warner just came out, said he's going to be a no in the and you got a bunch of moderate, what they consider moderate Democrats on the Senate already saying they're no. I think we got to get seven, maybe eight because Rand Paul's a no. This is going to be a fiasco. We're going to have more of this. We'll start the show tomorrow to go through all this because I think they're trying to hang up President Trump. This CR is not the best, but it may be the best of a bad lot. I do think and I strongly say that we have to have accountability how we got in this jam and the speaker is just not making it happen. It's now relied on President Trump. President Trump himself is whipping voice votes with everything he's got going on a new announcement. He's going to address some CEOs tomorrow. But economics Scott Besson is going to be with the Business Roundtable on Wednesday. I think they're now going to get much more aggressive in messaging the the economy and the economics of my Patriot Supply has a $247 special for the four week, right? I think it's 100 bucks or 180 bucks, even more than that. So they get a big special that and you get four of the 72 hour packages. This is one of the best deals I've ever seen and my patron Supply are the best in the business. So go to my patronsupply.com and do it today. You get the four week for 247 bucks plus they throw in four free 72 hour kits. Go check it out. Talk to one of their advisors, one of their consultants, my patron supply.com check it out today. The right stuff leaves us tomorrow at 10am this week, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna chop some wood. It's gonna be a tough one. But you know what? I think you got the right stuff. Something tells me I've seen the history of your movement. I've seen the history of your work. I know about your agency. See you tomorrow morning 10am you will be back in the war room. The April 15th tax deadline is coming and it's coming fast. Do you have unfiled tax returns? Can't pay the irs. The IRS is more than aggressive and the more aggressive than ever. And the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Wage garnishments, bank levies, even property seizures are all on the table. You need to get ahead of this. You need to get ahead of it today. But going up against the IRS alone is a big time mistake. Take my advice. Call the experts at Tax Network usa. They know the system. They have an edge. A preferred direct line to the irs. They know which agents to deal with and which ones to avoid. Whether you owe $10,000 or $10,000,000. Their genius strategies are designed to quickly settle your tax problems in your favor. Tax Network USA's attorneys and negotiators have already resolved over $1 billion in tax debt. Let me repeat that. They've already resolved over $1 billion in tax debt. Tax Network USA can help you too, but you need to move. You need to move fast because April 15th is already here. Remember, if you get that letter, don't put it in the drawer. It just metastasizes. Talk with one of our strategists today. It's totally free. Stop looking over your shoulder. Stop the anxiety, stop the worry. Put it all behind you. You call Tax Network USA at 1-800-958-1000. That's 800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com Bannon that's Tax Network USA. Go to tnusa.com Bannon Curdhuman really trying.

[Unknown Analyst]

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