WarRoom Battleground EP 754: MAGA’s Clash With The Establishment, America Thru The Decades

Summary

WarRoom Battleground EP 754: MAGA’s Clash With The Establishment, America Thru The Decades
WarRoom.org | Released April 24, 2025

In Episode 754 of Bannon's War Room, host Stephen K. Bannon delves deep into the ongoing conflict between the MAGA movement and the entrenched establishment in American politics. Joined by notable guests Sean Davis from The Federalist and Chris Caldwell, the discussion spans the influence of the administrative state, the judiciary's role, Republican strategies, and the looming fiscal crisis facing the nation.

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I. The Narrative War: MAGA vs. The Establishment

The episode opens with Stephen K. Bannon addressing the media's portrayal of MAGA supporters. Bannon vehemently criticizes mainstream networks, asserting that they have been deceptive towards the American people.

Notable Quote:
“All these networks lying about the people, the people have had a belly full of it.”
— Stephen K. Bannon [00:13]

Bannon frames the current political climate as a struggle where the dying establishment is resorting to extreme measures to maintain control, emphasizing the MAGA movement's resilience against these tactics.

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II. Administrative State and Judicial Challenges

Sean Davis and Chris Caldwell discuss the formidable challenges posed by the administrative state and the judiciary to President Trump's agenda. Highlighting recent judicial actions, they underscore the systemic efforts to impede Trump's policies.

Notable Quote:
“75% of those that voted for Harris, which is like 90% of them have said that if it was a legal executive order or presidential memorandum legal, that they would not, if they thought the policy was bad, they would not implement it.”
— Unnamed Guest [02:51]

This statistic reveals the depth of opposition within the federal workforce against top-tier Democratic leadership, suggesting significant hurdles for Trump's administration in enacting its agenda.

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III. Republican Strategy and the Role of Trump

The conversation shifts to the unique position Trump holds within the Republican Party. Davis and Caldwell explore how Trump's charismatic leadership mobilizes voters beyond the traditional Republican base, creating a formidable advantage.

Notable Quote:
“Trump is such a unique figure. He's able to get people to come vote who wouldn't have ever wanted anything to do with the Republican Party.”
— Unnamed Guest [06:10]

However, they also acknowledge the party's struggle to replicate Trump's influence with other figures. Caldwell points out the difficulty in maintaining voter enthusiasm without Trump's direct involvement, highlighting the potential volatility in upcoming elections.

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IV. Fiscal Policy and Government Spending Crisis

A significant portion of the discussion addresses the unsustainable fiscal trajectory of the United States. Bannon critiques the current government's approach to budgeting, pointing out the alarming deficit numbers and the lack of immediate action to curtail spending.

Notable Quote:
“We're $2 trillion in deficits every year with 37 trillion. Add in a trillion dollars about every 150 days. You got to now refinance 10 to 12 trillion of that every year. The math simply doesn't work out.”
— Stephen K. Bannon [10:14]

Caldwell supports this perspective, expressing frustration with fiscal conservatives who seemingly ignore the pressing need for budgetary reforms. He emphasizes that without significant cuts, the nation's financial stability is at risk.

Additional Insight:
“Once they win, they'll raise a billion dollars. It'll come down to a handful of seats in New York and California that could easily flip.”
— Stephen K. Bannon [04:33]

This highlights the strategic importance of key electoral districts in altering the balance of power and the broader implications for fiscal policy.

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V. Overcoming Structural Challenges Within the Republican Party

The guests delve into the structural issues within the Republican Party that hinder its effectiveness. Caldwell discusses the entrenchment of incumbents and the difficulty in introducing new candidates who can resonate with the working and middle-class voters.

Notable Quote:
“The party has to capture and make its own permanently before people are going to trust it in a way when we say MAGA.”
— Unnamed Guest [06:10]

Additionally, the conversation touches on the broader implications of America's economic policies, including manufacturing decline and overreliance on service economies, which have weakened the middle class and exacerbated fiscal challenges.

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VI. The Path Forward: Strategic Recommendations

Bannon and his guests conclude with strategic recommendations to bolster the Republican stance against the establishment. Emphasizing the need for robust fiscal reforms and revitalizing the party's connection with its base, they call for decisive actions to mitigate the impending economic crises.

Notable Quote:
“We need to show urgency about cutting spending. They have a $900 billion defense authorization, which is outrageous.”
— Stephen K. Bannon [12:21]

This underscores the critical need for immediate fiscal policy changes to ensure long-term economic sustainability.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Bannon's War Room provides a comprehensive analysis of the current political and economic landscape. Through insightful dialogue with Sean Davis and Chris Caldwell, the episode highlights the significant challenges facing the MAGA movement in its clash with the establishment, the intricate dynamics within the Republican Party, and the urgent need for fiscal reforms to safeguard America's future.

For listeners seeking an in-depth understanding of these pressing issues, Episode 754 offers valuable perspectives and actionable insights from key figures in the ongoing political battleground.

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Key Takeaways:

• The MAGA movement is actively resisting establishment efforts to maintain control through the administrative state and judiciary.
• President Trump's unique influence is a double-edged sword for the Republican Party, providing strong voter mobilization but creating dependency on his persona.
• The United States faces an unsustainable fiscal path with massive deficits, necessitating immediate and significant budgetary reforms.
• Structural challenges within the Republican Party, including entrenched incumbents and a lack of new, relatable candidates, impede its effectiveness in upcoming elections.
• Strategic actions are essential to address these multifaceted challenges and secure America's political and economic future.

Listeners are encouraged to engage with WarRoom.org for more insightful discussions and updates on the evolving political landscape.

Transcript

[Stephen K. Bannon]

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

[Sean Davis]

I know you don't like hearing that.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I know you tried everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.

[Chris Caldwell]

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. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my.

[Chris Caldwell]

Country, this country will be saved.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

WAR ROOM here's your host, STEPHEN K. Ban.

[Chris Caldwell]

Foreign.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

It's Thursday the 24th of April in the year of our Lord 2025. Welcome back to the second hour of our late afternoon early evening show. Sean Davis joins me from Kansas City, Missouri, here for the Hillsdale's conference. Very honored to be speaking tonight. A tremendous group of speakers throughout the day tomorrow. Sean Davis is with us from the Federals. Chris Caldwell, who's going to speak tomorrow, is going to join us. David Malpass, who is former head of the World bank under President Trump, is going to be here. David is an old friend going to be here tomorrow morning. So, Sean Davis, you're in narrative wars over at the Federalist. You've been doing this for a decade there. You worked at with Tucker and the guys who were Daily Caller. The narrative war we have today is the left understands that their shot here is through this radical neo Marxist judiciary. And there we just had at the beginning of the show, top of the show we had the first hour, a federal judge just came in and reversed President Trump's thing on IDs for voters. We also had a very interesting the Daily Signal Rob Bluey site had they've got this poll and analysis, 75% of the administrative state personnel working in Washington, D.C. that make over 75,000 a year. So these are the people that would be up to the SES, you know, the MID managers and above 75% of those that voted for Harris, which is like 90% of them have said that if it was a legal executive order or presidential memorandum legal, that they would not, if they thought the policy was bad, they would not implement it. This is what Trump's up against, the administrative state and particularly the federal judiciary. How successful do you believe they've been so far? Because to delay is to deny, sir.

[Unnamed Guest]

I don't think the administrative state this time around has been all that successful. There's been a lot of smoke. There's not been a lot of fire. I think Trump coming in, understanding the nature of the beast and kind of chopping it off at the head right out of the gate was the Red Wedding.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

The Red Wedding moments.

[Unnamed Guest]

Yep. We gotta take him out. So what the left is left with now is they've got the media still, at least parts of it, and they've got the judiciary. And while I think a lot of people assume, well, Trump has a whole term, he's got four years, we're only like 98 days into it right now. We're good. And I would say that I don't think that's the case, because he doesn't have four years. He has about a year and a half. He has until the midterms in 2026. That's what the Democrats, and that's what the Marxists are pushing towards, is they want to stymie him as much as possible and give themselves the option of taking over the House in the midterms, which I think they have a very good chance of doing.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Why do you say that?

[Unnamed Guest]

The margins are super thin in history, in history, number one, history, generally, they're not favorable to the. In the party that's in power. And then three, if I were to ask you, what is the House doing? What's the message? No, nobody has any idea. It's just utterly rudderless, kind of just, you know, waiting, treading water, hoping something happens. So they're not giving people a great reason to vote for them. So the left understands that if they can just drag everything out and delay as much as possible until November 2026 and they win the House, they think that's all they need. Because once that happens, Trump's getting impeached again by a completely deranged Democrat House.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

And this is where we start the whole cycle over again. Once they, Once they win, they'll raise a billion dollars. It'll come down to a handful of seats in New York and California that could easily flip. Right. They've. They got ground troops, you know, shock troops all over from these NGOs, and as you said, even people are not citizens of this country. And they flip a handful of seats, five or six seats. Hakeem Jeffries, the Speaker of the House, do you believe. Not your readers, but do you believe a greater expansion of Republicans? What we said at the time, look, November, it was one of the most magnificent turnaround, you know, come from behind, people celebrate. It was great then for the, for the inauguration People here, you know, the tech bros and the cyber guys, and we said, oh great. We said at 100 days, given what Trump is looking to do in 100 days, the sunshine Soldiers and Summer Patriots are going to be gone. You're going to be in the trenches again at multiple fronts in warfare. And guess what? We're here before 100 days. Do you think the greater. Because one of the problems we have is we've turned this into a working class and middle class party, but we still have not solved for that part of the equation as we saw in Wisconsin, where if Trump's not physically on the ticket, we'd still have a tough time getting those low information, low propensity voters to turn out. Do you think we can do that understanding and do you think you're seeing an expanded knowledge base of that in our ecosystem of new media as we try to promulgate this message out there?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, I think you hit on the number one long term problem for the right is that Trump is such a unique figure. He's able to get people to come vote who wouldn't have ever wanted anything to do with the Republican Party. And he's able to get them out in droves. And the reason is it's not because he's a Republican, it's not the R next to his name. It's because people trust that he has their best interests out for him. They trust. And it's fascinating that the real estate investor from New York City, this big bombastic guy with the gold letters everywhere, is the best champion for the working class that we've seen on the right in 50 years. And you can't just take the policies that he's pushing and somehow transfer that to another character. As great as J.D. vance is, you know, he has real blue collar roots and he clearly has a heart for working class people. There's something there that the party has to capture and make its own permanently before people are going to trust it in a way when we say make.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

It their own permanently. Let's go back to the comment you just made about the House because that's, look, the founders set it up that the House was supposed to be one closest to the people. And it was. It would be hot and the Senate would be deliberative, you would think. And with the fire breathers, you would think you start seeing a turnover, a more populism and nationalism. There you see it on somewhat, but it's not through the 218 people. I mean, a lot of President Trump's policies, the populist and nationalist policies would not. Would not get a majority. The Hassett Rule, if you get a majority of the conference, we're still not there. How do you solve that part of the equation?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, and that's the nut we haven't cracked yet. And I think it has to do with just how entrenched incumbents have become. Each new class that's come in, really, since 2010. It kind of started with the Tea Party is better on average for Republicans than the classic replace. Yes, but you still have. How many new people are we getting every two years? Five or ten? It's. It's very small.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

In the Tea Party, we had such a small base. 153 won the 62 seats. But now that we're up to 215 to 20, and there's very few real competitive seats to go after. So you're picking. If you're picking up, you're going to pick up a half a dozen, maybe eight.

[Unnamed Guest]

And of those, if you pick up eight, five or six might be really good. And so it's just, it's a structural problem. And so much of the fight that we're having isn't just with the left. It's with our own entrenched establishment who, you know, they don't want a manufacturing base back in America. They've convinced themselves that we need to be a service economy and making stuff is what other countries do. That that's insane.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

So you agree overall with President Trump's, the arc of his strategy of all these commercial relationships, since we're paying for their defense, that we take a hard line that you're going to pay a premium to get into this market and. Or move your manufacturing here. You believe, you believe in the actual underlying theory of his case?

[Unnamed Guest]

100%, because let's look at Europe and let's look at China. We built the China war machine. It was with our money taken out of our pockets that resulted in our middle class and our manufacturing base being hollowed out. That built the Chinese military, number one. Number two, our money built the European welfare state because we decided we're going to take you all under our wing. It wasn't enough that we helped you win the First World War and the Second World War.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

We're going to end the Cold War.

[Unnamed Guest]

And the Cold War three.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

We've done it three times.

[Unnamed Guest]

We're effectively.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Particularly for a nation of people that got kicked out of those countries. Right?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yeah, it's. It's madness. We cannot be the World Police and the World bank forever. And the chickens are coming home to roost on that. We're starting to go bankrupt. Our currency isn't as strong as what it was. We're almost $40 trillion in debt. And in the debate that's happening in Congress now is hey, we should increase spending by a trillion instead of like 1.2 trillion. And they pat themselves on the back and call themselves fiscal conservatives. It's madness.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What is. So this is going to be part of my talk tonight is what we try to preach here. What is it about the mindset when we have we're going off a fiscal cliff? Like yesterday I talked to this world economic conference the summer report puts on. It's all the globalist financiers. And I said when people criticize President Trump the strategy of trying to bring jobs back, I said tell me what the alternative, the plan A, your plan is not sustainable. We're $2 trillion in deficits every year with 37 trillion. Add in a trillion dollars about every 150 days. You got to now refinance 10 to 12 trillion of that every year. The math simply doesn't work out. It's just, it's not sustainable. And there's no in their model. And this is what gets me. There's no urgency about cutting spending. They have a $900 billion defense authorization, which is outrageous. And in this reconciliation, the big beautiful bill, they're adding $150 billion of additional defense money. This is not the 170 for the border. It's like they're living in detached reality. And when I talk to these people individually, they acknowledge it. But as a group, they sit there and they come back and they give these 10 year budgets. They said, well Steve, by law it's got to be 10 years. I go, I got that. But I've done at Goldman in my own firm. So many bankruptcies and restructurings we have this year and next year that's you got to show me some cuts. Otherwise it's all fantasy. But the city, I guess because we're the prime reserve currency and the Fed can just buy. We just create the bonds and buy them we've lulled to sleep. And that's these converging crises that are coming. And people got to understand this is not. There's no magic wand here. Elon Musk, as many of my differences with him, I love the Doge effort. But Doge, let's be honest, we don't know really what it came up with with the fraud. And here's the thing, Congress sat there and they thought he was going to be Doyce ex machina, that he was going to come and save him with a trillion dollars a year in fraud. It didn't happen. And the reason is they do not want to make tough decisions on facing our fiscal crisis. And as supposedly limited government conservatives, you would think that they want to address this.

[Unnamed Guest]

They talk a good game. I worked for Tom Coburn for many, many years and fought his spending battles with them and was just dumbfounded by. They would. These people would sit in a meeting with you and tell you, oh, it's totally unsustainable. And no, no, I'm not going to vote for your amendment to cut spending 1%. And this was back when the budget was two and a half trillion dollars and two trillion dollars. I think it's.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

And the deficits were $250 billion or $300 billion. I mean, it was nothing compared to today and now. Why, okay, so why tell us, what is that mentality? Why would they sit there and go, you're right, it's not sustainable spending. The, the total budgets of the federal government are what our deficits are today. Right. Why would they then say they wouldn't do the Amendment just a 1% cut?

[Unnamed Guest]

I think there's two reasons. One, they just get in and they get kind of indoctrinated into the blob. Well, this is my committee and this is what we do. And you know, I, I've really looked at these programs and there's no fat to cut. It's all muscle. But then the other problem, which I think is much bigger, and I think it is an American problem, is as pioneering as we are in individualistic and entrepreneurial, we lack imagination for what actually happens with human history. Ever since we started, we've been great and it happened really fast. And so we assume, well, America's always been big and strong and great, therefore we will always be big and strong and great. And we've never had a currency crisis and we've never had riots for food. We've never had massive bank runs, therefore we will never have massive bank runs. We've never had an inflation crisis, therefore we'll never have one. They're operating under this idea that it's all musical chairs, except the music's going to go on forever. And it's totally wrong. Because the old joke is, you know, how does a company go bankrupt for slowly and then all at once? Nations are no different.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Unbelievable. The federalist, your social media, because you get, you get a little heated on Twitter every now and again. A little. You Get a little heated. Where they go for your. Where they go for your Twitter account. How do folks get over to the Federalists and how do they people support you guys?

[Unnamed Guest]

Yep, they can come find us@the federalist.com or follow me on X@ Sean S E A N M D A V. They can support us by, by going to our website. We have a donate button. As I've said, we've got a hybrid profit nonprofit models. So if you'd like, we can give you tax deductible donations that support great journalism. Or you can come and, you know, just throw a contribution to the company, buy a subscription to get ad free and comments. But check us out. Thank you, sir.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Great honor. Great honor. The Federalist. Shaun Davis. Okay, can we. We're bringing Chris Caldwell. Let's go. I want to go to the merch. Can we go? Can Denver get up the merch page of President Trump 2028? Who was talking about that?

[Sean Davis]

They were mocking me a week ago.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

On Stephen A. Smith. Chris, right over here. Come on, brother. There we are right there. TRUMP 2028. We are sending hats and we're sending swag to Stephen A. Smith, Chris Cuomo, a whole bunch of folks that Bill Maher people that mocked and ridiculed me over the last couple. Hey, I'm just saying, as I said, it's happening. It begins. Chris Caldwell, how do you do? I am so honored to have you on here. One of the first people to identify the issue of Islam, the West and Europe. And what happened that book you wrote, it was called the Coming Revolution. It was back in.

[Chris Caldwell]

It's called Reflections on the Revolution in Europe.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

This is about 2010.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah. A little before 2008. 09, 2008 or 9, 2009 to be precise.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yeah.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yep.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What did you see at the time and has the arc of it gotten any better or has it gotten worse?

[Chris Caldwell]

I think the arc of it has gotten better.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Has gotten better.

[Chris Caldwell]

I think it's gotten better.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What was the problem back when you started writing in 2007-2008?

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, I think the big underlying problem was a demographic problem, which is that the populations of the Middle east and North Africa were growing much faster than Europe. That is the part that I think has abated a little bit. The outright population pressure from the Muslim world is not as.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Because their birth rates are declining or European birth rates coming up in the.

[Chris Caldwell]

Their birth rates are declining. I mean, I think that, you know, I think that the population of the west bank, for instance, and I had this number when I Wrote the book, but it had increased something like fivefold between 1967 and the first decade of this century. So, I mean, you're talking about a real powerful thing. And I think there was a great sociologist who just died a year or two ago, a German sociologist named Gunnar Heinsen, who wrote a great book about called Sons and World Power. And he said, you know, like all the expansion of cultures, including the European cultures that settled the new world, and things had to do with, you know, families having, you know, eight or nine.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Children and having three or four or five sons. Yes. And you got to figure out, since one's going to inherit everything, the other's going to go. In the ministry, you got two or three. They used the Crusades for that, for one point in time. So you got it. It's three, four number sons, three, four and five, who usually have some attitude. Right. So they hold it. I haven't heard. I mean, that's always been my theory. The guy wrote a book about that.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah. Gunnar Heinsen. It's. It's called Sons and World Power.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

You rise to world power off of having a number of sons that have.

[Chris Caldwell]

Time on their hand off of having surplus sons, sons who, like, can't be employed in the existing economic structure. Structure, you know, he need. Who need to go out and look for their living.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

We have a couple of three of those in the United States right now, don't we? I mean, we have some young men that are just kind of drifting. Right.

[Chris Caldwell]

But not that many. Not. Not that many. Not that many per family. Yes.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Very weak there.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What. So that. So in the arc of it, you don't think the pressure. Because you look at Sweden, you look at what's happening, you look at now the Rotherham cases are now coming up in England, you know, our guy, Raheem Gassam, focused. But a lot of this is coming back up to the surface.

[Chris Caldwell]

I thought you were talking about the migration pressure, however.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Is that because Orban stopped it? How did that actually stop? Was it Merkel leaving or it was the Italians, people getting more focused on it?

[Chris Caldwell]

See, I think. I think the migration pressure has diminished for population reasons, but because there's less.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Population and there was no Syrian civil war, they're not coming up by the millions.

[Chris Caldwell]

But there is a sense in which the problem is greater than it was when I wrote the book. I was writing the book, you know, basically between nine, 11 and, you know, in the five years or 10 years after nine, 11. And at that time you could say, well, Europe is really before A choice, you know, of what kind of continent it wishes to be, but that it made its choice and we're no longer in that Europe anymore. It's not like Europe is going to go back to being, you know, the continent that it was before this mass invasion. So certain things have been set.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

You mean politically pressure came up. They've made a choice to stop that open immigration of millions of people. A unit of Germany?

[Chris Caldwell]

Yes, I think so.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

But was that pressure from the right to say get our sovereignty back and from the Viktor Orban's and the Salvinis and the Le Pens who were not taking over governments but at least enough political pressure on the globalists to stop that? How did that stop?

[Chris Caldwell]

Yes, those, those, those figures that you name are absolutely key and they didn't show up in every country. I mean, Nigel Farage had a great populist role to play, but he was not as purely an anti immigration figure as for instance, Salvini was. Salvini, I think was probably the most successful anti immigration politician of the last 20 years in Europe.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I think you're absolutely correct. I was over there in 18 when he won. But there's two. Why was Salvini ahead of the curve? Because Italy's right there and was being invaded in those islands or on the boot or. Why Salvini?

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, that's an interesting question. I mean he's such, he himself is such an interesting guy because he had a great combination, a kind of Reagan esque combination of, you know, being really populist but also having grown up among businessmen in Milan. So he was a very balanced politician. I think it was mostly that he had a way of talking about the issue that made people really comfortable. And I forget the name of his Internet expert, but he had a guy who ran his website and the website, his webmaster said to him, you know what you're talking about how our civilization is collapsing, we're being invaded and stuff like that. That's really dark. And you know, after a few days of that, people aren't going to want to go to your website anymore. He said. So every time you do two immigration swamped by, you know, the alien forces things. Do a, do a feature on pasta.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yes.

[Chris Caldwell]

You know, do something about tiramisu, do something about how pretty Italian women are. And so Salvini's website was actually a fun, witty kind of place.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

And when he ran, he was a guy took Facebook and it was live. They were hanging out and doing fun things. And the rallies were kind of Trump. They were smaller than Trump's but the biggest thing that Europe had ever seen. But they were fun, they were gatherings. So he did that. He did that merger. They tried to govern for a while from left wing populism and right wing populism. Didn't turn out perfectly but, but they did it.

[Chris Caldwell]

I think it was, I think it was until the moment it collapsed. It was the most, probably close to the most popular Italian government since the war. And the problem was, the problem was that Salvini's right wing populism wound up more popular. I mean in the vote you had the, you know, the, the five star movement, the left populists got about a third of the vote. Salvini only got about a sixth of the vote. But once they were, once they were governing, then the thing that people really loved was the Salvini immigration policy. And he got up to like 45% in the polls to, to the point where if they'd had an election the next day, he would have had a non coalition government. He would have been able to rule by himself. The problem is he didn't have those votes in the parliament and he just lost track of that and he got booted out.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Why is it the elites, it appeared that the elites in Europe at the time looked the other way, or particularly even the business elites wanted this, I don't know, for bigger consumer markets or whatever, this invasion. They never really took a hard line against it, much like the business elites here in the United States. What is it about corporatists? What is about capital markets, the City of London, Wall Street, Frankfurt, that has no problem with mass immigration?

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, huh, I don't know that they have no problem with it, but they do, they do benefit disproportionately from it. I think the best, the best quantitative account of that that's been done is in the, you know, the Harvard economist George Borjas book, maybe you've talked about it on the show. But you know, he did a study in around 1995 where he, you know, he looked at some of these allegations that, or allegations, some of these claims that, you know, immigrants add a trillion dollars to the economy and they do, but it all goes back to the immigrant countries. It's the immigrants themselves who benefit from immigration. Otherwise it's a wash. However, that, that zero difference in the country disguises a big immigration disguises a big, let's say income transfer from the people who compete with immigrants to the people who hire them.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yes, yes. You're going to speak tomorrow. We've got about a minute. Here on this side and we're taking a short commercial break. Make sure, by the way, Birchgold, it's not the price of gold, it's the process. Why are the central banks buying more than ever? Why is the dollar. Why is the Chinese Communist Party's central theory of the case here is de dollarize the world economy. Make sure they break Bretton woods. Go to birchgold.com, it's the sixth free installment of our series the End of the Dollar Empire. Been doing this now for four years. You got the sixth. It's modern monetary theory, the idea that broke the world. We want to make sure we're big name and putting out concepts and ideas for you and see how they work out through the, through the, through reality, how they manifest themselves. How's that? Birchgold.com Bannon you can talk to Philip Patrick and the team. It is not the price of gold is the process of why gold is a hedge for, I don't know, four or five thousand years of mankind's history. Johnny Khan's going to take us out. We're going to have a short commercial break. Brother Caldwell, Chris Caldwell on the other.

[Chris Caldwell]

Side side.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They say that we need changing as if all the founding fathers seem to get it wrong. But I say I still believe him. The greatest innovator, liberator, cultivator freedom knows. So I suggest you take a look inside cause I think you changed already. You went and lost your pride. But I'm American Ma. I got American power. I got American bab. In America's heart.

You don't go out and buy a life jacket when the boat is already sinking. And you don't buy gold when the economy has already collapsed.

[Sean Davis]

Clearly others are heeding this advice as.

[Unnamed Speaker]

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[Chris Caldwell]

War Room.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Band. Welcome back here with Chris Caldwell. No, we were just talking between the break. Our audience is one of. We sell a ton of books here, so on. Because our audience are book readers, which is kind of a lost art. We started an imprint with Tony Lyons and the guys over at Skyhorse after, I don't know, we sold Kennedy's book, sold I think over a million copies and War Room sold half of them. So the Tony Fauci book. But we started an imprint a couple of years ago and I think we published 10, 12 books. And we've had one book into the New York Times top 10 best seller list. Jack Posovic's on Humans talking about the communist revolutions. Different revolutions today. So we're.

[Sean Davis]

You're writing process because your books are.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Have big impact. They're very serious, but they're spread apart. You're not a guy that's cranking out a book every two years.

[Chris Caldwell]

I wish I were. I. Whenever I'm writing a book, I feel like this is really what I was born to do. But I have.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

You get the juices. Get going.

[Chris Caldwell]

I love, I love, I love, I love the process of writing a book.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Talk to us, talk to our audience about that. What is the process of writing a book? Because. And here's the thing, books, and this is why we love them, there's so much different than reading like on the Internet or even newspapers today. It's. It's a, it's a lost art. What is your process for researching and then what is your process for writing?

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, I hate to say, you know, I. To be glib, I'd say it's. But the first 80% is procrastination, you know, and you know, I do a lot of day to day journalism. The Claremont Review that I work for is a quarterly.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Amazing.

[Chris Caldwell]

Which means that I get to, you know, go really in depth on a lot of subjects. And so, you know, at the end of a few years of procrastinating, there are actually a handful of things that I actually can talk reasonably, knowledgeably about. And if they come together into a book, that's great. And then just spend a lot of time thinking and then outlining and then a little more procrastinating and then there's.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

A blank, there's a blank page. It can't concern you because you're prolific in all your day to day journalism and things like that. What is it about a book? You say procrastinate what's it about a book that makes you procrastinate?

[Chris Caldwell]

That's a really interesting. That's an interesting thing. I think a certain perfectionism creep creeps.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Back because, you know, the book's going to be there forever, right?

[Chris Caldwell]

I think so.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

And it's more. It's more definitive than a newspaper article or something else you're doing.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah. You know, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the novelist, said that he was totally unable to write novels until he took a job at a Colombian newspaper like El Espectador or something and started, you know, sort of writing about, you know, murders and traffic accidents and things like that. And it. It took away his kind of like, reverence, his undue reverence for the print, for the blank, you know, for the printed page. Yeah.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

That he got over that hurdle.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What is it? What was it got your attention? Your book was the Age of Entitlement.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

What was it that got you interested in that topic? To take a couple of years and research it and write it?

[Chris Caldwell]

You know, I thought I started off thinking about it as a sort of like a demographic book. I was so, you know, it's. I was so interested in how the baby boom moved through society. I mean, I think that the baby boom was a big enough generation that they not only got to vote for what they wanted. I mean, if they. If they were behind something, voting wise, it was going to happen, but also the power of them as a force in the consumer market. It meant that all the objects that everyone looks at their whole lives are whatever the baby boomer market started to want. So you saw a lot of, you know, you saw a lot of sex in the 60s and 70s. You saw a lot of real estate in the 80s and 90s. And you're seeing a lot of, you.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Say, you say, as they went through the phase of life, when people are young and have the testosterone and everything like that, that's when the sex was a big thing. When it came time for them to settle down or become homeowners, that became a big thing. And you could walk through those phases of American life and see it came with this demographic wave. Post war.

[Chris Caldwell]

Absolutely. And it's not only that they were so big and powerful that they were able to arrogate resources from their elders and from their offspring to build up their own lifestyle. And so that struck me as really interesting. But it's so hard to get at because you've got two things that are moving at the same time that it didn't really make much of a narrative. But in looking at that period, I then discovered that the, you know, that the paradigm for almost everything that happened politically between the Kennedy assassination and the Trump nomination was civil rights. It's basically a, you know, it's like a second constitution, thanks to which a, you know, usually judicial, but also kind of regulatory elite gets to have a second look at democratic decisions. You know. And so in that civil rights style of government, although it had a lot of, like, moral prestige behind it, really actually traveled very far from the sort of, like, moral causes that gave it.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Its impetus from the original, Original civil rights movement. And so it would become what, just performative or become hollowed out or.

[Chris Caldwell]

Just one problem. I mean, one problem is that it's. It becomes performative and insincere and. And hollowed out. But the other problem is that. That it spread. I mean, so I think that when. When. When civil rights started, people thought it was really about fixing some things in the Deep South. I mean, even outside of the Deep south and, you know, outside of about four states, all these states were reforming, you know, so I think people thought.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I don't know, I came from the south, you know, I'm from Richmond, Virginia. But when I went, and this is after I was a naval officer, I'd seen some of the world, at least the Pacific. When I went to a certain university in Cambridge, I was shocked about how segregated Boston was. This is in the 80s. It was just a very segregated. It wasn't. There didn't seem to be any integration. You had Roxbury, you had the Southeast, you had the city, you had the Brahmins. It was a very structural. Coming from the south, you would think, oh, this has all been worked out before the Civil War turned out, it had not been worked out.

[Chris Caldwell]

Coming from Boston, I had a kind of a different perspective on it. It's the. I mean, the. The black community in, In. In a place like Massachusetts is very different than a black community in a. In a place like Virginia. In Virginia, it's been there for, you know, 350, 400 years. In Massachusetts, it's an immigrant community. It all came in the 20th century. In the 20th century. I mean, in. And so I will also say another.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Thing for you guys in Boston, particularly in Cambridge, if you have even a hint of a Southern accent, they literally think you're the dumbest cracker in the world. It is the most prejudice in the world. If you're from the South.

[Chris Caldwell]

If you're from the south, really interesting.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

No, at Harvard, if you speak with a Southern accent, they Just think you're a right.

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, how about that? I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm sorry about that.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I got through it do today in the online, in our chat rooms, etc, we have a audience, a lot of boomers. Okay. And we have a young staff. And the young staff is very much in the Internet. And particularly this new ecosystem of the, of the Trump movement, a lot of it has come from, you know, online community. And they have a pejorative term. You think like a boomer, right? It's not, it's not. They don't say deposit in a positive. You're thinking like a boomer. That's so boomer. Particularly in handling of technology or knowing what's cutting edge, etc. Did you ever think that, that the boomer generation never thought that they would, it would be a pejorative. They always thought they were kind of the best and the leading and leading America to a new enlightenment, didn't they?

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah. But in retrospect you can see very clearly that there were a lot of things that were really keeping us cosseted. And one of the things was the Cold War. There really was not a lot of variety in the strategic predicaments that a global power would face. You know, we just had to mind the Russians. It was not like a big ricocheting multifactorial world. You know, that was one thing. But I think that also the, the stability of large corporations or the seeming stability of large corporations meant that a lot of people, you know, in the 60s and 70s could imagine navigating their whole lives within one building, you know, which is harder to do.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

That's impossible today with these young people. I mean, this is the gig economy. I mean even a job, it's all gig economy and coming together. Do you think one of the things that strikes me in coming to politics late and coming after doing a number of things and coming to D.C. with the leadership, I'm shocked. For a country that has been a hegemon up to here recently, it's now that's being questioned the lack of seriousness of people. D.C. is a very provincial town. Right. It doesn't come across as a global capital. And the lack of not just sophisticated kind of people that seem to be on top of like this massive budget crisis we have, the financial crisis we have and all these different crises, you don't have a lot of. I just don't. Particularly in political and almost cultural leadership. Is that just my own prejudice or you think we as a global power? When I look back at the British and the Romans. And maybe it's just the way the books are written, but it seems like when you look at their decisions and how they thought things through, it was just at a much deeper level of seriousness than the leadership. You know, like even today, it doesn't compare. And this is not about President Trump, but just the general environment of D.C. doesn't compare to like World War II, when it seemed to me you had almost giants that were making these decisions. Am I just. Is that just the way history.

[Chris Caldwell]

It's not. No, it's. Of course, you've got a point. We have a very unusual kind of empire, world civilization, whatever you want to call it. There are a few factors, I think, that have, that have kept us from being more Machiavellian. There's a certain sort of like, inability that leaders have always had to sort of like ruthlessly make a big decision and decide. And one of them is that we've always been an extremely rich country and we've developed this habit of buying off people rather than laying down the law. We're a very feminist country. We have a lot. Women have a lot more of a role in this country than they did in the leadership of any other country. That's another thing. There are just a number of. There are a number of factors.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Do you think the fact that we became so rich so quickly that even the trauma of the Civil War and things like the Great Depression were not cultural ending. Right. Do you think that had anything to do with maybe the lack of seriousness that we haven't had like today? I happen to think in the convergence of these crises that we have and the lack of kind of leadership we have at so many different levels, this thing's going to metastasize. And one thing will build on the, the crisis will just build. And we haven't had to go through long periods. We had 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years of hard decisions, tough decisions and trade offs.

[Chris Caldwell]

You think that's where we're going?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I think that definitely. I think it's where we're going. It's just when I look at the different trend lines and I see people, they're always looking for a fairy godmother like Elon Musk. Come and find a trillion dollars of fraud. And so all sudden you wouldn't have to cut the budget. He would find it. Or artificial intelligence is now going to bail us out. There's always something next that's going to bail us out. And it's kind of wishful thinking.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yeah. Although artificial intelligence is interesting. Could I ask you a question, sure.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

You can do anything you want.

[Chris Caldwell]

The same realm. I mean, in that light, one of the things that interests me most now is the way we're operating at two different timescales. I think that Trump has probably convinced most of the country the way he convinced most of the country on China. He's probably convinced most of the country that in the long term, our dependence on foreign manufacturing is unsustainable, that our trade deficits are unsustainable as well. So I feel like you could ask almost anybody, even in Cambridge, and they'd say, yeah, it probably is. It would be nice if we were able to, if we had factories that we could convert to making artillery shells, et cetera, et cetera. But there is this nearer term problem of sort of like coordinating investment so that we don't find ourselves with nothing thing when we cut off the Chinese.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I say this all the time, and I'm one of the guys that the architecture believe in this. We're at a full embargo to the Chinese. They've been in economic war with us for a long time, stealing the $600 billion a year in technology. We've financed the whole thing, Wall street and private equity. But you're right, we're at a full embargo right now. And I tell people we're at a full embargo with the Chinese, and in 90 days to 100 days, the shelves are going to start being empty. I mean, President Trump took that meeting the other day. It wasn't random that he had Walmart and Costco and those guys said, hey, look, we understand what you want to do, and we want to get more American product and we want to do this, but there's a lag time here on supply chains and understand we're going to hit a wall. This is why I think just before he came on, President Trump keeps talking about, hey, there's some side meetings going on. And she kind of put it out. I ain't making any calls. And we're not having any meetings because these guys have been, look, from the time we brought them in to the World Trade Organization and the most favored nation in 2000, they have broken as they're supposed to, because in their concept of war, going kinetic is like defeating itself. They never should have to fight the foreign devils with military equipment. And they know that we're better than that. So ever since then, when they gained that system, the cyber deal they cut with Obama, they didn't live up to in 2015. A couple of years later, of Hong Kong in 2019. They totally tore it up and took over Hong Kong. Trump worked two years to cut a deal that was a more serious thing that we're talking about today with Lighthizer. They walked away after two years of negotiation and ready to sign. Walked away. He then did the skinny deal in January of 2020 when they, when they sent the Wuhan lab virus over here. They didn't fulfill anything on the skinny deal. They have never fulfilled one, one item of anything they'd ever fill in six major negotiations they've had of signed deals ever. And because they see this another way, it's an incompatible system and they have no interest in coupling. They don't mind decoupling. So you're right the timescale and it's going to be a factor to somebody talk about this tonight. You have to. You have to. And I don't, don't know if we've prepped people in doing it. But I think that's what President Trump looks as the cash from the external from the tariffs because you're not going to manufacture, you are going to pay a higher toll for coming through here. Now, the question is historically we've seen with the Chinese, when we added the tariffs there, it wasn't passed on the consumer. We'll have to see because that's going to be. Is that a concern of yours?

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, that is a concern of mine. And I was, you know, hoping you could tell me how we were going to get to that to that get to the long term.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, one way we can get to the long term is first of you have to do these deals with the East Asian countries. You have to do Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines and India. You latch those in Europe. Referee came on. I was saying Europe has notified us or it's in the European press that the EU has basically told people they are not prepared to decouple our deals. Do have a, a part of it that says in these intern because the deal is going to take a long time to work out. But the memorandums understand the architecture of it is you're not, you're going to be more in our trading program with our laws and customs than these guys in Beijing warns retaliation against nations doing US Deals. The EU has notified us that they're not going to, they're not going to decouple. They're not going to agree to anything. And this gets to my point about we're underwriting their security. And that's why the two battle groups in the Red Sea, although they're clearly for the Houthis and the UAE and the Saudis and Israel. So it's a mess. Are you working on any book today? Is anything you give us a headline. What excites you that would get you enough to break through your procrastination?

[Chris Caldwell]

What excites me is the simultaneity of all these revolutions.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

The complexity.

[Chris Caldwell]

Well, and the interplay between, you know, what's going on in Silicon Valley and what's going on in the populist world. And what's going on in the world.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Well, Silicon Valley, the oligarchs are totally out of control. The four guys who control artificial intelligence, which is just one aspect of the singularity, because we're hurtling towards a point that Homo sapiens is on this side and Homo sapiens plus is on that side. And that may only be a couple of years away, maybe three or four years away. That's a huge problem. And you have more regulations on a Korean nail salon in D.C. to get license to actually do people's nails and the makeup and other things than you have on the four oligarchs running all artificial intelligence, which, you know, seen has already been a, already been a disaster. And Deep Sea today released that everybody that's using Deep Seek all your information is going immediately to the Chinese Communist Party for manipulation. So artificial intelligence is a massive. I'm a Luddite. I would very much like to slow down artificial intelligence full max until we think it through.

[Chris Caldwell]

I think it's. There's this old, you know, Reaganite idea that you absolutely cannot slow the progress of technology. Do you have sort of pointers on how that could be done?

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I've got some of the top guys in AI are actually on our side. We're putting something together to at least, at least slow the move to artificial general intelligence. Once you get to artificial general intelligence, it's. First of all, it's probably gone right now. It's probably too late to stop it. Although we're going to try to put up something. But listen, technology from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, my belief is did much for to free men and women from. From this. The horrors of, of some of this labor. Now with surveillance technology, we're in a plight. The increases in technology oppress individuals is very oppressive. I mean, we know this from. We're banned. This show is one of the largest shows in America. We're banned on virtually every platform, banned in perpetuity on Facebook, on Spotify, on Instagram, on Twitter, banned on all of it because we were trump's We're Trump's site for the stealing of the election of 2020. And then we were the first ones on the pandemic in the third week of January 2020. We're the ones that came on shift. There was war room pandemic. We shifted a warm pandemic and told them, hey, it's out of Wuhan and here's what happened. And of course it was conspiracy theory and everything like that. Now it's open. Sure, we got a bounce. All right, great. You have social media. Where do people go to get your articles?

[Chris Caldwell]

I'm not on social media.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

You're all over. You are a Luddite. There's a website. Website people. And go get your books or just.

[Chris Caldwell]

No, just go to the Claremont Review.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Yeah. Because I read your stuff all the time. It's amazing.

[Chris Caldwell]

Yep.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Thank you, Birch. Gold's been the sponsor. Make sure take your phone out. 98989 Bannon at 989-898. The ultimate guide for investing in golden precious metals in the era Trump. Learn why gold has been a hedge for, I don't know, 4,000 years of mankind's history against times of financial crisis, turbulence and financial turbulence. We have the right stuff will take you out. Magnificent book by Tom Wolf, who is actually from my neighborhood down in Richmond, Virginia. Magnificent movie by Philip Kaufman. A classic and Academy Award winning music by Bill Conti. Listen to it. We'll see Tomorrow Morning Live, 10am Eastern Day on 10 back here in Kansas City, Missouri at the conference for Hillsdale College. See you tomorrow.

[Chris Caldwell]

It.

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