← Bannon`s War Room
Bannon`s War Room
WarRoom Battleground EP 'ARE TECHNO-OPTIMISM AND POPULISM INCOMPATIBLE?'
WarRoom Battleground EP 'ARE TECHNO-OPTIMISM AND POPULISM INCOMPATIBLE?'...
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- [00:03]
Steve Bannon
This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. I 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.
- [00:24]
Josh Green
And where do people like that go.
- [00:26]
Rohit Chopra
To share the big lie?
- [00:28]
Josh Green
MAGA MEDIA I wish in my soul.
- [00:31]
Rohit Chopra
I wish any of these people had a conscience.
- [00:35]
Steve Bannon
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
- [00:45]
Rohit Chopra
War ROOM here's your host, Stephen K. Banner.
- [00:54]
Steve Bannon
It's Friday the 11th of April in the year of our Lord 2025. Welcome for the second hour of our late afternoon early edition of the War Room. Remember, one of the big fights around has been as President Trump and the tech Bros. Remember, you had the tech bros and the oligarchs versus the economic nationalists and the populace, the populist nationalist movement. I think a lot of that got answered this week with President Trump's complete throwdown on Liberation Day. The following from Liberation Day, but particularly really engaging for the first time against the Chinese Communist Party and head on. President Trump had confronted them back in 2019. He actually, as you remember, offered them a deal that would integrate them into the world economy. They essentially spit in his face. This was in May of 19. And then next thing you know, you've got the pandemic and you have, and you have Wuhan President Trump. This question has been was he going too much for the tech bros. We know by having his ftc, his fcc, the antitrust people, they have this incredible group of folks they have over at the, at the Justice Department that President Trump has got the greatest set of kind of antitrust breakup the oligarchs that ever had. And you saw this past week with Josh Hawley, he's got support in the, in the United States Senate. Look, there was a conference held in the last couple of days. Two things happened. One, I went to a conference of kind of tech elites, but these are more on the entrepreneur side. Also I went over to the Justice Department. We're going to break down all of this over the next couple of days. So you can see it. This conference is called why Combinator? For little tech competition. This panel was techno, optimism and populism. Are they incompatible? And I make the case that they could be, they can actually be very compatible if you have the right type of regulatory apparatus. Josh Green, the great reporter from Bloomberg over there who wrote Devil's Bargain, Kind of the Rise of President Trump and Populist Nationalism, which I take a prominent role in that book. It was a big bestseller. Rohit Chopra is someone from the Biden administration. He's actually one of the colleagues of Elizabeth Warren, and he ran the bureau that President Trump is in the process of shutting down. So he's a guy on the left, but he shares a lot of what we think about this thing, about these companies being too big, these oligarchs being too big. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to play a chunk of this conference with me giving as good as I get, and then I'm going to come back in, in this first half hour block and kind of summarize. So let's go ahead and cut right now to the. To the tape itself.
- [03:43]
Josh Green
Thank you all for being here. You ready to get going? I'm coming right after you.
- [03:51]
Rohit Chopra
No, Josh, let's slow down.
- [03:52]
Josh Green
Yeah. All right.
- [03:53]
Rohit Chopra
This is too fast as we look ahead. I thought Bloomberg was supposed to move fast. We're moving, right?
- [04:01]
Josh Green
We're moving faster. Already written articles in the last month quoting Rohit and Steve. So I feel like I'm up to speed, and I want to get you guys up to speed speed, too. Looking ahead to this new Trump era, I wanted to start off by asking you both about an idea that was written up in the Atlantic yesterday that I think has big implications for what tech and antitrust policy might look like in the years ahead. The article suggested there's been a fusion on the right between maga nationalists like Steve and big tech barons like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, all in opposition to this specter of wokeness that people on the right are so worked up about. But the article goes on to suggest that Big Tech is actually the one in the driver's seat and that folks like Steve are, and I'm quoting the article here, political sucker fish riding a whale. My question for you, Steve, is this true? Are you in the MAGA crowd beholden to Big Tech? Or does Elon Musk's humiliation in Wisconsin last night begin to weaken his political standing and his influence on policy in the Trump presidency?
- [05:11]
Rohit Chopra
Are you assuming that someone spends $20 million and goes wear a cheese head on a stage and bounces around as humiliated? Okay, the fusion, the whole fusion crap is pushed by the tech oligarchs. You know why? They fear populism they fear economic nationalism. If we have, we're in a, we admit we're in a coalition, it is a coalition. But there's a much higher probability that we will have fusion with certain of the ideas of Rohit and particularly Lina Khan and others that have fought, you know, monopolies, have fought oligarchs for years. And I think that's where the fusion is going to come. One of the biggest scourges in our country are these oligarchs, the lords of easy money on Wall street, the corporatists, and particularly the apartheid state of Silicon Valley. And it's a huge problem. And yes, we're in a very uneasy coalition, but it is a coalition. They were some of them quite central to our victory in November and they were also central to our, let's say there was a huge defeat last night in the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.
- [06:26]
Josh Green
So my question then is if you agree with that.
- [06:29]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I think if you look at the first Trump term, you know, at the Federal Trade Commission, for example, every single time you really saw the Republicans on the FTC speaking from a different hymnbook than Trump. They were pro Chinese manufacturing, they were pro big tech, they were pro big pharma. And then you saw others who were really trying to fight against a lot of that money. And now we think Silicon Valley used to be lots and lots of little tech. And is it going to stay that way or is it just going to be owned by these six dudes? And Zuckerberg can wear whatever chains he want, but I think at the end of the day, if they control this whole system, there's big trouble for our country.
- [07:24]
Rohit Chopra
You're not going to burrow out, you're not going to start going to UFC fights. No, the fusionism is pushed by. We're in a coalition. The fusionism. They want us to be subservient to, to their interests in techno feudalism. And we're not going to do that. The power we still have here and the difference in the first term, we've now evolved this party to be truly a working class and middle class party. And the Democrats have kind of lost that or lost focus on it. They become the credential class and we need to drive this point home. That's where we're building a bigger coalition. And I think if we do our job and somehow we can keep them together in an uneasy coalition, although I don't know if that's possible, we can build a, we can redefine politics like in 1932 we're at that inflection point that is upon us to do it, and things like last night, obviously are a big setback.
- [08:14]
Josh Green
Looking ahead at the policy landscape, though, Elon and the Six Bros are representing big tech, who, if anyone, is standing up for little tech in the Trump administration.
- [08:23]
Rohit Chopra
I think you've got a lot of people. I mean, I think you've got. We've got. Our new. One of our new FTC commissioners are here. Mark, you got our viceroy. Where's Mike Davis, the fire breather? Mike Davis is a fire breather for the populist side. If you look in the Justice Department, right. Tomorrow I'm going to be over there at justice with Omid and others. Gail Slater. I mean, we have. Look, I think Lina Khan is one of the most important political figures in this country, and I think if she had been listened to more by Democrats, they would actually have been more competitive against us in November of 2024. But I think you have a lot of people that I would call neo Bradisians that actually see the danger of concentration, of massive concentration of personal wealth and power to government power. And look, let's be blunt. That was all caused by the Democrat and most progressive elements of the Democratic Party. The bailouts on Wall street and 2008, which were unacceptable, and the kind of Faustian bargain given to the big Six dudes to essentially say you're going to have monopolistic power, but we'll make a deal with you. You have to be at the cutting edge of that because we're a hegemon. You have to have the commanding heights of technology. TikTok shows you they've blown it on social media. And quite frankly, Deep Seek, whether it's a Chinese psyop or if it's real, shows you that their method, right, which they threw climate change overboard, all that overboard for this mass power of AI, is wrong. And now what do they want? They want a bailout. They want a $500 billion mercury program, or Marshall Plan, however they call it. And they want us to turn the national labs over to them, Right? So these guys, they have an unsatiable appetite for money and power, and it's got to be stopped.
- [10:13]
Unknown Speaker
And they want to hand over a playbook that is really Europe's playbook from the 40s about trying to have a clique of corporate royalty that we're supposed to help the entire time. And I thought America built all of this because we made sure there was little companies challenging these big guys and running them out of business when they're doing something better. So I think this is the jump ball right now. Now we see it in a few different places, but if they hollow out and defund some of these enforcers, they're not going to be able to go out.
- [10:51]
Josh Green
Hold on, let me ask you about.
- [10:53]
Rohit Chopra
It because you've been, are we taking this over? Are you going to get some more into this?
- [10:57]
Josh Green
I want to spice this up a little bit because you sound like you're half asleep. Rohit, you were recently on the receiving end of the Trump Musk policy approach. And so I'm imagining your view of Trump's approach is a little less rosy when it comes to big tech than maybe Steve's is. You told me at the time for a Bloomberg Post I wrote, quote, defunding the police that watch over Wall street and big tech will cost consumers billions of dollars. What's the case you'd make to folks like Steve and Republicans on the right for why a robust enforcement regime is necessary?
- [11:30]
Unknown Speaker
Well, look, Steve mentioned the bailouts. I think this a lot of what our discourse is today, whether we know it or not, comes from the financial crisis and the big giveaways to those who are already powerful. In what planet can you mismanage your business so badly and go on the other side and become bigger and more powerful? That's exactly what happened in 2008. So I really think, look, it is really, it is a jump ball in so many places. When Musk and the whoever took over the cfpb, one of the first people they fired were the tech people, the ones who were doing the investigations of big tech companies creating currency. They were the ones who were trying to make sure there was open tech so that small companies could challenge big tech. So we're going to see a fight on both sides, I think. But I don't know how it's going to turn out if they keep getting rid of the watchdogs and just expect these agencies to be lap dogs.
- [12:40]
Josh Green
Okay, so I want to dig in a little bit more on this idea of a struggle between big tech and little tech, how it might play out in the Trump years. And I want to provoke you both a bit by offering some historical comments. Context. Richard Nixon famously wanted his Justice Department to threaten investigations of the major TV networks in order to obtain friendlier coverage, perhaps a precursor to Trump's later threats against big tech. On the Nixon tapes, we hear him saying a DOJ investigation, quote, gives us one hell of a club, a sort of Damocles, Nixon called it, to coerce favorable coverage. Steve Is that Trump's real aim here? Just a friendlier Facebook and a defanged Washington Post, or are there real populist instincts that might lean against the power of some of the big tech companies?
- [13:32]
Rohit Chopra
I think, look, it's obviously, you know, something that's being worked out through the Trump administration. Like I said, we're a coalition. There's definitely voices on big tech. If every lobbyist in this town, every law firm in this town, let's say it's a rig system, system's totally right. Do you want to go up against big tech? Now? I'm going to tell you how tough.
- [13:50]
Josh Green
But you talked to him personally about this.
- [13:52]
Rohit Chopra
Here's what I think is, here's one of the things I think is important is our going after the big law firms. We're trying to go after the machinery that has this system set up to go after the big law firms. I think we have to go after the big investment banks, the big hedge funds, the money center banks. You have to go after all of them and, and basically play smash mouth because they play smash mouth with you. This system is run by money and power. It's run by oligarchic centers in both Wall street, the corporatist and Silicon Valley. We're just not going to change overnight. And there is a struggle. I mean, you have, I would submit to you that. And if you read the front two pages of the remedy section in the Google case and see where our Justice Department's coming out, it kind of stuns me of how antitrust, the people we've put in, I mean, people know I'm a big admirer, Alina Khan. I don't think we've made that big a shift. I would love to have her back. I think she'd be terrific. But we're just a difference in degree, not so much in kind of what we put in place today. And I think you're going to see tough antitrust action taking place. That's why I think Wall Street's not enamored. They didn't see the big wave of M and A and M and A fee coming. So this is. But it's always going to be a struggle. It's who's going to be able to have muscle politically in Florida. 6. We were down three points, I think, up to two weeks ago. When our show got involved, Breitbart got involved, we got our grassroots volunteers out. You know, Scott Jennings on CNN makes a very important point about as we reshape this party to be more working class and middle Class. We also are dependent upon low propensity voters. Low propensity, low information. It's not. They're not degreed or not dumb by low information. They're just not interested in politics. Right. These people basically come up for Trump. We have to have a massive grassroots effort every time to get them out. Scott's absolutely correct. And this is one of the reasons we won in Florida six is got it out. So the power we have to, what they call them, suckerfish, we have to deliver, you know, mass amounts of grassroots. Right. Who are basically entrepreneurs, right? The little guy, the little shopkeepers, the workers. We have to deliver that and we have to deliver it consistently. But I think you're starting to see that we did win, shouldn't be lost unit we did win overwhelmingly, the voter ID in Wisconsin last night, although we lost, I think we got blown out.
- [16:21]
Josh Green
I mean, since I've known you, you've been really outspoken. You just mentioned it now about the power of money in politics. And I'm interested in how that applies to tech and antitrust policy. Is there evidence you can point me to that Trump is serious about pursuing a crackdown he's talked about in the past?
- [16:37]
Rohit Chopra
Yes, I am.
- [16:37]
Josh Green
And won't be bought off by inauguration.
- [16:40]
Steve Bannon
Look at the ftc.
- [16:42]
Rohit Chopra
Listen, it's a Melania documentary. We're in an imperial capital that the populist nationalist movement did not create. Okay. This is an empire. Exactly what the revolutionary generation and the framers and the founders of our nation warned us against we evolved into. If the revolutionary generation of the framers came back to say they'd spit on the floor with how we've allowed this country to evolve. And so this, our movement is relatively young and having political power. But look at our Justice Department. Look at some of the commissioners we're putting on there. These people are almost as big of fire breathers as Rohit and Lina Khan. That's what I think is so shocking.
- [17:23]
Josh Green
Is the personnel the real focus that you see.
- [17:25]
Rohit Chopra
Personnel's policy in this town. Right. Particularly working. Go back and read. Look at what we're doing at Google both in the courts in Northern Virginia and in D.C. you should definitely want to read the summary that the folks wrote. It's quite powerful and I think it shows you the beginning of a framework of what I would call a populist nationalist idea about antitrust and about taking on these oligarchs.
- [17:51]
Josh Green
Let me ask you, people don't think of you as this necessarily, but you were actually, in a manner of speaking, a two time Trump Official because you served in the Trump FTC and you had a long and glorious, what was it like, seven day run as director of CFO 1313. Oh, that's more than a Scaramucci. So you look. But you, in all seriousness, you've had, it seems to me, a variety of experiences with Trump and his policy impulses when it comes to antitrust and other things. I remember you were at FTC when they first went after Facebook. You did some cracking down on companies that had abused the made in America label. I remember that Republicans were against, but I believe Trump spoke out in favor of that. So you've seen all sides of the. I mean, how serious do you think he is about pursuing an agenda that would really police big tech and stand up for little tech companies, a lot of whom don't think they really have a voice.
- [18:50]
Unknown Speaker
Well, I'm not his therapist or psychoanalyst, but I guess I'd say this. When you actually look at the people, the people that were put on the Federal Trade Commission in 2018, most of them were voting with big pharma, big tech, those guys. Over time you saw some shifts. We ended up voting out the Facebook complaint. Two Democrats, one Republican against two very pro monopoly Republicans. So we'll see how it plays out. There are some warning signs. I have no idea why they would fire. Well, I was going to say two federal trade commissioners.
- [19:34]
Josh Green
Is that a positive when you fire the Democrats from the.
- [19:37]
Unknown Speaker
Well, it's also like, why fire them? They're the ones who are also on board with going after some of this concentrated power, standing up for little companies, for little pharmacists, for little grocers. And the list goes on and on. I don't know what that was about, but I think this is now the question, are we going to see a repeat of 2018 or is Steve going to be right, that there's going to be some big changes?
- [20:03]
Rohit Chopra
See, I think that's an evolution of our party. I think we're getting more populous and more nationalist. Like in 16, we came out of nowhere to win. We've had in those four years at interregnum, President Trump and you see the relationships he built and who he's put in. People should understand. I am banned on every platform. I'm banned in perpetuity on Facebook, on YouTube, yeah. Twitter, Spotify, I can go through every. I'm banned. The show is the number one or number two podcast in the country, essentially. You know, if you look at Pod Save America, we're generally in back of them. I'm banned everywhere. I was debanked. After January, after we. After President Trump went back to Mar a Lago, all my banks fired me, all my law firms fired me. I had big name law firms, all me, all my credit cards were canceled. I went to federal prison.
- [20:54]
Unknown Speaker
Right?
- [20:54]
Rohit Chopra
I've seen the power of the state. And you know what I say to them? Go fuck yourself. Right? We're going because you have to. Otherwise they're out to crush you. Don't think I'm any different than any of you guys. You raise your head up against the apparatus and they're going to do the exact same thing to you. This is why I think there's much more commonality. The potential fusion of I think we do have is much deeper behind the scenes and much deeper as we get back to actually what is populist, what is economic nationalism? How do you defend the little guy? How do you defend the entrepreneur? How do we get back to our entrepreneurial roots as a country?
- [21:30]
Unknown Speaker
Right?
- [21:31]
Rohit Chopra
And it's a struggle. And we're not going to agree on everything culturally, we're not going to agree on everything politically. But when I look at the battlefield, I feel pretty good. I feel that there's a natural reaction to the Facebooks and to the Silicon Valley crowd and to the Wall street.
- [21:45]
Steve Bannon
Crowd with what's happening in artificial intelligence, what's happening with this, this conflict, this economic war against the Chinese Communist Party, all of it. Obviously, technology plays a huge role in these oligarchs of the big five or six, you know, combined companies. And this is one of the reasons that, about this whole Zuckerberg trial on Facebook, that is. That is so important. And President Trump, I think, is taking a very firm stand and having our back. I love that conference. I really appreciate the folks, the folks inviting me, which I thought was pretty extraordinary, very controversial in them, but we had a. Had a terrific time. The second part of that, and I think you'll see some of the audience response supporting our positions. We're going to play right as we get into the next hour right now, two things. Birchgold Gold has been all over the place, but it's been on a tear. The greatest increase in gold in one day, 100 bucks, happened yesterday. Make sure you understand it's not the price of gold, it's the process. It's the convergent forces that make gold a hedge and make gold a store of value, particularly in turbulent, turbulent economic times. One thing I can tell you, we're going through a fourth turning, so the times are going to be turbulent. Financial markets are going to be turbulent and you need to understand this. One of the reasons we do the show. Go to birchgold.com Two things you can get. Number one, take your phone out and just text is very simple. Bannon at 989-898 get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals in the era of Trump. This is actually an introductory totally free. You get up to speed. Also you can get totally free the end of the dollar empire. Remember the Chinese Communist Party's run around trying to de dollarize the world's economic system. This is one of the ways they think they can really strike at us to take the gold off being the prime reserve currency. Now we make the argument in this series which is totally free that hey, maybe we don't want to be the prime reserve currency because it comes with a whole lot of global responsibilities. But that has to be a national debate and that's something that would take years for us to kind of unwind. The Chinese Communist Party wants it to happen overnight as a blow a strike against the United States of America and her citizens. The end of the dollar empire the six free go to end of the dollar empire burchgold.com Bannon make sure that you get the six free installment. They're all free but the six free installment. Modern monetary theory, the idea that broke the world. This will get you up to speed quite frankly, even for the debates on debt and the debates on the deficits, all of it. So make sure you get it and read it. And every day we talk about this, it's something you ought to get up to speed on. One more thing the we needed at the ramparts. You heard Mike Davis earlier in the day, the viceroy say you've had just a massive impact on the judiciary to getting their attentions, particularly on the impeachment of Boasberg. We don't need you tied up particularly if somebody gets into your your title and monetizes and takes out a second mortgage on it or sells your property. Right now home Title lock has a 1 million trip dollar triple lock protection. Was it due 24 hour coverage in the middle of the night. If anything happens, if everybody's messing with your title, you get an alert, okay? If all else fails, you get $1 million a restoration fund, a $1 million restoration project to make sure that your title comes back to you clean and you don't owe anything. Go talk to Natalie Dominguez at home title lock and do it today. Don't wait. Find out all the information from her. Here's how you do it. Hometitleock.com Steve just Steve. That's hometitleock.com promo code. Steve, do it today. The one million dollar triple lock protection. Okay, we take a short commercial break. We'll come back. I'm going to set it up. I want to get you into more of this, of this conference that I spoke at. Really want to thank the people over at Y Combinator. It was done over at the Gallup headquarters. Quite beautiful. The old Masonic hall that is very famous in Washington D.C. president Grant used to, used to frequent it a lot, a lot of the reconstruction they said of the United States after the Civil War was done there. So we're going to leave you with modern day holy war. I'm going to be back in just a moment.
- [26:14]
Unknown Speaker
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- [27:00]
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- [28:45]
Steve Bannon
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- [29:59]
Unknown Speaker
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- [30:18]
Steve Bannon
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- [31:22]
Steve Bannon
Use your agency.
- [31:23]
Unknown Speaker
Action. Action Action.
- [31:25]
Josh Green
War Room.
- [31:27]
Rohit Chopra
Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.
- [31:33]
Steve Bannon
Okay, that was. That was obviously American heart. Not Modern Day Holy War, American Heart from the great John Khan, of course, Modern Day Holy War. Some of our other ALP music is from the incredible lady. No Grady, that's Nicole. No Grady. I love that song. Love John Khan's song. And we always go out or try to go out with the right stuff. Sometimes we do Billy Joe Shaver on those kind of days with Get Behind Me Satan. Get the Behind Me Satan, which is always a good one certain days. Welcome back. We're going to do a little more of the of the conference and I'm going to come back and give you some of my closing thoughts. Thoughts. One thing here is that President Trump and this is what he's going after, the Charlie Gasparino story that we talked about this morning with Dave Brat that he's now going to go after the money center, banks. Everything President Trump's trying to do, if you look at it, is to support the forgotten man and woman. This is why this was a conference of entrepreneurs, of kind of people getting, you know, friends and family round angel rounds, initial venture capital. And what they wanted, what they're trying to promote, and that's why they're in Washington, D.C. is a sense of competition, how important it is to have the entrepreneurial spirit. Will listen, nothing has the entrepreneurial spirit more than one Donald Trump. He is the ultimate entrepreneur of what he's done. The real estate area, media, every, all of his endeavors. But also he supports entrepreneur, one of the most powerful driving focuses we have in the MAGA movement, in the Make America Healthy Again movement. You think about it, you're against big tech, you're against big Pharma, you're against these big faceless kind of heartless corporations that are just looking to do everything grinded out to the bottom line. There can be nothing that maga's more opposed to. And that's why I was very proud to speak at this conference. I will tell you in this conference, and I'm not saying it was a hostile environment, but it's an environment of folks that don't listen to war room and really haven't had access to what we've been trying to promote over the last couple of years, it was a very warm reception at the end. They agree with a lot that we had to say. And because it really is put forward President Trump's message that he's trying to stand up for the little guy, he's trying to stand up for the forgotten man and woman. And this is if you see everything that he's working on, every one of the verticals, whether it's national security, of which he wants to stop the forever war so that young men and women's lives are just not thrown away on these foreign battlefields. To everything to his national, his economic nationalism, which is really focused on the American citizen and making sure they have a better deal or the best deal and that their tax dollars are not thrown out and just come back to hurt them and to hurt their economic well being. Everything President Trump does is really in defense of the little guy, the forgotten man or woman. That's why it was in his first inaugural address, the American carnage address had a little bit to do with and very proud that President Trump allowed me to do that because you see, his direction was standing up for the little guy. Okay, we got a little more, a few more clips of this to play from this conference. Rohit Chopra is the other executive and Josh Green is the, is the moderator from Bloomberg News, one of the biggest reporters over there on, like I told you, the terminal in Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Business Week. Very, very powerful in the financial community. Let's go ahead and play the tape and I'll come back with some closing observations and commentary in a couple of minutes.
- [35:00]
Rohit Chopra
So I think there's, I think there's, I think there's a great future for populism, how we define it in economic nationalism.
- [35:08]
Josh Green
Let's broaden the aperture a little bit beyond the U.S. steve, you've been quite active in supporting populist right wing causes not just here but across the globe and in Europe. Trump has two supporting populist politicians. In December, when he nominated Gail Slater, he said, quote, big tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector. I think he posted that on Truth Social. Given that Europe is grappling with many of the same policy issues in regard to big tech. Do you support and should Trump support the EU's efforts to crack down on big players like Apple and Google in an effort to open up markets overseas?
- [35:46]
Rohit Chopra
I do agree with trying to stop these people anywhere we can because I think they've gotten too much power. I would like to see instead of, you know, you have 75 electric vehicle companies, but you have one search company, right? We should have 100 search companies. We should have, you know, Facebook. We should have 100 alternatives. The only thing that holds me back about the Europeans is that there's no more corrupt system than the EU and what they do. Right? These are still the, it's still the monarchists, it's still the aristocracy, right. That most of our Families, you know, many generations ago came away from. This is why I so detest the established order in Europe. And I'm a big supporter of kind of these right wing populist nationalists which. Each one's different, right? And each one's got its own characteristics, as it should in these countries. But we have a long fight over there. Look, it shouldn't be lost to anybody. They tried to put Trump in prison for 300 years. Bolsonaro's on trial for his life. Life. They're going to find him guilty in the show trial. They're putting him in a prison. He's going to be assassinated or they're going to attempt to assassinate him. And Le Pen, he's up by 20 points in the poll. And they're putting. Le Pen now has a four year prison sentence and can't run for reelection. That may all be worked out, but that is what this kind of judicial, what I call insurrection is coming against the populist right. And we have to just power through it.
- [37:03]
Unknown Speaker
I don't think we should outsource source anything to Europe. But I will say this. When they've been doing all their committees after their laws, the people who are actually going and using that process to challenge big gatekeepers from squelching them out are a lot of little American companies because they want access to that market too. So I don't know. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our own work here. We should not allow Facebook's Libra currency scheme to come back again. We should not have these new types of dollars that big tech companies control and can wall everyone out of. We should be passing laws and doing work here in Washington in every single state. And there are so many issues, issues where I think there's a lot of agreement, child and teen privacy and exploitation of them, counterfeit goods and labeling. I mean, the list goes on and on. And the big tech companies have fought every single step of the way and we should fight against that.
- [38:17]
Josh Green
It's Liberation Day. I'm sure you all have heard. I'd love to get a preview from Steve. But what I really want to ask you about is can the US and Europe effectively regulate tech companies at the same time that they're waging a trade war? Or will Trump wind up inadvertently helping big tech in an effort to jam the eu?
- [38:43]
Rohit Chopra
I think they're kind of two separate things. I think today, and I think in the rose Garden at 4 o'clock, we're going to find out. I'm not so sure this decision has been made. I mean, I'm for reciprocity. And I realize there's some legal issues with that because I want to expose to the world how we've been taken advantage of by the political class in the United States, the globalists on Wall street with these trade relationships with people that we pay for their defense that have hosed us for decade after decade after decade. And that all rolls down to the little guy. So I'm from reciprocity and tough reciprocity. I don't think that may happen. I think there may be some tiered of 20% of some tiered system which will be fine and they'll use the emergency measures to implement that. But I think we have to think about and focus on bringing high value added manufacturing jobs back here to the United States. And not assembly jobs. The guys at Ford bitch and moan all the time. Well, we manufacture all this and we're going to lose a billion dollars. No, you don't. You assemble. We need to bring high value added manufacturing jobs back here to the United States of America. People say we're manufacturing more than ever. There's 400,000 unpaid. No, we assemble. We need to manufacture here. We need to rebuild the greatness of our industrial base. And we can do it at the same time, we have to break up tech and give more access to capital entrepreneurs. We can do all that, none of this. The Republicans, when I first got, got into the politics here with Andrew Breitbart 12, 14 years ago, this kind of Austrian school of economics and all this, it was like they thought it was a natural property. They thought this was like the second law of thermodynamics. It's not. It's all human agency. We've proven this in this populist movement and getting people engaged and involved. The little guy who's engaged and involved now in politics. So we can do this and we can build a system that's closer to the imperial American plan that Alexander Hamilton and the great founders of our country set up in the 19th century that we can recreate here and become an economic superpower again. A true economic superpower based upon people. Not that.
- [40:46]
Unknown Speaker
What?
- [40:46]
Rohit Chopra
In the last six months, the top 1% have accreted another $4.5 trillion of wealth to themselves. More than gone to the bottom 50%. We have a capitalist system, our quote unquote capitalist system with no capital. And that's what we have to change. And we can change. All of this can be done. Don't think we have to take down the system and to do that. You have to be relentless. You have to be prepared to be banned, to be debanked, to be shut out and to go to prison. If you're not prepared to do that, you're not prepared to take on this system and win.
- [41:19]
Josh Green
But getting back to the question of Europe, is Trump willing to let the EU crack down on American companies like Google, like Apple, or will he dig in his heels and want to retaliate?
- [41:30]
Rohit Chopra
I don't think it's going to be retaliation against that. I think it's going to be retaliation against manufacturing and the German car companies and all that.
- [41:37]
Unknown Speaker
So you don't think that, you don't.
- [41:39]
Josh Green
Think that bleeds over into tech policy.
- [41:42]
Rohit Chopra
To a degree, but I don't think it'll be the driver.
- [41:44]
Unknown Speaker
Also, the big, big ticket item is on China.
- [41:46]
Rohit Chopra
Yeah.
- [41:47]
Unknown Speaker
So we'll. Right now you have a lot of the largest tech giants saying you need to listen to us and favor us to compete with China. I think if anyone gets distracted by that argument, we are in trouble.
- [42:03]
Rohit Chopra
But here's the horrible thing of that argument. Their failure in being given the Faustian pact of allowing them to become oligarchs. They failed in TikTok, they failed in social media. Clearly they're not as good and they failed in AI. They want to bail out at least $500 billion and the national labs will be turned over to them. They also put the gun to your head and say, hey, you can't regulate us now because you need national champions because the Chinese Communist Party has a fleet around Taiwan. That's a struggle we're going to have to go through and we cannot agree to that. We can't agree to bailout. We can't agree to turn the national labs over to them, the weapons labs for AI. And we certainly, we certainly can't genuflect, as you're so rightly pointing out, about the issue with the Chinese Communist Party.
- [42:50]
Josh Green
Rohit Democrats have been despondent by the results of the November election. With the exception of last night's victory in Wisconsin, it's been a pretty rough ride. A number of folks I talked to do see glimmers of hope on the antitrust front with the nomination of Gail Sleep. Other folks we've talked about. What are your thoughts? Steve's talked a lot about this idea of a populist cross party alliance. What are your thoughts on that? How realistic do you think it is as you look ahead at the landscape over the next couple of years? And you know, as somebody who's worked under Trump who's clashed with Elon, who thinks a lot about the policy issues at the heart of all this.
- [43:32]
Rohit Chopra
Are you hopeful?
- [43:34]
Josh Green
Are you despondent? How should people think about this?
- [43:37]
Unknown Speaker
I mean, look, I'm happy that some of them are using the policy ideas developed by Lina Khan and others who really came and started and lit a match on all of this. And if that is leading others to change, good. I just want to go back to. I still think it comes down to. You saw anger across the board after the Wall street bailouts, Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party, the whole thing. Most people yesterday in Congress, every single Republican except nine of them voted to like raise overdraft fees for people. There is maybe going to be agreement on certain places. But right now, those big oligarchs and big, big corporate royalty are still calling the shots in Washington.
- [44:30]
Josh Green
Do you disagree with that?
- [44:31]
Rohit Chopra
No. They own this city. If you try to go for them legally, you can't get a law firm because they hire the law firms. They have all the lobbyists. They have tremendous power in Capitol Hill. That's why our movement is in its very early stages. And with President Trump at the top of the ticket, we can win national elections. As it proved last night, since we have low propensity voters, we built those low propensity voters. I'm the first to admit we have a tough time otherwise and we have to build an apparatus that can do that. But it's going to come from, I think it was only one in the Senate. Josh Hawley, I think is the only person that voted, only Republicans. So we have a ton of work to do. I'm not sure so many of the elected officials in the House or the Senate are populist economic nationalists. We're still run in a neoliberal, neocon mentality. But I think, think I believe and if you look at Stoller, you look at yourself, Lina Khan. I believe since I would posit the Democratic Party in the official apparatus of it, abandon you guys who had some great ideas, great ideas that we as populist nationalists are getting a whole team to hopefully implement at least some of them, that there's much more that fusion to me is more important than the fusion with the big tech bros. We have to deal with political reality as we have it right now. But our party is only going to become more working class and more middle class. And I think that will tend to the future.
- [45:51]
Josh Green
Our time is ticking down. But Trump also got rid of populists like Rohit. So Rohit, Steve's talked a lot about the positive idea of an alliance. But just as a last question, what's the worst case scenario for you? What do you stay up at night worrying about?
- [46:06]
Rohit Chopra
True.
- [46:09]
Josh Green
Note that we only have 90 seconds.
- [46:10]
Unknown Speaker
Well, to me, I'm actually, I'm not crying and despondent. All of us are working on how we figure out how to reclaim power and to actually make sure that this economy is working. And I think that we'll see if anyone in this administration will do it. I'm going to be watching on big mergers like Capital One Discover. I'm going to be watching, like Steve is saying, the Google case, Facebook case. There's some places where I'm going to be watching really closely to see. But I really hope that this is the status quo is so broken and just we need to move and turn the page.
- [46:55]
Rohit Chopra
Jake Sherman said yesterday, because I've been a huge proponent of this tax extension of the taxes that given where we are with cuts that have to be made are just not going to be made, given the financial situation of having to refinance all this debt and what the burden is putting on working class and middle class people that I don't see any scenario that we can extend the tax cuts for the upper bracket. It can't happen. And Jay Sherman went around yesterday and.
- [47:22]
Steve Bannon
I love Jay Sherman.
- [47:23]
Rohit Chopra
I think it's fantastic. He said he couldn't find, find one representative in the Republican side.
- [47:27]
Josh Green
No, they laughed at the idea.
- [47:29]
Rohit Chopra
They laughed at the idea. Chip Roy came on War Room this morning and absolutely agreed with me and says behind the scenes there are a lot of people. The litmus test for me early on, besides all the great work the guys at Justice Department are doing on Google and other things like that and the FTC is this tax situation. If the wealthy are not prepared to help us get control of spending, particularly defense spending and actually align defense spending with our hemispheric defense that President Trump has laid out. The defense budget has to be cut. And I say this as a guy that spent eight years as a naval officer. My daughter went to West Point. I'm not a dove. The defense budget's out of control. It has to be cut right before you touch anything else. And we have to raise taxes. We cannot extend the tax cuts for the wealthy. Their taxes have to increase.
- [48:18]
Steve Bannon
I'll bet you that room was 80%. Combination of Democrat and libertarian people that normally wouldn't agree with a lot of stuff we talk about on a lot of the ideas we talk about in the show. But there was a lot of support at the end of this, I would say overwhelmingly in the room. And that means people just need exposure to these ideas. They need the exposure unfiltered, disintermediated from the mainstream media. And that's what we hope to do. That's why I'm doing more of these conferences, going to more on this type of, on this type of media. We're going to have a killer show tomorrow and get to a lot of the finances of what's happening this week, particularly the time at the capital markets revolt against President Trump. I don't think anything would be farther from the truth, although we will get into it. This reconciliation bill I believe needs to be broken down for people and the war room posse is going to break it down. We're going to break it down together because you're going to be at the ramparts on the fight of this because nothing could be, nothing can be absolutely bigger. Remember the 25 to 30 folks minimum that wanted to vote against it basically said, okay, we'll start the process. We trust in the president, we actually trust in leadership that they're not going to try to screw us. So we're going to have see, we're going to check all of that. 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow we will be live and I'll be here with a number of guests that will make it the Saturday show, the great show that we always have. And my favorite show of the week reminds me I was delivering papers and cutting grasses when I was a small kid. Saturday was the workday with my dad and, and then getting the job done with my own little entrepreneurial side hustles. Okay, Birch Gold. Make sure I want everybody over the weekend. It's a study weekend to get up the learning curve. Gold's been on fire setting all time records every couple of days blowing through the greatest one day move in. At least the modern history of gold was 100 bucks. Since people are monitoring this, I mean gold's not supposed to do that. Gold is a hedge. Gold's a store of value. Why is it moving like this? This is what you need to talk to Philip Patrick and the team over at Birch Gold. So just take your phone out. Go Bannon B A N N O N at 989-898 you get the free ultimate guide on investing gold. More importantly, you get to. You get a relationship with Philip Patrick's team and that's what you need. Go there today and just remember, just get physical gold. Okay? We're going to leave you with the right stuff. I love ending with the song because it gets you jacked up. It's so beautiful.
- [50:40]
Unknown Speaker
Off a classic book by Tom Wolfe.
- [50:43]
Steve Bannon
An incredible movie by Philip Kaufman. I think it's a classic. Didn't get appreciated at the time, although got nominated for seven Academy Awards. The one they came away with, I think came with a couple, but best score, best music, and that was by Bill Conti. That's rich. Going out. The right stuff. We leave you with the right stuff. We will see you back in the war room tomorrow morning, Saturday at 10:00am Eastern Daylight Time. See you then. Health isn't just a personal issue. It's a family issue, a community issue. We're living in unpredictable times. Supply chains can break down, hospitals can get overwhelmed. And let's not even start on the natural disasters. These aren't hypotheticals. They're happening. You see it here in the war room and we all know it. The question is simply, are you ready? That's where Jace comes in. This isn't just a kit. This is a Jace case. It's a lifeline. It's a personal supply of prescribed emergency medications that puts the power back in your hands. Whether it's an unexpected illness or a global disruption of supply chains, you can act fast and protect yourself and your loved ones. This February, show them you care in a way that really matters. Be prepared. Get the Jace case today so you'll have the right meds on hand the moment you need them. Visit jacemedical.com and use the code Bannon B a N n o N at checkout for a discount on your order. That's Jace medical.com promo code Bannon. Get the Jace case and do it today.
- [53:33]
Unknown Speaker
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- [54:09]
700,000Americans every year. Yes, heart disease is the number one killer every year, year in and year out. Heart disease builds over time. Hypertension, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, diabetes, all of it affects our heart. A healthy heart is key to being energetic. As we get older, it is never too early to take care of your heart. You see, heart disease sneaks up on us. You can start in your 30s, and when this happens, you're at serious risks.
- [54:37]
Steve Bannon
By the time you turn 60.
- [54:38]
Unknown Speaker
If you want to take care of of your heart and those you care about, please go to war room health dot com. That's war room health dot com all one word, war room health dot com use the code war room at checkout to save 67% of your first shipment. That's code war room at checkout to save 67%.
- [54:57]
Rohit Chopra
And do it again.
- [54:58]
Unknown Speaker
War Room Health, all one word, War Room Health dot com. Go there today. You need if you're going to be part of the posse, you need a strong heart.
- [55:07]
Steve Bannon
You need a lion's heart.
- [55:08]
Unknown Speaker
How we're going to do that is with salty. Go there, do it today. Check it out.