KIRK ASSASSINATION HEARING EXPLODES AS BANNON RIPS ELECTION THEFT | WAR ROOM AM W STEVE BANNON | JULY 9TH, 2026

Summary

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Real America’s Voice: WAR ROOM AM with Steve Bannon

Episode: KIRK ASSASSINATION HEARING EXPLODES AS BANNON RIPS ELECTION THEFT
Date: July 9, 2026
Podcast/Host: iHeartPodcasts / Steve Bannon

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Episode Overview

This episode of WAR ROOM AM with Steve Bannon dives deep into urgent political flashpoints: the explosive hearing on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, allegations and fears of renewed election theft in 2026, and America’s broader political stakes at home and abroad. It connects historical context, populist grassroots activism, current events, and projections for U.S. geopolitical and cultural direction. Frequent references to history, strategy, and political figures anchor the rapid-fire commentary and roundtable debate. The tone is combative, urgent, and peppered with historical analogy, with frequent calls to action for listeners.

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Key Discussion Points and Notable Segments

1. State of the Republican Party and American Democracy

[01:04–03:03]

• Analysis of the Democratic Party’s process for replacing their Maine Senate nominee, emphasizing the requirement for candidates to gather grassroots support.
• Bannon criticizes Senate GOP leadership, particularly Mitch McConnell, questioning McConnell’s health, transparency, and ongoing public office service:

  “On June 14th he was hospitalized... He has not missed a paycheck. He is getting the health care that he needs. And there are a lot of Americans across this country where that is not their reality, in their situation.” (Stephen K. Bannon, [01:59])

2. Election Integrity and Suppression Tactics

[03:03–07:27]

• Host and guests revisit 2020 “election theft” allegations and warn of new attempts at voter suppression ahead of November:
  • Use of “suppression tactics,” federal overreach, and local monitors in Michigan.
  • Prediction that Democratic victories are “suppressed” only by GOP manipulation, not voters’ will.

    “The only way... for where we stand right now is if they suppress the vote. And that’s what they’re trying to do.” (Political Commentator, [04:31])

• Bannon worries about potentially violent outcomes from “people who believe the lie” about election fraud, drawing direct lines to January 6th parallels.
• Discussion on Trump’s strategy:

  “He stakes out an unreasonable position... then he escalates to, to further rhetoric and inspires his, his supporters to use extralegal methods... he doesn't have a plan B... his plan is to make it harder for people to vote and easier for him to cheat.” (Political Analyst, [05:02])

3. Populism, Grassroots, and the MAGA Base

[07:35–16:04]

• Bannon contextualizes current events with American Revolutionary history, then highlights the importance of grassroots organizing for the MAGA movement, using redistricting victories in Texas and Virginia as examples.
• Urges a hard line on immigration (“10 year hiatus” and mass deportations), warning against “open border Nullification Projects.”
• Criticizes political operatives who are “showing [Trump] false data,” and celebrates Make America Healthy Again as a “grassroots movement” that aligns with MAGA.
• Notes the “small-dollar donors have dried up” and calls for programmatic clarity to reinvigorate the base.

4. Geopolitical Urgency: Iran, The Middle East, and the 'Red-Green Alliance'

[18:24–32:33]

• Calls for ending U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, especially direct action against Iran, in favor of economic warfare:

  “No oil to the Chinese Communist Party. No cash money to the Persians. … Let them go hungry.”

• Guest Jim Rickards, strategic intelligence expert, presents three options for Trump regarding Iran: surrender/withdraw (“the best path”), stalemate, or escalation—all fraught with risks.
• Advocates for financial warfare over military escalation:

  “Financial warfare... is far more powerful than people realize... The dollar is still king of the Hill and strangle them financially... No Iranian oil on the market.” (Jim Rickards, [30:38])

• Emphasizes the importance of keeping gas prices low as a factor in domestic election outcomes:

  “The key is you got to get the price of gas, keep it coming down. American people will give you credit for that. … That’s the best advice I can give the Republicans.” (Jim Rickards, [32:19])

5. The Turkish-Greek Dynamic and Lessons from Antiquity

[34:10–37:06]

• Andy (executive director, Hellenic American Leadership Council) provides broader historical context, linking ancient Greek-Persian struggles to modern US-Iranian tensions.

  “Themistocles knew when the Athenians had won the Battle of Marathon... the Persians were going to come back with greater force. … That lesson in strategy and forethought…” (Andy, [35:27])

• Warns about Turkey’s Erdogan, describing him as seeking to restore the Ottoman Empire merged with political Islam, with negative regional and religious implications.

  “They're slowly wiping out Christianity and its historic homelands. We should not play along.” (Andy, [41:56])

6. Western Civilization’s Roots and Cultural Commentary

[45:11–50:14]

• Discussion pivots to the classical West, importance of Homer, the Iliad, Odyssey, and the value of reading the classics for understanding leadership and the roots of democracy.
• Critique of American educational decline in classical literacy:

  “More than 50% of incoming college freshmen haven’t read a book cover to cover. We need people to start picking up books again.” (Andy, [47:05])

• Encouragement to study Plutarch’s Lives as a key text shaping the American founders’ understanding of democracy and republican liberty.

7. Historical Parallels and Strategic Geography

[50:14–53:05]

• Bannon draws lessons from Alexander the Great’s campaign into India and its punishing geography, relating it to today’s U.S. strategic dilemmas in the Middle East:

  “Yard for yard where we're bombing today, right? ... And these are. This was Alexander the Great's unbeatable army... By the time he got past Carg island and got to Babylon, Alexander the Great was gone in six months.” (Steve Bannon, [50:52])

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Notable Quotes

• Steve Bannon ([01:59]):
  “On June 14th he [McConnell] was hospitalized... He has not missed a paycheck. He is getting the health care that he needs. And there are a lot of Americans across this country where that is not their reality in their situation.”
• Political Commentator ([04:31]):
  “The only way... for where we stand right now is if they suppress the vote. And that’s what they’re trying to do.”
• Political Analyst ([05:02]):
  “[Trump] stakes out an unreasonable position... then he escalates to, to further rhetoric and inspires his, his supporters to use extralegal methods... he doesn't have a plan B... his plan is to make it harder for people to vote and easier for him to cheat.”
• Steve Bannon ([07:12]):
  “I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this. This country will be saved.”
• Jim Rickards ([30:38]):
  “Financial warfare... is far more powerful than people realize... The dollar is still king of the Hill and strangle them financially... No Iranian oil on the market.”
• Andy ([35:27]):
  “Themistocles knew when the Athenians had won the Battle of Marathon... the Persians were going to come back with greater force. … That lesson in strategy and forethought…”
• Andy ([47:05]):
  “More than 50% of incoming college freshmen haven’t read a book cover to cover. We need people to start picking up books again.”
• Steve Bannon ([50:52]):
  “Yard for yard where we're bombing today, right? ... And these are. This was Alexander the Great's unbeatable army... By the time he got past Carg island and got to Babylon, Alexander the Great was gone in six months.”

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Additional Memorable Moments

• Bannon rails against mainstream media and warns of grassroots uprising:

  “The people have had a belly full of it... we're not prepared to have any more elections stolen in this country.”

• Historical analogies abound:
  References to General Washington’s Revolutionary War, John C. Calhoun and Nullification, Themistocles and Salamis, Battle of Thermopylae, Alexander’s campaigns, and the founding fathers’ classical education.
• Ongoing emphasis on activism:
  “This is a fight. We got to get back to basics. ... When the grassroots is involved, it's amazing what can happen.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------------------------|-------------| | Maine Dem. Party and concerns over leadership/health | 01:04–03:03 | | Election suppression, Trump, MAGA plans | 03:03–07:27 | | Bannon’s opening: history, populism, redistricting | 07:35–16:04 | | Geopolitical threats: Iran, CCP, economic/military options | 18:24–32:33 | | Turkish-Greek tensions, Erdogan and religious issues | 34:10–41:56 | | Culture/classics: Homer, Plutarch, U.S. founding philosophy | 45:11–50:14 | | Alexander the Great and strategic geography | 50:14–53:05 |

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Summary

This episode embodies the WAR ROOM’s turbulent, populist energy, linking the assassination hearing of Charlie Kirk with fears of systemic election manipulation and urgent global threats. Steve Bannon whips together founding-era history, grassroots activism, strong anti-establishment sentiment, and hardline policy prescriptions. Guests like Jim Rickards and Andy (Hellenic American Leadership Council) reinforce themes with analytic depth and historical context—from economic warfare against Iran to lessons from Themistocles for U.S. grand strategy. Throughout, there’s a call to look to history, organize the grassroots, and refuse to accept establishment narratives or solutions. For listeners, the message is clear: vigilance, activism, and an immersion in the classical roots of American liberty are vital in the face of existential threats—at home and abroad.

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Transcript

[Stephen K. Bannon]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing. It makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world.

[Steve]

How about something about a comedic tone?

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner. Yes. Listen to Armstrong and Getty on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joel Osteen]

What God started in my life, he's

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

going to finish the Joel Osteen Daily Podcast.

[Joel Osteen]

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. What was meant for my harm? Lord, I want to thank you. Right now, you're turning to my advantage.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

Your daily source of hope and encouragement.

[Joel Osteen]

Your second wind is on its way. God is about to breathe on your life in a new way.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

Listen to the Joel Osteen Daily podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your favorite podcast.

[Maine Democratic Party Representative]

The process that we have put in place to convene a nominating convention was voted on by those Maine Democrats. And that vote passed with over 82% of the vote, which is a full endorsement of the direction that we are taking to, to replace this nominee. We are of course going to require folks to talk to Maine voters in some way that's going to qualify them to be our U.S. senate nominee. Beyond just declaring their intent. What that will most likely look his petition collection from Maine Democratic voters across the state.

[Political Analyst]

I have no idea.

[Steve]

I have no idea how he's doing.

[News Anchor]

We should note the White House provided that audio to the news media. Mississippi now has reached out to McConnell's office for comment. We have not heard back.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Look, was it yesterday that it seemed like everybody and their mother and the Republican Party apparatus had a 20 minute conversation with Mitch McConnell. Now shout out to the staff and the comms people because they're like, make sure you say it was good and he had good things to say. But is it true that people have been speaking to Senator McConnell? And I think that this matters for one, because he's being paid by the taxpayers. But also two, I just keep going back to the fact that on June 14th he was hospitalized, he went to the hospital and he has not missed a paycheck. He is getting the health care that he needs. And there are a lot of Americans across this country where that is not their reality in their situation.

[Political Commentator]

Yeah, I agree.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

Should be.

[Political Analyst]

I agree.

[Political Commentator]

And someone else who said it on our air is Barbara Boxer. I want to play what she said. I thought it was really poignant.

[Steve]

This is a public office. We don't work in the private sector. And you need to just get out there with the truth. And I am stunned at what has been going on, and I don't think that the people should, should stand for it.

[News Anchor]

I think just to start us off tonight, I want to level set because I am proud of this table and I'm proud of the narrative of this show because close to a year ago, we first warned, we said he was

[Stephen K. Bannon]

going to steal the election.

[Joel Osteen]

And people were like, y' all are being dramatic.

[News Anchor]

This is where we would end up. And so having said that, it is also very, very important to hear a governor like Wes Moore, governor like Beshear and others lean into this conversation. It will be state officials, folks. At the end of the day, as a former state official, I can tell you it will be state officials who are going to be the bulwark from the governor on down across the state against what this administration has already got in the works, let alone what they're planning to do next.

[Political Commentator]

You know, it's interesting. Jack Smith was on our air last week and he said that he was absolutely concerned about this. And I think that someone of his stature saying that just magnifies how important this issue is. You look at the list of things that we're going to talk to Mark Elias about today, you have stuff where the Trump administration is withholding funds that are been earmarked for counterterrorism until states adhere to what they want is blackmailing states. It's a racket. You have this idea they're going to send local monitors into Michigan elections because they're uncomfortable what's happening there. So you're starting to see them roll out all the things they want to do, which is a suppression tactic.

[Steve]

Now, why are they doing that?

[Political Commentator]

Because where is he polling in the 30s? Right. In a free and fair election, this is a big Democratic win under what we know elections to be. The only way for that not to happen, for where we stand right now is if they suppress the vote. And that's what they're trying to do.

[Stephen K. Bannon]

I'm concerned about what people who believe the lie are willing to do. Same thing like the people who believe the big lie in 2020. I'm concerned about what people who believe this lie are willing to do this November and November's after that.

[Political Analyst]

Yeah, no, look, I think you're exactly right. I mean, you know, what we've seen is that Donald Trump has a progression that he goes through. He stakes out an unreasonable position. He raises the rhetoric around it. When that doesn't do what he wants it to do, he goes to court. When the courts, when he courts shut him down, he loses in court. Then he escalates to, to further rhetoric and inspires his, his supporters to use extralegal methods. Now, if what I sound, if what I just described sounds like what happened in 20, right, Donald Trump attacked mail in voting before the election. He attacked the election result afterwards. He went to court. When that didn't work, he then incited a violent insurrection. But, you know, you could look at what he did with immigration through the same lens. He demonized migrants, he increased the rhetoric. Then there were court cases about, for example, of him trying to send people out of the country to foreign gulags. And when that failed, you saw US Citizens being killed in street, in the streets in places like Minneapolis. And so, like, I very much worry that this November, as we head towards these elections, Donald Trump doesn't have a plan B that is like, okay, lower, lower, you know, costs reach to the center. He doesn't have that. He's got only one plan. And that is, as I said, it is to make it harder for people to vote and easier for him to cheat. And what happens is because it's really hard for him to pull that off because the courts have not gone along with it in the past. When that fails, Simone, what you are left with is him escalating the rhetoric. And then we've seen what happens.

[Steve]

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people's not got a free shot. All these networks lying about the people, the people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but

[Andy]

you're not going to stop it.

[Steve]

It's going to happen.

[Jack Armstrong]

And where do people like that go

[Steve]

to share the big lie?

[Jack Armstrong]

MAGA Media.

[Andy]

I wish in my soul, I wish

[Steve]

that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and

[Political Analyst]

what is my purpose?

[Jack Armstrong]

If that answer is to save my country, this. This country will be saved.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

War room.

[Jack Armstrong]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.

[Steve]

It is Thursday, the 9th of July, the year of our Lord 2026. Eric Metaxas. Not going to have him. What a day. Murder the day is the day that General Washington read the. Read the declaration to the troops, gather them down at Bowling Green in the battery, watching the elements of the British Expeditionary force come with 32,000 combat troops and between three and 400 combatants and the entire Royal Navy. He read it to him getting ready for the fight that was going to commence in a couple weeks, 250 years ago. We're going to cover all that. We have a truncated version today, just an hour of the war, and we're going to go live to the evidentiary hearing, or essentially a grand jury that you're sitting in as the grand jury members of the trial of the assassination of the great Charlie Kirk. And so we'll turn that over today and then we're going to be back at five. Looks like we're the. We're during the time that we get at least a 10 or 15 minute break. And Wendy Patrick will come up, give a summary of what's going on. But for those in the audience have been pretty vast watching this, which we think is quite, quite, quite important because every day we toss to Charlie Kirk at the noon hour for the Charlie Kirk shows. We still toss to the Charlie Kirk show, but we used to do it with the Charlie Kirk before he was assassinated out in Utah. We've got some of the war you just saw right there. They're starting to squirm before the release of information, declassified information regarding foreign involvement in the stealing of the 20 interference and stealing of the 2020 election. And then whatever happens afterwards, I hope either we expedite the Save America Act. If you can't expedite it, my recommendation is you've got a national security emergency and you should go. The President of the United States, Commander in Chief has a obligation and a duty to protect the vote in November, so it can't be stolen by these open border Nullification Project. Mandami Newsom Bass, the mayor of Chicago, Jacob Fry in Waltz in Minnesota, you go on and on the new mecca for transgenderism, which is Seattle, because they're all flooding in. There you go. These cities, they are more about nullification that John C. Calhoun. And we know where that led. This is leading to the same folks, same place, folks. As sure as the turning of the earth. They see MSNBC now, they're squirming and yammering. Squirm and yammer all you want. Get Mark Elias up there every day. Get Weissman up there every day, every show. Do it, bring it, bring your best. Because we're not stopping. We're not prepared to have any more elections stolen this country. We're not prepared to have the invasion of this country in the. With every foreigner in the world coming here and living off the American people. Should be no more. Should be a 10 year hiatus minimum on all quote unquote legal or what I say. The con and the scam. Immigration and then mass deportations. Saw Mike Howe yesterday in the great photos. Mike Howe rolling around the Capitol, you know, making people's heads blow up with the panel truck that had about mass deportations, had war room.org on the side of it. The mass deportation coalition is one of the. It's the fastest thing I've seen grown here since the Tea Party people are signing up. You should go over to their website right now because this is a fight. We got to get back to basics. The President's been shown false data, bad information. Yesterday I was honored to join Tony Lyons in this Make America Healthy Again call that takes place every, every Wednesday. I want to make sure we're going to start putting it up on our own sites on Getter and Rumble and all these other platforms which comes to, I don't know, 15 million people, 15 million eyes. We're going to start putting it up because it's a fascinating. And we'll start getting folks on the war room. It's a fascinating conversation every week. And I just joined to say, hey look, they came out to kind of handcuff Bobby Kennedy and handcuff Make America Healthy Again, which is a coalition partner. The power of Make America Healthy Again is that it's a grassroots movement. That's why there was such a nice easy fit from the very beginning. The concerned mothers about the education policies, what they saw their kids doing, the pandemic, what they saw about the vaccines, what they saw about everything dealing with fauci, the Children's Health Alliance, Children's Health Defense, excuse me, Mary Holland and the team we had them on. You know, Naomi, all these people, it was a natural fit, wasn't it? Why? Because they're grassroots power. That's why. They're a perfect fit with Make America Great Again, which is more in the economic nationalism and obviously the invasion of the country and all these issues. But they blend together and we have to have their back. And some of the political people around President Trump are showing him false data. How do I know that? We had Jeffrey, Jeffrey Tucker did the dominant poll to say by two thirds majority the American people support what President Trump and Bobby Kennedy are doing and Make America Healthy Again. That's why in this run up to this election. Because here's the theory of the case on the election because of redistricting in the fight that we led with Alex Degrasse and others. The grassroots in Texas, not the political staff of the White house. That's his BS. We were here in 22 and pick. Did the pick and chart work? I don't want to hear it. The political geniuses over there, all they do is piss away money. They've got the president so wrapped around the axle on his policies with falsely with giving false data that it's an open secret in town. The small dollar donors have dried up to nothing, to zero. Why in the third. And we know there can be enthusiasm. Look at Texas, look at Virginia. If you show people there's a program, and here's the program, here's what we're going to do and we're going to hit our marks. The MAGA movement will come out. They'll come out in droves. Just ask John Cornyn about that. Look at the reditioning in Virginia. You know, Ryer, the chairman of the gop, Dolores Stallman and all these great grassroots leaders in the Commonwealth of Virginia that rally people with no money. With no money. I mean, Spicers sit there. It's amazing what can happen when the grassroots is involved. But we got to get our mind right. We're in for a fight and we're in for the fight, really. The political fight of the MAGA movement in a midterm election when obviously the propensity to vote is much lower. You saw what's happening. And listen what happened to the Tea Party. Platner's. No, he's not a good guy. He's actually a very bad guy. But his economic message. And look, he's a socialist, but the Democratic Party is controlled more by donors than even Republican Party. They're controlled by oligarchs, oligarch duff that want to destroy the culture of this American republic. That's the dark money in back of Mandani. That's what came in and tried to. They said Platner is too radical economically, so they got him out of the way. I think they put Maine back in our column without Maine. And I've said, hey, we're going to lose the Senate because of Thune and we need a throwdown with Thune. Don't need to be hiring Johnny Vestafno be rubbing up on Thune. Thune's a loser. Done nothing but lose ever since he'd been in the Senate. Got tax cuts passed for his donors and that's it time to get serious. Divine providence may have worked in our favor. They went after they went and promoted a bad guy, finally got outed and I think Maine is now, you know, it's Collins's to lose. It's just a massive shift. And without Maine, they got a very, very tough Maine and North Carolina put them in a strategic advantage. Very tough in the house. Can we hold serve next in the war room?

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy

[Steve]

modern world about something about a comedic tone.

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner. Yes. Listen to Armstrong on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Joel Osteen]

What God started in my life, he's

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

going to finish the Joel Osteen Daily Podcast.

[Joel Osteen]

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. What was meant for my harm? Lord, I want to thank you. Right now you're turning to my advantage.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

Your daily source of hope and encouragement.

[Joel Osteen]

Your second wind is on its way. God is about to breathe on your life in an new way.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

Listen to the Joel Osteen Daily podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. War Room.

[Jack Armstrong]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban.

[Steve]

Okay, I want to thank in this kind of truncated shows we're doing this week because of the Charlie Kirk assassination coverage. I want to thank Birch Gold. Take your phone out. They've got a special that's going to run through tomorrow. A 1oz silver round with a qualifying purchase. Take your phone out, text Bannon at 989-898. Talk to Philip Pachter and the team today about what a qualifying purchase is. Might also want to ask him about, hey, can I get some free information that has no obligation to it to understand why gold has been a hedge for, I don't know, 5,000 years of man's history. Check it out today. Also, the great folks down in Texas, 972 Patriot Patriot Mobile. Call it right now. By the way, if you want to go have a prayer session, they'll pray with you. This is a Christian company with Christian values. Jenny and glenn story the best two hammers grassroots energy 972 Patriot find out why. Talk to the Customer service. Find out what's the best phone service in America. Check it out. Today, the Red Green Alliance. Who's talked about the first. Oh, I don't know. War room over at Breitbart, Trevor Loudon, these team. Frank Gaffney, everybody.

[Jim Rickards]

It's not. It's not.

[Steve]

It's not perfect, right? Got some little boomer in there. But it's a threat. It's a threat to this nation right now. We gotta get very serious about this war in the Middle East. I mean, here's how serious. Wrap it up. Economic warfare. Scott Bessen. Don't give him any more license to sell oil. Never again. Don't do it. That was a mistake. I know it wasn't your mistake, but it was a mistake. Don't do it. No oil. No oil to the Chinese Communist Party. No cash money to the Persians. No $6 billion to buy our foodstuffs. We'll find the farmers out in Iowa, Nebraska. Find somebody else to sell it to. No cash. Let them go hungry. They won't be dancing the streets like they were last Saturday. Five million of them. Does that lack empathy? Yes, it does, because I don't have empathy right now. We're in a war. We're in a shooting war. We have young Americans in harm's way in the Middle East. It's time to wrap that crap up and bring it home. It's a sideshow. And the Israel project is a sideshow to a sideshow. Israel. We can't merge the defense budgets. We can't merge the defense industrial base. We can't do any of it. Israel is a sovereign country. If they don't want to be a vassal state, and I know they hate when I say that, but, hey, if you don't want to be a vassal state and a protectorate, and you want to go, and you want to march to Beirut, you want to march to Damascus, which President Trump just took off the terrorist list, you want to march to Tehran, march.

[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

Go.

[Steve]

Go for it. You're a sovereign nation. Tough people. Idf. You got tough hombres over there. March. Get General Keane. Give him a field promotion. Get Mark Levin. Get that big mouth in the front tank. He talks a big game. Why don't he over there fighting? Is his family ever fought? Don't think so. Don't think so, Homie. Don't think so. Get in the front tank and go for it. Now's the time. We're coming home. We are coming home. And right now, politically, if you don't get that message once again, you're reading bad data and just think of who lied to you, who lied to commander Chief lied, who lied to the commander in chief, who gave him misrepresentation and bad information. They didn't fall in five days with strategic bombing and General Kane and Admiral Cooper, the American military delivered hammer blow the denuclearization. You went for total obliteration in June of last year and everybody thinks you did it. Don't know why you had to go back. But hey, even in going back those first couple of days, like you said, it's buried under a mountain of rubble. Enough said. You've done your duty, you've denuclearized. If they ever start getting fancy, send them back over and bomb again. Nobody cares. But bring everybody home. In war, constancy is important. Jim Rickards, we got a massive election and if we lose this, folks, trust me, the Trump revolution is going to come to a grinding halt because Jamie Raskin's already prepared to send, I don't know, 5 million subpoenas. Like day one, the White House is going to be Fort Apache. It doesn't have to be like that. We can hold serve in the House and we think, I think now with the Platner chaos, I think we can hold the Senate. It's going to be tough and you got to get enthusiasm and the grassroots. Only the grassroots, not the corporate donors, not the RNC fat cats. They run for the hills. Where's all your tech bros? Where's the tech bros? Now that you're talking about Reid Axios, I put the story up. Now that you're talking about, President Trump is very involved in putting in some sort of rudimentary regulatory apparatus because as President Trump said, I think we need some safeguards for this. You know why? Because he's seen these guys, looked them in the eyes. He knows these oligarchs are dangerous on the spectrum. Dangerous. You don't see them running in the Oval Office anymore. You don't see it because they're all left wing progressives, all of them. Jim Rickertz, I've asked you to come on today and change it up. We're going to have you and I really appreciate you coming on Jim for one reason. You've had a series of called shots, right? When I get you and Sam Faddex, these gray beards on here, you guys are just giving the best information. Give us your assessment, sir, particularly the complexity of what you're so good at. Strategic intelligence of that intersection of geopolitics, national security, military strategy and good old politics here in The United States of America, sir.

[Jim Rickards]

Thank you, Steve.

[Political Commentator]

Yeah.

[Jim Rickards]

Let me spend a couple minutes on Iran and then we'll pivot to domestic electoral politics in the midterm. So I was checking the news this morning and the Telegraph, which is a great UK paper, I like them because they publish my op eds, but they had a big headline story. It said, Trump has three choices. Surrender, stalemate or escalate. And I thought, where have I heard that before? We've been saying that on your show for three months. Basically, those are the past. Now, that's a good framework for analysis, but it begs the question, okay, which one of those are you actually going to do? And they all have problems now. Surrender, withdrawal, retreat, some kind of paper, whatever it takes, get home, exactly what you were just saying is the best path, and then just get working full time on the. On the elections. Stalemate won't work. It worked for a short period of time, but the world would run out of energy. If you don't reopen the Strait of Hormuz one way or the other, with tolls or without tolls, you're going to start shutting down a big part of the industrial economy. So that's a temporary fix, but not sustainable. And the third one is escalate. It won't work, but it has its attractions. My view that I'm not in favor of this, but just as an analyst, I would say if you want to escalate, forget about blowing up bridges and radar stations and all that, go get the highly enriched uranium. I mean, it would take division strength, meaning 10,000 troops, security perimeter, special operations, all the intelligence you can get. It would take a lot and there would be casualties. And by the way, easy for me to say, I'm not jumping out of a helicopter, but that's one way to kind of end this once and for all. But I do think the retreat or escalation, sorry, the surrender path is the best one. But here's the problem. Iran won't let Trump do it. In other words, Trump actually was going down that road. But then all it takes is Iran firing missiles at a couple oil tankers. Now, can they physically close the strait? Can they interdict every vessel? Do they have that kind of. No, they don't, but they don't have to. All they have to do is once a week or twice a month, blow up a couple tankers and that's enough. If you own the vessel, you're not sending it through, no matter what CENTCOM says. So there's kind of no, no good way out here. The, the best way out is to basically, as you say, get out. I agree with that. And then, you know, go. But you.

[Steve]

Hang on, hang on. But you. But you.

[Jim Rickards]

But you.

[Steve]

With economic warfare keeping. Look, we had them on their knees in January. This is why hundreds of thousands, if not millions, took to the streets. Now, 40,000 got killed, supposedly. Right, but that's the way to bring him to the knees. The option of getting out doesn't mean surrender. It means take care of the objectives you've got. Now, I will tell you, if we go down the route of which they put a division in, not only have we ended the Trump movement for eternity, we've rented the Republican Party for eternity. The American people are not going to tolerate that. I think there would be an overwhelming. 90% of people go, whoa, no way, baby. We were in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years. $9 trillion, 10,000 dead. That's just the military, not even the contractors, right? 50,000. You go on any street in America, you got homeless. So you gotta thread the needle here. But that's where you need constancy and kind of message. But look to me, Jim, help me out here. The mullahs aren't gonna listen until you hit them upside the head with something more than a bomb because they don't care how many people die and they don't even care how many mullahs die. But they get tens of thousands of mullahs. These are Persians. They've been doing this against the Greeks and the Romans forever. In fact, we're going to have the head of the Hellenic Council on next to talk about Turkey and the whole region as the Greeks see it, because they've been fighting this thing for 3500 years. So your plan of. I don't call it surrender, but let's get the hell out smartly, having accomplished our objective. Sir, your thoughts?

[Jim Rickards]

Right, But Stevie said we had them on. We had them on their knees three months ago. We had them on their knees in 2012. I mean, the guy who was actually good at this was Obama. Now, Obama threw in the towel too early and signed a lousy deal. But his conduct of financial warfare, that's what I did at the CIA for 10 years. I was a. Financial warfare was my specialty. And I spent a lot of time with the treasury and the Fed and the other branches of government. Scott Besson is just the guy to do this. But go behind the curtain into the international payment system, the dollar system, which still rules. Forget this devaluation trade and all that stuff. The dollar is still king of the Hill and strangle them financially. You're right. No Iranian oil on the market.

[Steve]

But, Jim, soon as Scott started doing that and we got traction, next thing you know, we sign an mou. The MOU was retarded, okay? On every level. To give them any access to their cash. They ain't got any cash. We're sweeping that cash now. The reconciliation bill's $350 billion, okay? 88 to $100 billion. That is what has cost us first off. All 50 billion they've got that we can get our hands on is our money. They cause this thing, that's our money. We shouldn't give them a penny. I don't care if they go hungry. They go hungry. They're going to get surly. If they get hangry, maybe they'd be overthrown. Some moolahs, which is what we need. We don't need them dancing in the street, singing Death to America at some funeral. We need them out there saying, hey, my belly's not full. Moolah I need.

[Andy]

Where am I getting.

[Steve]

Where am I going to eat? Shut the whole thing down economically with the most. With the most powerful economic force. And we control the swift system, right? We control the dollar. Just do it. Don't. Not one drop of oil to the ccp. What are we doing here? We're letting the CCP get our choke down the ccp at the same time when she comes over here in September. Let him be a supplicant. Let him be a supplicant. Hey, pretty please. Gotta get some more. Anyway records. Hang on for one second, right? I took your mic and started rant. You triggered me, man. You got me rolling here. Jim Rickards, Strategic Intelligence. We're also going to Greece. Are they taking the greatest legend in the west and turning into a transgender propaganda?

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[Steve]

How about something about a comedic tone?

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[Jack Armstrong]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Banner.

[Steve]

Rickards, the floor is yours. I took your mic yelling and screaming like a madman because my next guest is actually the the executive director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council. I've got so much, it gets me so worked up. Our forefathers in Greece and in Rome and been dealing in this neighborhood for 3,000 years. Let's take some lessons from them, okay? Because nothing's changed. Nothing has changed. Nothing. Jim Rickards, your thoughts, sir?

[Jim Rickards]

Well, first of all, Steve, you're exactly right about financial warfare. It's far more powerful than people realize. You have to know how to do it. There's a lot to it, but that can definitely be done. That's what we should do. So let's get to that. But I just want to pivot for a second. From Iran, everything we just discussed to the midterm elections. And believe it or not, they're very strongly linked. So here's the most important data in terms of the midterm elections. One year ago, gasoline prices, this is national average, regular, so not diesel, high test or anything else, was $3.16 a gallon. Today it's $3.84 a gallon. And two months ago, at the height of the war and the shortages and all that, it was $4.50 a gallon. Now the Democrats will say, hey, prices are higher. They're 22% higher than they were a year ago. And that's true. That's somewhat how the American people think about it. American people don't walk around with long term price charts in their heads. They ask themselves one question, is it going up or is it going down? Well, in the last month, it's come down 15%. It's gone from 450 to 384. And the American people say, okay, it's still a little high. Got it. But it's coming down. They'll give you credit for that. They'll say, all right, keep it going. And I said, now this, if I know it, the Iranians know it. Part of what they're doing, they're trying to get the price of gas at the pump, believe it or not. Talk about election interference. They're trying to get the price of the gas, of gas at the pump up again because they know that'll beat the Republicans in the midterms. Then you'll have Jeremy Raskin, you'll have impeachment, you'll have, you know, wealth confiscation. All the rest we don't know. They, I think the viewers are very familiar with the DSA communist program, et cetera. By the way, you're going to have 12 outright communists plus the squad in Congress come January. That's, that's almost a foregone conclusion. So the key is you got to get the price of gas, keep it coming down. It doesn't have to get to a year ago. It just has to come down. American people will give you credit for that. Just do whatever it takes. And that's the, that's the best advice I can give the Republicans.

[Steve]

I want to have you back on. I'll talk to you today, but I want to have you back on next week. I want to break this thing maybe Saturday or over the week to break this down in more detail because you've given great guidance so far. Where do people go? CG Intelligence. You've had a special people getting access to this now and love it. What do you got for us?

[Jim Rickards]

Thanks. Yeah, I talked to my team yesterday. They said this is the good news. We're going to extend our 4th of July offer. So we have this special offer, 1776. So $17.76 for strategic intelligence. You get three months for that price and then you have 30 days. If you don't like it, you can cancel full money back guarantee, no problem. And you can keep all the bonus reports. But for 1776, the landing page is RickardsIntel.com RickardsIntel.com but that's where you go to get the special offer. This is the cheapest has ever been and we love the 1776 handle, by the way, the special reports, the bonus reports you get with us about what we call the American birthright. It's basically the Trump administration opening up federal lands, drilling, exploration, Gulf of America oil, et cetera, and how investors can participate in that. And so 1776 rickardsintel.com Brother, thank you so much.

[Steve]

Appreciate you. Go check it out. 1770 can't go wrong. You're paying 18 bucks basically for three months of a great newsletter. You'll fall in love with it. But if you don't like it, you get to Jim, he'll give you your money back.

[Joel Osteen]

Andy,

[Steve]

is that how to pronounce the last name.

[Andy]

Close enough.

[Steve]

Okay. It sounds like you're Greek. You're executive director of Hellenic American Leadership Council. I want you on here for a couple things and we're going to hold you through the break. Already, I can tell that, number one, the Greeks been doing this with the Persians for a long time, correct?

[Andy]

That's right. And they got a great record. President Trump should have tagged in and should have tagged into Greeks if it

[Steve]

wasn't for you guys standing tall against overwhelming odds for some bad hombres. And these people are tough. We wouldn't have democracy as we know it today. Correct?

[Andy]

Yes. I mean, clearly there's a lot of literature and studies about this and we can go back to the original source, but if it wasn't for the Battle of Salamis and then the Spartans at 300 buying time for the rest of the Greeks to regroup, there would have been no west as we know it.

[Steve]

Go tell the Spartans as we say. Right. So what's the lesson? Give me the lesson that the White House, President Trump, National Security Council, our audience, what should be, if the Greeks were to give us, you know, if we go back in time and they were to give us both a warning and guidance, what would it be, sir?

[Andy]

Yeah, I would go to look to a singular figure that a lot of people don't talk about. They talk about Leonidas and they talk about Alexander the Great when it comes to the Persians. But I would look to Themistocles. Themistocles knew when the Athenians had won the Battle of Marathon that the Persians were going to come back with greater force. And he put the city on course to build the triremes to build these ships. And that's what those ships saved Western civilization. And that's something, that's the lesson, that lesson in strategy and forethought. Because it's really disheartening that we're getting checked in the Strait of Hormuz. America's the greatest naval power of all time. And we didn't think of how somebody with some cheap technology and drones and we also have to be thinking of their pirate. And what's horrible, what's horrible, horrible about this is what are the lessons that the Chinese are learning? If the Iranians can do to this and the Straits of Hormuz, what can the Chinese, who have significantly better technology anti Axis and area denial weaponry do to us in the South China Sea? So we have to think strategically. We shouldn't be thinking of, you know, we could just throw some force because we're not going to put troops, we're not going to put boots on the ground. There's no reasoning for putting boots on the ground. And so we should be looking to

[Steve]

Themistocles, by the way. Absolutely brilliant. Matt Boyle told me you were brilliant, but, man, Matt Boyle nailed it. That is one of the most intelligent things that have been said in the war in a long time. And we're going to get some information up so the war and posse can immerse themselves in it. Well, thinking strategically, it's a little bit changed because Islam kind of came to, you know, conquered the great civilizations of Egypt and Babylon and Persia and the Turks. So now we face, now we face the same cats, right? The same, the same dudes. And it's the same exact thing, except now they've got a kind of a fanatical religion that drives him. And you've got Erdogan. And I realize President Trump's close to Erdogan. He respects Erdogan. And Erdogan, look, he's a powerful guy. But you saw in that when President Trump arrived and we didn't have time because of Charlie's trial to show it. I will show it Saturday. Over the weekend, it was. And who's preached this gospel? They did this film about, you know, going around following me and I kept saying, erdogan is going to turn the Turks back to the Ottoman Empire. He wants to caliphate. He wants to control the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, just like they did before Lawrence and Arabia in World War I. That's his mission. President Trump shows up, it's like the Ottoman Empire, right? It's like Ataturk never arrived. Erdogan, this is his mission in life before he goes. You've been one of the most stalwart nations in having our back. Right. And you bring all these ancient lessons. The dangerous neighborhood of the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly with the Turks, their involvement in NATO, but particularly now, we're taking sanctions off, and I'm a sanctions guy. We're taking sanctions off and discussing selling the F35. Your thoughts? What do the Greeks think about that, sir?

[Andy]

Well, so I'm, you know, I think it's what you said. The closer Athens and Washington have been over, they've been on the same side of every conflict. As we celebrate our 250th birthday here in the United States. We got our founding fathers looked to the ancient Greeks for inspiration for our democracy. And Greece has always hit its NATO targets. Greece has given the US Major basing rights that the US Capabilities both in Ukraine and in the Middle east would have been different if it weren't for the basing rights they have in Greece. What you described. Absolutely correct on Erdogan. And even worse, because it's not only he wants to bring back in his eyes what was the glory of the Ottoman Empire, he marries it with 20th century political Islam. Erdogan is the leader presently of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle east. And we're seeing it in Syria. We're seeing it with his sponsorship of Hamas, we're seeing it with what he's doing elsewhere in the region in Libya. His previous tension with Egypt was about the Muslim Brotherhood, but he thinks the Ottoman Empire was great here. Let's quote this. After the US recognized the Armenian genocide, after Israel recognized Armenian genocide, here's an Erdogan quote. Turkey's history is free from genocide, massacres, oppression and colonialism. That's just objectively not true. It was a colonial power. There was a 30 year genocide. There wasn't just one day in Armenian genocide, there was a 30 year genocide that killed over a million Armenians, Christians, Assyrians. If somebody wants to go look at it, they can go find what the population, what the Christian population of Turkey was at the turn of the century, at the end of the Ottoman Empire and what it is today. And that's continuing. That's continuing. You have the spiritual head of the Orthodox Church, a worldwide Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. He's denied religious freedom. He has no legal status. Erdogan calls him the Bishop of Constantinople. He has to get his travel checked by the Turkish government. The theological seminary remains closed for 50 years. They're slowly wiping out the Ecumenical Patriarchate. He's occupying the northern third of Cyprus, where that was the site of the first Christian mission. St. Paul and Barnabas landed in Cyprus. Lazarus is buried in Cyprus and they're slowly wiping out Christianity and its historic homelands. We should not play long. And you know, unfortunately we have an ambassador, a US Ambassador, Tom Barrick there, who speaks glowingly of the Ottoman past. And that's, that's really working against both our values and Barracks.

[Steve]

Barracks, one of my best friends. He's a good man, but he's a Phoenician. He's down there, this thing. That's why, by the way, that's why we got to unite. And I love Tom Barracks, he's a great man. But, and this is, you see Bibi, Bibi's out looking for another war. We need to get our partners in that region and we need to think this through. Our folks. When the, when the, when the balloon goes up in the eastern med in the Balkans and Turkey and Greece in these islands, you ain't putting that flame out. We're trying to extract ourselves from the Middle East. If this thing goes up, you're not putting this one out for 50 years. Right. And this is what I'm saying. It's a tinderbox over there right now. Hang on a second, Andy. I'm a hold you through the break. I want to have you on. We're going to drill down more on geostrategy when I have you back on. But in the next segment, we talk about the classical west, one of the greatest of all of our foundational myths. The war at Troy, the Trojan War, and the generals of the Greeks and the Trojans, and two, both Aeneas and Ulysses. Aeneas went on a journey and founded Rome. Ulysses would not be denied going home. We have a totally woke version of that coming to an IMAX theater near you. So be warned, as we're going to do here in the world. Short commercial break. Back in a moment. We rejoice when there's no more. Let's take down the ccp.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand?

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[Steve]

How about something about a comedic tone?

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[Jack Armstrong]

Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban.

[Steve]

This is one of the more recent translations, really pretty excellent. By Emily Wilson, a classicist. I think she's at the University of Pennsylvania. Yes, University of Pennsylvania, Classics professor of an adventure story like no other. Andy, how important is Homer in the Iliad, in the Odyssey as the foundational myth of the origin story of the

[Andy]

west sir, listen, I have a problem that we've gotten away from the classics. We used to have these great book series and, you know, we're lucky if we can get comic book versions. You hold up an excellent translation. Emily Wilson, she did the translation of the Odyssey. She also did a couple years ago, a translation of the Iliad. And, you know, I know it's easier to make everything an HBO show or a, you know, a movie, but, man, the fact that we people are not reading these books anymore, and there's even great novel versions of this. Madeline Miller did the novel version of Circe. We can go back to the old Mary Renault books. Steven Pressfeld, since you're talking about the Persians, everybody, every one of your listeners, everybody in your audience should go by the Gates of Fire. I read that Steven Pressfield is one of. And in fact, I think when Admiral Stavridis did the book leader's bookshelf, the top military officers and the top junior officers all recommended that people who want to be leaders read the Gates of Fire. So there's ways to immerse oneself in the classics by picking up a book. And we've become in America that more than 50% of incoming college freshmen haven't read a book cover to cover. We need people to start picking up books again.

[Steve]

Have never read a book cover to cover in their life.

[Andy]

In their life.

[Steve]

Here's the amazing thing about this. When you read the Iliad or the Odyssey and the stanzas and the beauty and how it feels fits together and the battle scenes and humanity, right. You have to remember this was all from memory. This is oral tradition, is it not? Homer, Whoever Homer was, it's oral. Folks remember their memories. They trained them like computers. This is all from memory. We write it down. But the original stories were all oral, correct?

[Andy]

Yeah, yeah. Homer's a great storyteller, and the ancient Greeks were great storytellers. There was Homer who did these epic poems. There was something that's really. Since we were talking about geostrategy, Thucydides, Herodotus.

[Political Commentator]

Yes.

[Andy]

And, you know, there's timeless lessons in there. And we can, you know, we can. Aeneas, as you said, Virgil, Seneca, there's some timeless. There's some timeless Plutarch.

[Steve]

The reason I say that Lincoln had a version of the King James version of the Bible, the Old and New Testament. He had the plays and sonnets of Shakespeare, and he had Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans and the way it's originally written, which is so powerful. Anybody today, any Kid today pick up these moral lessons, because what he did, he did the Greek, Greek, and he did the counterpart to the Roman about how the societies were different. And you read it and you understand. You really start to understand the West. You start to understand the underpinnings of the West. And this is why Greece has so much to teach us now in the lessons of Greece and the lessons of Rome. You know who believed that 250 years ago? The founders of this nation, they've really been. They studied. They studied Greece and they studied the Roman republic in excruciating detail. For the lessons on the foundation of the country. Go ahead, sir.

[Andy]

Yeah, there's a. There's a book people can go. There's another book people can read about. Thomas Ricks wrote a great book called First Principles. And you see how they were exactly looking to that ancient wisdom, not hero worship, but ancient wisdom saying, these are the principles we were founded on. These are also the mistakes they made. They tried to avoid mistakes. Our founders were good enough to say, yeah, maybe that direct democracy that the ancient Athenians did was way unchecked. Let's make it a republic. So if we don't know the mistakes people made, not only the successes, the mistakes people made in the past, there's that famous quote, those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.

[Steve]

That's why, Andy, if I can hold you through. The court has not started yet. We don't have the slate. So maybe a few minutes at the beginning. We were to do this at the very beginning of the war, I think it was. We were doing the Saturday and Sunday show for, I think, the first four weeks on one of the Saturdays. I think it's Aaron's History of Alexander the Great. And I focused on Alexander the generals having that war council when they got into India and they saw the elephants and they said, hey, boss, you know, I kind of think we've come far enough maybe, maybe, you know, North Africa, Egypt, we kind of like that. Maybe we should reverse course and get back to something that's a little more, you know, we don't have these war elephants coming at us. And so when they went back, guess where they went? They went right along the North Arabian Sea, right along the Gulf of Oman, right past Hormuz. Exactly. Yard for yard where we're bombing today, right? And guess what it was. You read that, and I told the audience, you read it, it's a hellhole. I mean, it's so tough and so brutal. And these are. This was Alexander the Great's unbeatable army. And by the time and the time he got past Carg island and got to Babylon, Alexander the Great was gone in six months. Okay, now was he poisoned or he just died of exhaustion? History doesn't know. Andy, can you hang on? We're gonna take absolutely a short commercial break. We've got the evidentiary hearing. It's gonna start Provo, Utah. I know people are following this quite closely. You are the grand jury audience, right? The participation has been amazing. Of course, Wendy Patrick will be covering throughout the day and we will be back at 5 o' clock and it'll probably be a 15 or 20 minute break if it holds up and we get Wendy on there. The Grace and Mo will be anchoring today at 5. We've got some what I say meetings we have to attend in the afternoon. I want to thank our sponsors have been so forgiving all week, particularly Birch Gold home title lock. Everybody really want to thank them. Hometitleock.com promo code Steve or Slash Steve. You get access to their 250th, the celebration of the nation's founding, the birth of the Greatest Nation or 25% off for a two year deal of $1 million triple lock protection. Don't let artificial intelligence and cyber the combo get into your home title because 90% of your net worth is type there. Every dream you've ever had is in that home. Make sure it doesn't get turned into a nightmare. Short commercial break. We'll be back in the war room in just a moment. We're united, strong.

[Jack Armstrong]

Why should you listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand? We're not boring. A lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry. You don't want to live your life like that. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong and Getty. We try to bring you the truth and help you figure out this crazy modern world.

[Steve]

How about something about a comedic tone?

[Jack Armstrong]

We have a winner. Yes. Listen to Armstrong and Yeti on Demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Joel Osteen Daily Podcast.

[Joel Osteen]

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[Joel Osteen]

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Joel Osteen Daily Podcast.

[Joel Osteen]

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[Joel Osteen Podcast Announcer]

right when you need it.

[Joel Osteen]

There are opportunities in your future bigger than you can imagine.

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