Loading summary
Transcript190 lines
- [00:00]
Stephen K. Bannon
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:05]
Grainger Advertiser
This is the story of the One. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Grainger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers, all so that he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it it done.
- [00:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
- [00:42]
Stephen K. Bannon
Pray for our enemies.
- [00:44]
Sam Tanenhaus
Cuz we're going medieval on these people.
- [00:48]
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.
- [00:59]
Stephen K. Bannon
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? MAGA Media. I wish in my soul, I wish.
- [01:06]
Sam Tanenhaus
That any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
- [01:13]
Stephen K. Bannon
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
- [01:19]
Grainger Advertiser 2
War room.
- [01:20]
Stephen K. Bannon
Here's your host, Stephen K. Ban.
- [01:27]
Sam Tanenhaus
You've just had an explosion across the battlefield that is American politics here in the imperial capital. You've actually had a senior editor of, I would argue, one of the most, if not the most influential publication on a weekly basis before you had cable TV and podcasts and everything like this. The revered Time magazine, accused in an open hearing in front of the nation, arguably one of the most respected individuals that had been in government for a long time, had been aide de camp to Roosevelt, the first Secretary General of the United nations, just to get the kickoff, now leading the most prestigious ngo, the Carnegie Endowment of Peace, as being a Soviet agent. What happens?
- [02:14]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, Chambers goes through about eight or nine names.
- [02:19]
And mentions some others well known, not as well known as his. And the others all go silent because, well, if somebody accuses you of something, accuse you of being a communist. You got to remember, Steve, this is an era where if you're accusing someone of being a communist and they're not, that's potential slander or libel, right? Because it's not.
- [02:41]
Sam Tanenhaus
Read the watch. When you watch the movie Oppenheimer, I mean, we went from allies, quote unquote, to now mortal enemies, right? And not just. It was not just about geopolitics at the time. These are two distinct views of how one views humanity. The world, all of it. This is the story of Whitaker. Chambers goes from a hardcore, if not Trotsky, you know, Marxist, Leninist, atheist, to a Christian. That is Christianity informs every movement of his life, right. And you see this whole battle right there, that's why this is so big. This, this consumed post war America, the war against. They called it the Cold War, but it got hot in many places. This is what consumed us up until all the way through President Reagan's. President Reagan's presidency.
- [03:29]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, well, and Chambers insisted it was a moral battle. That's what nobody wanted to hear. It's not just, it's not just moving spiritual war.
- [03:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
It's a spiritual, spiritual war.
- [03:39]
Stephen K. Bannon
It's a moral war. That's why, you know, when a friend of mine, I think of yours too, Pat Buchanan tries to say these things, right? Said them a long time ago, you know, he's hooted off the stage.
- [03:49]
Sam Tanenhaus
Hang on for a second, hang on a second. How is one of the leading Jewish intellectuals in the country a friend of what they tell us today is the greatest anti Semite in the nation? Pat Buchanan. I revere Pat Buchanan, but to hear you say that you're a buddy of his is pretty shocking.
- [04:06]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, first of all, any journalist who interviews Pat Buchanan knows how straight he is, how direct, how uncensored how. And how helpful he will be. He, and you know, people are shocked by this, was actually a friend of mine who told me a long time ago before I interviewed Papykem, said he's a really nice guy. I didn't believe it then I met him many years. But there's something else going on here too, is now we're going to get to something that's in the Buckley book. If we want to switch over there.
- [04:33]
Sam Tanenhaus
We see it is because Buckley now comes on the stage.
- [04:37]
Stephen K. Bannon
He does come on the stage, very.
- [04:38]
Sam Tanenhaus
Short, a bit player, but in the wings. But all of a sudden you're going to see, you're going to see the kernels of all this. This is why it's the revolution that changed America. We're now going to get in. It's more than Buckley. It's what Buckley sees down the road.
- [04:50]
Stephen K. Bannon
That's right. And Pat Buchanan, of course, is still a younger guy than Buckley, but he was raised in all this. Remember, he comes from Washington and he was raised in all this politics. And when Pat Buchanan had his big fight really, with the neoconservatives during the first Iraq War, something I think, you know a little bit about that first Gulf War and the way I Treated it in my book. And if you go back and look at the documents and debates at the time, because it's recirculating right now. Right now it's happening. There are accusations that if you are skeptical of Israel and the way it's conducting this war right now in Gaza, you are anti Semitic. And so they look for every opportunity to make that point. Well, if you go back to the debate to Pat Buchanan had, you're talking.
- [05:45]
Sam Tanenhaus
About the Gulf war in the 90s.
- [05:46]
Stephen K. Bannon
Or the first one in the 90s.
- [05:48]
Sam Tanenhaus
In the 90s. I want people to understand this is not after 9 11. This is pre 9 11.
- [05:53]
Stephen K. Bannon
This is when the first Bush is president. The invasion of Kuwait, the threat to Kuwait. Maggie Thatcher tells Bush, you know, don't get wobbly. That's it. Don't get wobbly, George. George. Don't get wobbly, George. Right. It's not Skull and Bones, right, Bohemian Grove anymore. We got to do it. And Pat Buchanan says, why are we fighting this war for Israel? Right. And. Well, and he's denounced and.
- [06:25]
Smeared many respects for that. But that was a battle about that war, which in retrospect, maybe Pat Buchanan was right about.
- [06:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
What do you mean by that? That's so controversial. We're going to get, we may not get clicks, although I think we will out of the, out of the, the first part of this about Whitaker Chambers, I think is brilliant. And people are going to see. But right now you're, you're going to go viral. So tell me why. What's the argument for why Pat Buchanan might have been correct to say, which if everybody says, hey, the good war that we fought over the last four years is the Gulf War, right? Because you were, you know, a little nation was invaded by a bigger nation. This is where America had to stand up. Also, it might have something to do with oil, but why was Buchanan. Because Buchanan really got the separation and kind of the beginning of this whole movement, this part of this movement really started with that whole powerhouse debate they had then.
- [07:24]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, you know, Steve, if you go back and look at the debates in Washington among, like, the major, like, intellectual players of that era, and I mean, like Irving Kristol, not his son Bill. Irving Kristol, Jean Patrick Kirkpatrick.
- [07:42]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah, I went to Georgetown after she started thinking she was a hammer.
- [07:45]
Stephen K. Bannon
And they're saying, why are we looking to start a new Cold war in the Middle East? And Pat Buchanan had a line.
- [07:54]
Sam Tanenhaus
And Irving Kristol was not just. He had been, I think, a Trotskyite. He was. And he was one of the guys lead the effort anti chemistry to make sure he got the Jews out of Russia. I mean, this guy was a hammer, right? When these guys are actually backing up Pat Buchanan, these are not intellectual lightweights. These are about as heavy a public national security lectures as you can have.
- [08:13]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, I'll give you an example of this. Near the end of his life, when my wife Kathy, who got very close to Bill Buckley, as I did, we went to see him in his house in Stanford 2008. Now we turn the clock forward. And she said to him, well, Bill, is there any conservative writer now you really respect? He said, Irving Crystal was the one, right? Not Bill Crystal. Irving Crystal. Irving Crystal and Jean Kirkpatrick. You go back and look at some of Pat Buchanan's early books, including the one he wrote on how the Republic could build a majority. He wrote that he. Remember, he and Bill Rusher were writing this book. Now we're getting into the weeds, but I know the people who follow the weeds.
- [08:52]
Sam Tanenhaus
No, this is the way this is. Remember, young people are thirsting for this information because none of this stuff is taught. You're talking about something that happened 30 years ago and it's never discussed.
- [09:01]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, I know it's true because I see it when I go around and talk about this stuff. Well, you look at Pat Buchanan's early writing and you will see one of those early books is dedicated to one of his mentors, Professor Irving Kristol. This idea, right, that somehow that intellectual elite declared war on Pat Buchanan over. That is untrue. They agreed with him. Charles Krauthammer, I remember him. I remember him saying, the isolationist position is totally defensible and consistent with, on intellectual and ideological grounds. And so here's the line Pat had that really resonated with me later. He said, we already almost destroyed the empire over a strategically meaningless country, Vietnam. Why are we meddling in a strategically important one? The Middle East? I'll tell you another thing about this, too fascinated me. I found it in the Buckley book. So after Buckley started National Review, 1955, it was not long before the Suez Canal crisis, right?
- [10:10]
Sam Tanenhaus
Over oil, the end of the British Empire.
- [10:12]
Stephen K. Bannon
End of the British Empire. Everybody favors.
- [10:17]
The Brits, the French, and for once the Israelis. National Review hated Israel early on. And your viewers and listeners should. Should know this. I've got it in the book. National Review referred to Israel in 1956 as, quote, the first modern racist nation, unquote.
- [10:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
And so was that Buckley's Catholicism, traditional Catholicism, or what Was that what brought that what brought that to the forefront.
- [10:44]
Stephen K. Bannon
Of National Review, the Catholicism was one aspect. Another was. Came from a writer that people knew only as a pro McCarthy, anti communist, named Freda Utley. And she had covered the Middle east. And she said to Buckley, I'm going to write a piece that defends the group nobody else is looking at. There are these displaced Palestinians there and they have a case to make. And she wrote a book about it. And there was one columnist in Washington, of all people, Mary McGrory, the liberal picked up on it. Or it was Dorothy Thompson. That's who it was. Another great liberal columnist picked up on it.
- [11:28]
Sam Tanenhaus
That's as part of the Algonquin crowd.
- [11:30]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. And she said, she said, freda Utley is making a case here. No one's paying attention to the Palestinians. So Buckley, she sends the story to Buckley. And Buckley says, what do we do with it? And he says, I know what we'll do. We'll just invent a new column. We'll call it the Open Question. And this is the first one we're gonna run. So smart. And that's why Buckley was great. He could open up instead of this kind of, you know, whom do we denounce? Right.
- [11:58]
Sam Tanenhaus
You.
- [11:58]
Grainger Advertiser 2
Who do.
- [11:58]
Stephen K. Bannon
Who do we exclude? You think? Make the good argument and I'll run it.
- [12:02]
Sam Tanenhaus
Well, that changes over time. We'll get to the part about we gotta exclude some guys here, the Birchers and the Objectivist. The Objectivist is a bizarro Enron cult.
- [12:12]
Stephen K. Bannon
Right.
- [12:15]
Sam Tanenhaus
The Birchers are dangerous. Cause they're conspiracy wingnuts. But let's go back. Let's go back to when Buckley comes in on the wing of the stage. It's at the end of the Alger Hiss part, but the beginning of the McCarthy part.
- [12:27]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yes. And so.
- [12:29]
Sam Tanenhaus
And by the way, one of the most fascinating parts of the book is that Buckley's transformation, personal transformation, about. Because unlike Bush, who are a kinetic family who kind of went to Texas and pretend they're Texans, Buckley's actually a Texan. I mean, his family who kind of hard boiled all guys down in Texas, that they moved to Connecticut and he was raised in Connecticut. But you know, Buckley here, one of the Transformers thing is when he has to go in the army, which he kind of tries to avoid for a long time during World War II. He's anti World War II.
- [13:02]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah.
- [13:02]
Sam Tanenhaus
What's controversial, he's very anti World War II. He finally goes in. But in being an infantry officer, even though just most of it's in training, it does transform him. And to be kind of more of a guy's guy.
- [13:13]
Stephen K. Bannon
Guy's guy. I'd add a second thing to that, too, which really made sense to me when I went to Buckley's hometown, Sharon, Connecticut, which is what they call the northwest corner, Litchfield county, right near Dutchess County, New York and western Massachusetts. So I tell people when the Buckleys were declaring Roosevelt war in the roosevelts in the 1930s, they're declaring war on the guy they saw at the Rhinebeck Horse show every summer. Like, this is very much an inside the elites. This is the elites. Well, but I mention that because when my wife and I went to Sharon, Connecticut, not where Buckley lived as an adult, but where he grew up. And you can see the house there. That's where the Young Americans for Freedom first met. You can see the boulder with statement on it and all this. And you walk to that town you see right across from the Buckley house is the oldest church in town. And in Connecticut towns, you really learn this. It's always the Congregational church. Then next door is the Episcopal Church. High church, high church. Down the street, the Methodist Little Lower Church. You have to go practically into a back alley to find the Catholic church. And that's where the Buckleys worshiped. The household servants of got in the cars with them and they drove to church together. So who's worshiping at St. Bernard's the Catholic Church in Sharon, Connecticut? It's the working class. That's who Buckley saw. Buckley was an altar boy. He and his brothers are altar boys. His father was an altar boy in Duval County, Texas. The one right. The county that won. I have no air quotes here, but. But won the Lyndon Johnson Senate campaign in 1948. Buckley's grandfather was a sheriff in that county. So he comes out of that. Make sure they count them right. The living, the living and the dead.
- [15:02]
Sam Tanenhaus
They counted by the pound. We're going to take a short commercial break. Want to thank Birchgold for sponsoring this today. An easy way to do this is take your phone out and text Bannon. B A N N O N. That would be me. At 989-898- you get the ultimate guide for investing in gold and precious metals in the age of Trump. It's not the era Trump, it's the age of Trump. And you talk to Philip Patrick and the team. Make sure you do that today. Good holiday reading on a Saturday afternoon to do it all and to contact Birch Gold. We're going to take a short break. We're back with Sam Tanenhaus in a moment.
- [15:35]
Grainger Advertiser 2
This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger. Because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [16:05]
Stephen K. Bannon
Kill America's Voice Family Are you on Getter yet?
- [16:08]
Sam Tanenhaus
No. What are you waiting for?
- [16:10]
Grainger Advertiser
It's free, it's uncensored, and it's where.
- [16:12]
Stephen K. Bannon
All the biggest voices in conservative media are, are speaking out.
- [16:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
Download the Getter app right now. It's totally free. It's where I put up exclusively all of my content 24 hours a day. You want to know what Steve Bannon's thinking? Go to Getter.
- [16:25]
Stephen K. Bannon
That's right. You can follow all of your favorites. Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobi, and so many more. Download the Getter app now.
- [16:32]
Grainger Advertiser
Sign up for free and be part of the movement.
- [16:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
Okay. If you really want to understand America and the conservative movement, and particularly if you have a college student or young person in their 20s that you think needs to get up to speed, this is the Christmas gift you want to get them. Buckley by Sam Tannenhausen. And by the way, if you ever get Whitaker Chambers for yourself, particularly if you're, especially if you're a Christian and you're saying, hey, in the world today, you know, it's so much, look, anti Christian philosophy out there, you think it's pressure? Read the book of Whitaker Chambers. It is one of the most moving stories of, I guess a convert that had lived, had lived Christianity against the pressures of the world. This book is amazing, Buckley. And I want to. I want to throw down a challenge. When Whitaker Chambers, the book Whitaker Chambers came out in the 90, who was the biggest promoter of that book in media?
- [17:23]
Stephen K. Bannon
Don Imus. Remember him?
- [17:25]
Sam Tanenhaus
Oh, he dominated the 90s. He dominated, right, For Rushmore.
- [17:28]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. The book was nominated for the National Book Award and it came in a box and Imus got it and he started reading it and he started talking about it. And I didn't know this at first. I listened to the program, but I would hear it in the afternoon. I listened to him in the morning, but I also listened to the sports guys in the afternoon. I was working, I was riding at home and somebody called me up and I said, don Imus is promoting Your book. And then it became a thing, you may remember, it became a joke. Remember, Charles McCord would do these things. I'm going to kill myself if you don't stop talking about Imus and about, about Tannen House and Chambers. Imus called me up, his wife called me up, this is it. And asked how she could get a custom made Woodstock typewriter to give Don for Christmas. Because the typewriter was the.
- [18:19]
Sam Tanenhaus
We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that story. Hold on.
- [18:23]
Grainger Advertiser 2
Why?
- [18:23]
Sam Tanenhaus
Why is the typewriter a story? You talked about the farm. Tell me about the typewriter. Nixon, the farm, all of it.
- [18:29]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, after the pumpkin papers, after Chambers.
- [18:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
First testified, they say he's a liar.
- [18:34]
Stephen K. Bannon
They say he's a liar.
- [18:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
The apparatus came down. This is why, if you're a Christian, you gotta read this book. Everything that he feared while he was kind of a schizophrenic turned out to be true. They were out to get him. As soon as he said this thing publicly, the entire apparatus in the world crushed this guy. Right.
- [18:50]
Stephen K. Bannon
There were three accusations that the party would use to smear somebody. One is to say he's a homosexual. That's a term that was used back then to. That he's mentally unstable. And three, he's an alcoholic. They said this about Chambers.
- [19:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
Go back. I want to make sure people understand this. This is what the Russians would do to basically try to smear somebody. Right.
- [19:18]
Stephen K. Bannon
But they would do it through their.
- [19:19]
Sam Tanenhaus
Agents, through their agents here, American agents. But one, you were, you were gay, you were homosexual. Two, you were mentally unstable. And three, you were an alcoholic. And in Chambers case, they tried to do all three. Yeah.
- [19:31]
Stephen K. Bannon
And they spread them around. And Chambers did happen to have history of homosexuality. The others were untrue. And so there's a really famous moment in the Hiss case. It's one that brings tears to the eyes of grown men. Steve. It's when they finally. Hiss is the only one of the accused who insists on answering Chambers. He says no, these are. He sends a letter after Chambers is named, him and seven or eight others. His sends a note to the committee, the House committee, and he says, I demand equal time. I want to come before the committee and repudiate these lies have been told about me. So they say, well, come on in, Mr. Hiss. So he does.
- [20:17]
Sam Tanenhaus
And what was his thinking? Understanding he actually was a spy. He felt, I'm Alger Hiss, I can go in front of and dominate. Where these guys are the worst witnesses in the world. Bentley and Chambers. I am Alger Hiss. This is. I can command any stage I'm on. I'll command the stage and show that he's just jealous or he's mentally unstable or he drinks too much or, you know, he's just not. He's not a credible witness.
- [20:42]
Stephen K. Bannon
And the other thing he's got going for him, Steve, is that the HUAC congressmen are really held in low repute. It's the committee nobody wants to be on. They're the red baiters. They've done the Hollywood tanner and right where they.
- [20:56]
Sam Tanenhaus
Yeah. Ronald Reagan. This is Ronald Reagan's rise to power. The whole movie, the Way We Were is about this film, about this moment.
- [21:01]
Stephen K. Bannon
Mainly this moment. They, they.
- [21:04]
Sam Tanenhaus
Because they think anybody that come forward. Because you had what, Adolph Mengy, you had people in Hollywood come forward. But even the people that came forward and name names were smeared by the mainstream media. Being a rat, you were an informer. So that's the whole thing about being an informer. Even if you were accurate about these people being communist. Right. It was the whole stench of being an informer.
- [21:24]
Stephen K. Bannon
There were two blacklists, and we only hear about one of them. We hear about the blacklist of the accused communists. We don't hear about the blacklist of the witnesses who never got work again because they came out and testified. Ayn Rand actually came out of that politics. But we can get to that later because she was, as you know, I.
- [21:40]
Sam Tanenhaus
Can'T believe you take these views on everything. This is how politics has changed so much in the country. You're a secular Jewish liberal from the New York Times. You're saying things that. And a couple of years ago, the progressive. Let's say those are lies. You're just lying about Eye of Stone. You're still. Remember, Altra Hiss is still a fight. It's still an intellectual fight. How did you get through your life by coming out and writing about this and actually telling the truth of the story.
- [22:09]
Stephen K. Bannon
You know, one of my thoughts, this.
- [22:11]
Sam Tanenhaus
Is how much culture and politics have changed in this nation.
- [22:14]
Stephen K. Bannon
Well, they have changed and they were starting to then. I mean, one thing that worked to my advantage was I started writing about chambers in the early 90s after the Soviet Union collapsed. Remember, there was that period when people were rethinking a lot of this and heroes were people like when they open.
- [22:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
And they open up the KGB files.
- [22:34]
Stephen K. Bannon
They opened up the archives and we.
- [22:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
Opened up our archives.
- [22:37]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yes.
- [22:37]
Sam Tanenhaus
So you've got the real story about that.
- [22:39]
Stephen K. Bannon
You could get the real story. And there was enough respect in that era for that kind of research that.
- [22:45]
Sam Tanenhaus
Salty Nitschen thought we were. He got over here, he thought we were a mess. He thought we were too weak. Right. He got over here, said, this is not going to save the West. What America has declined to. He's the first one to really like an Old Testament prophet told us. Told us about the weakness of the West.
- [22:59]
Stephen K. Bannon
He made the same argument that Buckley and Chambers and those early. And Buchanan later, and those early great anti Communists made the country's weak. It has no moral spirit. Spirit has no fiber. We're repudiating our own identity. I mean, all this stuff. Solzhenitsyn said that at Harvard, at commencement. At commencement. I mean, it's unthinkable today.
- [23:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
Then he went to Vermont and he said, this place is a disaster.
- [23:24]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, yeah, that's right. He went up to Vermont. Remember, David Remnick went and interviewed him. David Remnick is a guy who gets a lot of this stuff. And we have some very interesting.
- [23:33]
Sam Tanenhaus
Lennon's Tomb is.
- [23:34]
Stephen K. Bannon
Lennon's tomb is fantastic. And I can't do it here, but I'll show you the note Remnant sent me about this book in Chambers. He sent me a note not long ago saying basically, like, this is the history nobody is told that needs to be told and will be there forever. He says, forget everything else. Forget what the critics say, all this. But there's another guy who's really important to me, is a guy I know not well, but I've written about him and I've met him a few times, is Robert Carroll. And the.
- [24:07]
Sam Tanenhaus
The. The series on Lyndon Johnson before.
- [24:10]
Stephen K. Bannon
And the Power Broker. And the Power Broker when. Great.
- [24:13]
Sam Tanenhaus
You want to learn about New York City.
- [24:15]
Stephen K. Bannon
When Greg Carter, Robert Moses hired me.
- [24:18]
Sam Tanenhaus
This is a Robert Caro type.
- [24:21]
Stephen K. Bannon
I am pleased to say that more than one reviewer has said that. And what I'm really proud of.
- [24:26]
Sam Tanenhaus
No, there's so detail about every aspect of. Like, that's what folks. It's a thousand pages, so you're going to get your money's worth. But it's a page turner because you're learning about American history as you go. It's not. It's the story of America as told through the actions, the human agency of one person.
- [24:41]
Stephen K. Bannon
That's what I learned from Bob Carroll. You know, his books are called as, you know, the Years of Lyndon Johnson. So what I think of the. The books I write as being these two big ones.
- [24:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
But you don't go to the public library. He's one of those guys at the New York Public Library that Has the cubicle. There's like 10 guys. They can. They do it out. You know what I'm talking about?
- [24:59]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, he doesn't do that anymore.
- [25:00]
Sam Tanenhaus
I lived across the street from the New York Public Library for years. I loved it.
- [25:04]
Stephen K. Bannon
I. That's how I did some of chambers.
- [25:05]
Sam Tanenhaus
We lived in Tesla's right next to Tesla's lab on Tesla Way. That's why I have a place. Yeah, the Engineers Club has been turned into a Senate co ops because those are the guys that couldn't get into the Harvard, Yale or the University Club because they hadn't gone to Ivy League schools. Yeah, they had, but you know, Westinghouse, Carnegie. So they started the Engineers Club. Tesla was part of that. And that's right across from the New York, New York Public Library, which is a magnificent. You just go over there and get lost and reading all day. And they were one of the groups in the basement, I think it is. They have 10 writers they allow to be in residence to kind of get a little cubicle and work.
- [25:37]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, I never, I never got that. I never applied for. Probably wouldn't have gotten it. But when I was working on Whitaker Chambers, you know, it was a long time ago, I'm in my 30s. I would go to the New York Public Library and I'd see other like giants there. You'd see Norman Mailer sitting at a table just reading a book. You just couldn't believe what you would see back then. And those are the days, you know, they dig the stuff out of the archive and they send a tube, they bring up the book. That's where I first read Bill Buckley's magnificent essay on Whitaker Chambers in the New York Public Library. Nothing was digitized. It was in Esquire magazine. And I'll tell you something. You're asking me, why do I do this stuff? I grew up in a household that didn't think a lot of Bill Buckley. And then a couple of things turned me around on him. And one was when I was working on chambers, I went to the New York Public Library and I read an essay in Esquire magazine. It was actually the first piece Bill Buckley published there, though I didn't learn that much later called the End of Whitaker Chambers. It was a memoir about him interspersed with letters. And I realized this guy's like an exquisite writer. Why didn't anybody tell me this? You know, and you sort of get mad. In retrospect, there's nobody in front of a classroom who's going to say, by the way, you know, I might want to look at Bill Buckley memoir, cruising Speed, to see what great journalism is like. Nobody says this. You have to find it yourself.
- [27:01]
Sam Tanenhaus
We're going to take a short break here.
- [27:05]
We're going to have to extend this a couple hours. So what we're going to do is have you back. This is our weekend show. We're going to have you back. We'll figure it out. Because Buckley, that's why he wrote God and Man at Yale, because he saw even then the professors how they were trying to twist things, which was a traditional. You know, I've given this book as a gift to some of the most senior people in this administration who went to Yale, right, to say how shocking it is because right now, you know, they're taking the names off buildings and transgenderism so big, and they're doing pronouns. I go, guys, back in the old days. And I'm talking the 1950s, 1940s, 1950s. It was a different place. It's amazing. Sam Tannenhouse, really, the biographer of America Pre World War II all the way through the conservative movement. He's done it in three magnificent books. Whitaker, Chambers, Buckley and the Death of Conservatism, is our guest. We'll be back in a moment.
- [28:05]
Grainger Advertiser 2
This is the story of the one As a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility, he knows keeping the line up and running is a top priority. That's why he chooses Grainger, because when a drive belt gets damaged, Grainger makes it easy to find the exact specs for the replacement product he needs. And next day delivery helps ensure he'll have everything in place and running like clockwork. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [28:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Band Wife. Focus on the typewriter it was for a reason. The typewriter becomes, by the way, we're going to do another at least couple hours with Sam and we're going to I'll figure the schedule out. Why is the typewriter the, the, the, the farm in Maryland. Why is all this important? And it leads to the beginning of one of the most important presidencies in this country, Richard Nixon's well, what happened.
- [29:05]
Stephen K. Bannon
Was we're in 1940, 1948, 1948, summer of 1948, there's an election coming and the Republicans think they might lose the house in 48. So here, here's their chance.
- [29:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
They won it quickly in 46 as people were kind of tired of the war. Like they turfed out Churchill. And so you Got, they won, they won that midterm and they take control. You have HUAC and. But now in 48, a lot of people in the country going is this is what we're spending our time on?
- [29:31]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. And you know, the Republicans don't have the strongest candidate in Tom Dewey and Truman's actually a good campaigner, so who knows what's going to happen. And you have coattails and you're swept out of power. So Alger Hiss makes his appearance and he's incredibly suave and debonair and so there's a key moment and he's everything.
- [29:50]
Sam Tanenhaus
The hard right hates personified. But everything that, the kind of liberal mentality, particularly the urban mentality of New York City and San Francisco, it's what the high ideal has been of an.
- [30:03]
Stephen K. Bannon
Ivy League globalist and New Dealer. Right. You know, he came through the New Deal, he'd worked in all a lot of the key departments involved, as we said before, and the United nations founding that, the Alta Conference summit, all this. Now he comes to form a very polished, smooth guy and he seems kind of amused by it, by it all. Oh, Mr. Hiss, you know, so Whitaker Chambers is, he's a senior editor at Time magazine. Why is he calling you a communist? Said you sure you don't, you were never a communist. And he's making it up. And Hiss says well I don't know anybody named Whitaker Chambers. I said really? You don't even know him. And his says, well I've seen pictures of him. I might even confuse him with you, Mr. Chairman in this committee because the chairman's got this round face. I. The audience breaks up, laughs Right, Laughs. And he's passed it on the newspapers but one detail.
- [31:04]
Sam Tanenhaus
He's under oath, correct?
- [31:06]
Stephen K. Bannon
Under oath.
- [31:06]
Sam Tanenhaus
He is oath. This is key. This is the leads up to the point.
- [31:09]
Stephen K. Bannon
He's under oath, graduate of the Harvard Law School. And there's a lawyer, a very smart young lawyer elected to Congress from California, Orange County, a total outsider. 35 year old guy, former naval officer. Former naval officer. And he's watching his. And he doesn't like him either for all those reasons you mentioned.
- [31:36]
Sam Tanenhaus
And, and he later said because Nixon's an outsider with a chip on his shoulder and he's looking at the personification of the establishment. When Nixon that despise that just treat guys like Nixon like nothing.
- [31:47]
Stephen K. Bannon
When Nixon was a young guy. We all know this has been reported in all the biographies. You can always tell the really interesting presidents because they get great books written about them them including Nixon and Nixon when he was a kid, was admitted, you know, from coming from that little town, Yorba Linda, California. He's admitted to Harvard, but he's a son of a grocer, he can't afford to go there. So instead he goes to the local college, Whittier, and then he gets his law degree at Duke, finishes third in his class and a law firm will hire him. Can't get a job, can't get a job. The FBI wouldn't hire him. He tried to get a job there, nobody wants him. So here he is, he's got, he.
- [32:21]
Sam Tanenhaus
Was not cut the cut of the jib. What they were looking like, they delayed. It's not just intellectual, you know, you're the non, you're the total opposite package.
- [32:28]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, he's got nothing going for him, but he's very, very smart and he has a great word. He says there's something mouthy about his. He says he's talking too much, right? There's this thing where somebody asks you the question, give them the answer, don't make the joke about the chairman of the committee. And something sticks in Nixon's head. Also he is talking to Robert Stripling, the very smart investigator who's been interviewing these communists for years. And he says to Nixon, he's saying he doesn't know a guy by the name of Whitaker Chambers. Chambers isn't going to call himself by his real name. When he's an underground agent, he's going to go by an alias, right? So maybe if we look closely at his transcript, he's not answering the questions, he's evading them. So then a journalist guy named Bert Andrews, a very smart journalist for the Herald Tribune in New York. The Herald Tribune was the Republican establishment's New York Times. It was like Time magazine. But they had a smart journalist there named Bert Andrews who'd been covering these investigations. And he calls Nixon aside, he sees that Nixon means business here and he says, are you really investigating this case? He says, what if Chambers is telling the truth? Let's just make this weird assumption that a guy who's throwing up, throwing away a high paying job, a senior executive at Time magazine, might not make this stuff up unless he's got a good reason for it. And that reason is he's not making it up, he's telling the truth. So I said, well, have you really looked at his, have you seen whether the things Chambers said about him make sense? So they go out and they interview Chambers and they said, well, his says you don't know him. They go out to Chambers Farm in Maryland, right? He has his little farm. He and his wife are there. Back to the earth types, like old ex socialists, right? Only Chambers really does it. He doesn't just talk about it. He actually works on a farm with his kids and his wife milks the cows himself.
- [34:49]
Sam Tanenhaus
And all this because now he's a Quaker.
- [34:51]
Stephen K. Bannon
He's a Quaker. He's a believing Quaker. And he's doing that when he's not going into Time magazine, he's actually going home, right? Working in his farm. And they go to see him. And Chandra says, well, I'm kind of surprised to see you guys when everybody else is calling me names. And they say, well, we want you to prove that you knew Alger Hiss. I knew Alger Hiss. Here are the addresses we lived at. Here's the car I loaned him when. Or rather that Hiss loaned me, because I didn't. I needed one to get around so I could go back and forth and make the rounds. And he goes through all this stuff.
- [35:25]
Sam Tanenhaus
He does, being a courier, that his actually loaned him a car so he could do this nefarious activity.
- [35:31]
Stephen K. Bannon
Important thing, though, Chambers does not yet say that his is passing him documents. All he says is, yeah, we were meeting these cells and my wife Esther knew his wife Priscilla very well. And Esther, who was a painter and artist, said, oh, yes, here's the dress Priscilla wore when we went to her apartment once. I had the baby there and the baby wet the floor and she brought this lovely little blanket for him.
- [35:58]
And Bert Andrews says to Nixon, either this guy is a fantasist or he really knew Algeria. Hiss, because it's too detailed. He's got too much stuff. So there's a funny thing that happens. They start setting up more interviews. They do one with his in the. What's now that Grand Hyatt, the first Trump Hotel that back in those days was a Hotel Commodore. And they call Hiss and Chambers in for meeting again, off the record now. So it's not.
- [36:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
They're in executive session.
- [36:33]
Stephen K. Bannon
Executive session.
- [36:35]
Sam Tanenhaus
Because they understand and Nixon understands that what they have is a game changer, game changer for him politically. He can come from a nobody to a national figure also. They could actually take down real communists.
- [36:48]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. And you know, the story goes, and other HUAC guys said this later, Nixon was the only one who really nailed the communists, who really got the guy.
- [37:00]
Sam Tanenhaus
This is why, by the reason this is all about what? This is why they hated him. They hate him to the mirror of his bones. And this is the reason they hated him.
- [37:06]
Stephen K. Bannon
You should see the letter Nixon wrote me by hand.
- [37:12]
Before my book came out, the Chambers book, back in the 90s when I was writing first op ed pieces, I did one in the Times, which Nixon didn't read. Didn't read. But he did read the one in the Wall Street Journal, and he wrote me a letter by hand.
- [37:29]
Who is the guy? I'm drawing a blank. Who wrote that great recent biography of Nixon, Furling or no? The guy who also did. He's a friend of mine. Feeling embarrassed about this. It's a senior thing. He wrote a biography about Tip o', Neill, Jack Farrell, John Farrell.
- [37:46]
Sam Tanenhaus
That's our furling.
- [37:48]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, Jack Farrell. He quotes that letter.
- [37:50]
Sam Tanenhaus
It's a great biography.
- [37:51]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, really good biography. And he quotes the letter that Nixon wrote to me because I put it in the Hoover archive back when archives were interested in my stuff, and they're not anymore, but they were back then. Great guy. Robert Conquest arranged me. I had no money, so I was able to sell the Chambers archive to the Hoover Institution. Well, any rate, so I have a copy of the letter that was written by hand, and so I'm going to paraphrase it. Nixon says something like, well, back in the days of prestige media, you know, they were not going to listen to a guy like me. He's remembering back to 1948, still with.
- [38:23]
Sam Tanenhaus
A chip on his shoulder.
- [38:24]
Stephen K. Bannon
Still with a chip on his shoulder, having been president. Well, that's. Never.
- [38:28]
Sam Tanenhaus
Give it up, man. You need that. You need that fire.
- [38:31]
Stephen K. Bannon
People hate it when I say it, but it's really true. Nixon's my favorite president. He's the one.
- [38:36]
Sam Tanenhaus
Oh, my God. How do you even get into. Do they let you in restaurants in New York?
- [38:39]
Stephen K. Bannon
No, my own family doesn't understand that one.
- [38:42]
Sam Tanenhaus
And I think I don't hear Dershowitz whining about his defense of Trump. You're going back to the railhead of.
- [38:47]
Stephen K. Bannon
This, and I don't think you defended Pat Buchanan.
- [38:50]
Sam Tanenhaus
You're defending Nixon. You just said Nixon's your favorite.
- [38:54]
Stephen K. Bannon
I'm not saying. I think he was the best president. I think much of what he did was a lot better than what he gets credit for. But he's my favorite one. He's the one I identify with. I've met a lot of people, a lot of literary people who told me their parents liked Nixon, often people from other parts of the other countries, because they'd say Nixon was the outsider. Nixon was the one they never gave a break to. Nixon's the introvert in the extrovert's profession. He doesn't have Trump's amazing public skills. Although, as you know, Nixon liked Trump a lot.
- [39:24]
Sam Tanenhaus
Monica Crowley is now the ambassador Portugal. That was Nixon's, you know, aide de camp.
- [39:29]
Stephen K. Bannon
I knew Monica way back when. You write all those books for Harry Evans. And so Nixon begins to realize there's something very powerful about Chambers. Remember, there are a few Quakers in this case, including Nixon's, a Quaker, and Chambers.
- [39:44]
Sam Tanenhaus
I didn't make that connection.
- [39:45]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. And. Wow. Right? Wow. Priscilla Hiss was a Quaker. Quaker. Alger Hisses.
- [39:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
I didn't know that either.
- [39:52]
Stephen K. Bannon
There's a whole Quaker thing going on. Wow. They're always inside stories and things. If we ever get to Buckley and Gore Vidal, I'll tell you the inside.
- [40:00]
Sam Tanenhaus
No, we're gonna hold that for the night. No, no, the Buckley stuff's got so much.
- [40:04]
Stephen K. Bannon
You will get gold and platinum. So here we are. And so they start gathering the. The. The evidence. So at one point, there's a really great moment in the. His case. Chambers had said, well, Alger and I were both. He used this great term nobody uses anymore. He said, we were amateur ornithologists. He said, bird observers. Sounds like Buckley didn't even say bird watcher. He said, well, we bird on the bird observers. We do it here on the canal. And they say, oh, really? Yeah. Chambers said, alger once got really excited when we saw a rare warbler, a prothonotary warbler, and there's one guy on the HUAC committee, guy named John McDowell from Pennsylvania, I think, who is a bird watcher. They bring Hiss in And he says, Mr. Hiss, we know. Right. We get it. You know, he didn't know. Chambers, you've told us all that, but tell us a little bit about yourself. Are you interested in birds? And he says, oh, yeah. And.
- [41:08]
McDowell says, you ever see a prothonotary warbler? He said, you bet I did. I saw one right here in the canal.
- [41:16]
Sam Tanenhaus
And like, they'd heard the story before.
- [41:18]
Stephen K. Bannon
They'D heard it from Chambers, and they're thinking, there's no way this guy makes up that Alger Hiss had seen this bird. That Right. So it's little details like that.
- [41:29]
Sam Tanenhaus
Is it kind of turn history?
- [41:32]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah. And you know, and I'll say, we don't see this level of, like, exactitude with our legislators now on the committees.
- [41:43]
Sam Tanenhaus
Are you kidding me? We're gonna take a short break. Sam Tanenhaus. The book is Buckley. I want everybody to. If you have a young person first, I'll get it for yourself. It's amazing. If you want to See, kind of the lead up to President Trump and that's why death of Conservatism. We'll talk about that next time. Is really got my interest piqued back after the financial crisis in 2009. When I read this book, I go, wow, this guy's nailed it. The problem with the Republican Party and Conservative Inc. Back then, but Buckley is the book to get now. Want to drive some sales on this, particularly give it to young people in your family, college in their 20s. You sit and they go. You don't think they know much, but they're thirsting for access to information. Buckley's the book short commercial break Back with Sam in a moment. We rejoice when there's no more. Let's take down the ccp.
- [42:35]
Grainger Advertiser
This is the story of the one As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast. It's why he partners with Granger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers. Also, then he can help students, staff and teachers stay healthy and focused. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
- [43:05]
Sam Tanenhaus
War Room here's your host, Stephen K. Mac, Count this book around people that think you're brilliant, right? Because this is a this is a heavy book and it's magnificent. Reads like a novel. It reads like you're reading a Russian. I was like, it's like War and Peace because you're seeing the history, but you bring these characters to life. Not just Buckley, but McCarthy, Jack Kennedy, Clare Boothe Luce. You have these vignettes of these people and you realize why they made such a big impact in American history. The book is Buckley the Life and the Revolution that Changed America. And it leads you right up to the age of Trump.
- [43:41]
I want to finish we're going to have you back on in this coming week, but I want to have you because we could do this for hours. I want to finish the pumpkin story because you see Nixon, you see Whitaker, Chambers, Hiss, the whole establishment. This is one of the biggest moments in post war history about this committee.
- [43:59]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, well, what happened is they start seeing the evidence and they think, okay.
- [44:04]
Sam Tanenhaus
The bird watching thing gets the guys in committee realize this guy's lying under.
- [44:07]
Stephen K. Bannon
Oath, he's purging himself and then they start doing the research. And that's what they were good at back then. STEVE and we've been talking about this before in Those days, the Congressional Committee would really do the work. And they started, not like today. They were serious people, serious people. They're hunting down car leases. They see Chambers at one point said Hiss had given him, had, had given him a car, which they found. And, and Hiss admitted that he'd given him the car. But he, he said Chambers had known him under a different name. He'd known Chambers under a different name, George Crosley. And all this stuff is starting to pile up. And they realized that, well, they've got one thing. They know that Hiss is lying about whether he knew Chambers. But how does that prove that he'd known him as a Communist? And so they say to Chambers, look, we get it, we get it that, yeah, Hiss is lying. We know it now, we can call him up in front of a committee again and say, did you know Whitaker Chambers? And he might have to say, well, maybe his memory had slipped, but he'd known him, so what? And so there's a great confrontation there. This is one that brings tears to grown men's eyes, is they have, they have a big public meeting now in the caucus room, House Caucus room, television cameras there, Steve, 1948, at that point, 10,000 people in America own TVs.
- [45:32]
Sam Tanenhaus
But the ones bars, Bars have them.
- [45:35]
Stephen K. Bannon
Yeah, bars have them. So they go and they watch and there's his again. And he's denying he knows Chambers. And he looks at him, Chambers is sitting there and Hiss looks at him with this kind of contempt. And then they bring Chambers up and they say, look what he's saying by you saying that the insinuations are out there that they're. Now, they don't say this publicly, what the insinuations are, but the press world knows what they are. The media establishment, very small in Washington, much smaller town, everybody knows the communists and liberals they respect are saying, well, I knew Chambers at Time magazine, the guy's a total paranoid. You know, my copy would come in from China, he'd turn it upside down, he's some kind of anti communist fanatic or, you know, he seems to come in at strange hours. I think he's out drinking all the time. So they start spreading all the, all these lies about him, say, so what about this? Why are you going after Alger Hiss? Why have you chosen to persecute this man? And Chambers then says, what you would expect him to say now is what we hear President Trump and people around say, f you right. But that's not what Chambers does. Chambers says, in testifying against Mr. Hiss, people are Saying that I'm acting out of some grudge or personal animosity toward him. He said, I'm not. I knew Mr. Hiss and I liked him. I still like him. But he and I are caught in a tragedy of history.
- [47:17]
And so help me God, I have no choice but to testify now. And, Steve, you know your religious history. He says, I can't do otherwise. He's doing Martin Luther, right?
- [47:34]
I can't do otherwise. So then they say, all right, we get it. We believe you. Nixon and the others are saying, there are headlines everywhere. This is dominating all the news. But you've got to prove he's a Communist. So, okay, now Chambers is afraid that he's not going to make his case, and also the other side's going to come after him. And he remembers something, that when he defected from the party before 1939, in 1938, he kept some material he had. He called it his life preserver. And he gave it to a relative of his wife's. She kept it in a dumbwaiter in Brooklyn. And they go, and he goes with this young guy. They dig through the dumbwaiter and they have a manila envelope, and inside it are documents. And those are typed documents that are secret classified information. And by this time, his has made the stupid mistake of suing Chambers for slander. Chambers has to defend himself. And he looks at his lawyer and he says, well, I've got something different for you now. This is how one of my chapters ends. And he says, what is it? Chambers says, espionage. And that's when he delivers the documents. So now it gets to the HUAC people.
- [48:58]
Sam Tanenhaus
They have to Nixon.
- [48:59]
Stephen K. Bannon
To Nixon. They have handwritten documents and typed documents. And they say, do you have anything else? Chambers says, all right, come on, you can come out to my farm and I'll show you something else I've got. So at night, they drive out to Chambers farm in Maryland, Westminster, Maryland. He walks them out. It's winter, it's December now, 48, the election's already been held. Republicans are not going to control the House anymore. And somebody, either his or Chambers, is going to be indicted for perjury. Chambers takes him out to a pumpkin patch and he pulls out a pumpkin with a hollow, with a right jack o' lantern with a hollowed out middle. And he said, gentlemen, I think this is what you're looking for. They're tin canisters of microfilm that he's got from Altreus.
- [49:51]
Sam Tanenhaus
We're gonna bring you back in this coming week. This has been amazing. The book is Buckley. We've only done the lead up to it. The Buckley stories will just blow your mind. Where do people go? Do you have social media? Do you have a website?
- [50:03]
Stephen K. Bannon
I have a website.
- [50:05]
Sam Tanenhaus
Samtanenhouse.com all one word. The book is Buckley. Today, on a Saturday afternoon. Maybe the day you go out to a bookstore and get it or go to Amazon and order it. I'm probably sold out at your local bookstore, but if not, go to Barnes and Noble, check it out. Or local. We love the small independent bookstores. Go check it out or go to Amazon, get the book. Give it as a gift to friends. You've got to basically your children, your grandchildren, make sure they fully understand what America's gone through. The man in the revolution. Buckley's the book. Sam Tenenhouse, so honored to have you in here. Look forward to having you back next week. You're actually a right, I realized something about 2/3 away thing, you're actually a right winger. You're a right wing. We're going to talk about it later. Other people have accused you that too. Guys, have a great weekend. We're going to be back here at 10:00am Eastern Standard Time on Monday. I'll be up on getter on social media all weekend, putting up on another action packed weekend. All my thoughts and all observations. See you back here Monday.
- [51:04]
Stephen K. Bannon
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.