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The Jimmy Dore Show
Steve Bannon Claims “Huge Victory” After Pleading Guilty In Border Wall Case
01:00:58
Steve Bannon pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding donors to a private effort to build a wall on the U.S. southern border, ending a case the conservative strategist decried as a "political persecution." Bannon, a longtime ally of President Donald...
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- [00:00]
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Steve Bannon
Foreign.
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Jimmy Dore
Come see us on tour in Dallas, Austin, Baltimore, Hartford, Connecticut, Syracuse, New York, Atlantic City, Levittown. Co host and Providence, Rhode Island. Go to Jimmy Dore.com for the link for the cheapest tickets establishment. Media sucks.
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Steve Bannon
August light and so good luck Bullshit.
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Shama Sawant
We can't afford why he's fomenting this Watch and see as his j the medium speeds and jumps the medium and.
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Steve Bannon
Hits them head on.
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Jimmy Dore
It's the Chimmy door show. We have special guests with us. Steve Bannon, political strategist, media executive who served as senior counsel and chief White House strategist in Donald Trump's. During Donald Trump's first term. He was previously was the Executive chairman of Breitbart and has been involved in various political campaigns and initiatives, including the controversial We Build the wall fundraising eff. And in 2022, he was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Please welcome to the show Steve Bannon. Steve, how are you?
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Steve Bannon
Hey, Jimmy. Thanks for having me.
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Jimmy Dore
Good to see you. Thanks so much for coming on. First off, if I was going to, if I was going to ask to borrow a pen, could I. Could I borrow a pen from you?
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Steve Bannon
Oh, no, the special code. I got a code flashing so three pin day. It's a three pe.
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Jimmy Dore
Well, listen, there's a big news happened yesterday. I wanted to get this out of the way before we get to the rest of it. So you pled guilty yesterday in this border wall fraud case to avoid jail time. And let me just give people a rundown what this was. There was this thing called We Build the Wall, an online fundraiser for Trump's signature. This is from ABC News, by the way. Let's remember that's the same ABC News that just agreed to pay Trump $15 million for lying about him. Okay, just so you know, the judge imposed the agreed upon sentence of A three year conditional discharge, during which time Bannon cannot serve as director of a charity or fundraise for a nonprofit. He is also barred from using data gathered from We Build the Wall donors. We Build the wall promised 100% of donations would fund a wall along the US southern border, but Bannon redirected money elsewhere. This is what they say. Bannon defrauded donors to the nonprofit by falsely promising that none of the money they donated would be used to pay the salary of we the Build Wall President Brian Kolfage, while secretly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to him by laundering it through third party entities. That's what the prosecutor said. Prosecutor was Elvin Bragg. You know, he does great work. Bannon said after hearing, after the hearing that he would. Well, let me just ask you about that. So now this was. They were doing this case in Manhattan just like they do all the January six cases in D.C. so it makes it very hard to get a fair trial.
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Steve Bannon
No, but that's not, that's not the story. So here's the story. In 2018, Nancy Pelosi, remember Nancy Pelosi, they took the house. I was defending President Trump on the campaign trail and said, hey, one of the first things they're going to do is to impeach him if they take the house in 18. This is in the early days of President Trump's first term. They had the huge blow up in 18 about shutting down the government. Remember that Christmas President Trump spent at Washington didn't even go to Mar a Lago. The government shut down. And this guy that had no arms and no legs or had one arm, a veteran, that's the most wounded, I think the most wounded veteran Air Force veteran in the history of the Air Force. Because in the old days, they couldn't keep guys alive that were this shattered. And he's just a tremendous guy. He went on Fox and said, hey, let's put together a fund that can, that can build the wall and to give the money to the government. And so he raised about $25 million. And then he came to me later when, you know, they were, they had to give it back because they didn't have a. They, you know, the government just gave. The government takes your money. They don't designate to go build a wall. They just put it into.
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Jimmy Dore
And general funds.
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Steve Bannon
Yeah, general fund. So he did that. We went back to whatever the, the, the, the platform was. I Forget who was GoFundMe, I think. And they, people opted back in. I think they opted in like 22 or 23 million dollars. And then we went about building the wall. And this is one of the things, because I've really talked about the case. We spent the money building the wall. They spent the money building the wall. The wall, if you ever saw the movie Sicario, that part between Juarez and El Paso, the most dangerous part of the border, right up that mountain where the crucifix is, is where the army engineers said a wall could not be built. Well, we build the wall, built a mile of, right from the Rio Grande river. The last part where it turns and heads to San Diego. Right up there. It's magnificent. And it stopped all the human and sex trafficking. Then later the guys went down to the Rio Grande river and they built it right on the Rio Grande, not a mile inland where illegal aliens can come and touch the earth and, and claim citizenship or claim asylum. I should say they built it right there. So. And in fact, the complaint against me wasn't. This is why yesterday in court there's no restitution. The reason it's a huge victory, a huge victory with Alvin Bragg. In seven years of this in millions of dollars paid to, to persecute me. They had one. They had one donor for 43 bucks. One donor for 43 bucks. Call the prosecutor's office and ask it. And the witnesses. They had one donor for 43 bucks. I had no rest. I had no restitution, no fee, no, no penalty, no community service, no jail time. My lawyer's been doing this. The guy had brought in at the end to negotiate the deal, has been doing this for 30 years. He says he's never seen a high profile case like this where you did a plea and nothing happened. And here's the reason the system's so rigged in Manhattan, and this is what I warned the President about, is you have the source backed prosecutor Alvin Bragg that can panel grand jury at any time. You have Tish James, the Attorney General of New York. And every transaction goes through there. The reason they said they had jurisdiction over me is that they said 100, 200, 200 investors or people have put money up. They couldn't get one to testify. One guy for 43 bucks. And they said I stayed in hotels in New York. Now, remember, they originally tried to indict me in a federal case, or they did indict me. And the reason was to be brutally frank. And this is how corrupt the Southern District is. They did it 90 days before the 2020 campaign. I was going to come back in or had been approached by Bernie Marcus and others to Step back in. At the exact same time, I took over the 2016 campaign to come back into the 2020 campaign because Bernie Marcus and some of the biggest donors were very concerned that the 2020 campaign was off track. And I was going around at the time talking about the Mark Elias, how he was going to steal the election with the Transition Integrity Project. They wanted me in there, the Southern District, with Chris Christie's guy in Berman. These guys, totally corrupt, indicted me. Then Trump pardoned me because he knew it was bogus. Then they changed, I think, the constitution in the state of New York to make sure they could go after Trump and other Trump people that Trump had pardoned when double jeopardy. So I've been fighting this now for seven years. It's cost me millions of dollars, but I couldn't be happier. But it shows you. I'm actually gonna go down to the wall, I think, in three or four weeks, or do the show right from the wall. Because I couldn't be proud of everything I've accomplished in my life. Naval Officer Trump building my businesses, my family building. This wall is one of the most. Is one of the proudest things I've ever been associated with. It's absolutely an engineering masterpiece. The two that we did, one up the mountain and the other on the Rio Grande, I couldn't be prouder of it. And it was a time when the government and President Trump was shut down from building any wall at all. So I'd love to. I'll probably do a big event down there and have everybody come down and say it.
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Jimmy Dore
And so what. So what did they get you to if they said that you funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from this 25?
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Steve Bannon
No, no. What had happened is that I had a arrangement, so I had a deal with them because they didn't have a D.C. office. You know, when you sit there and you get this money, it says, go build a wall. First off, there's 2,000 miles of border. It's not just simply just can't go down build a wall. One, it's finding. It's finding land and property that is not subject to eminent domain because you're not a government entity. It's not subject to cartels. It's very difficult, time consuming, inexpensive to go find this. So I was. Although I wasn't part of the company, I set up an advisory board. I had people like Erik Prince, our famous mercenary. I had people like Kris Kobach, who's the Attorney General of the state of Kansas, and Chris is one of the immigration experts. I had Construction experts. I had all these as an advisory board to the actual thing itself. And we had a contract. My firm, my C4, will do these kind of special projects under, under a contract. And plus, we had other money in the till. So. And Brian Kolfage was a guy, and I paid him. I paid him to do social media for me. He had no arms and legs. And they said, hey, you took some of that money and funneled it.
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Jimmy Dore
I said, well, hold.
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Steve Bannon
It's my money. Anyway, the bottom line is I had a choice. And here's the reality. I got these lawyers, and they're great. And they said, steve, look, we. We don't think. And they don't. I think they don't think they could ever get a conviction to you the first time. It'll be a hung jury, but they'll refile right away. And you go back, you have another hung jury, and this will be $2 million a roll. Then they'll come back to you again and they'll file again to hit another. Another hung jury. And they said, on an acquittal in Manhattan, you're never, you, Steve Bannon, just like Donald Trump, are never going to get a jury that's ever going to quit you because you're always going to have three to six people that just hate your guts. And I looked at Trump's and remember Trump's team went through and they had all the jury selection guys and they went, you know, they picked the jury. Took like two or three days. And they were sitting there, and I remember talking to some of the team. They had a guy that was, like, looking at him and he might be maga, and he was a guy was going to be the hung juror. And I think it took three and a half hours. And he was, he was found guilty on 32 felonies. And this is the point I made when I walked out of the courtroom yesterday to the Trump team to say that, hey, these federal cases that are coming in now to slow down Doge and Elon Musk and Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt and the President, they say it's a constitutional crisis, you're going to win those. And he won one today in federal court, a big one about the buyouts of the federal employees, you'll win those. And if you don't, you expedite appellate court hearings. And if you lose, there you go on the emergency docket to the Supreme Court. And if you don't piss off Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, you'll win there, too. But I said the politics of the Democratic Party are shattered, the national left wing media shattered. They're not going to be able to use the courts in lawfare like they did to try to put you in prison. But the beating heart of the problem is New York City. It's the financial capital of the world. If you look at the ship of state or the United States as an economic model, the bridge of that ship is in Washington, like the home office, the bridge of the ships in Washington, but the engine room, where actually transactions take place and where everything crosses is New York City. So it gives Tish James full authority. It gives Alvin Bragg, and Alvin Bragg as the DA in Manhattan, can impanel a grand jury at any time, indict you for anything, and then tie you up for years and years and years. And hey, they're going to claim jurisdiction. And I said, Pam Bondi better be on top of this and ought to be on top of bragging Tish James on offense. And maybe it's just coincidence. Pam Bondi went in the Oval, went into the briefing room today and said they're going after Tish James and Alvin Bragg now they're going after him on sanctuary cities. And they're already suing, I think civilly. They're going after them sanctuary cities and put them on notice that, hey, if you get in the way of law enforcement officers, you know you're going to be breaking the law. And so she's already put them on notice. But, but the only apparatus out there right now that can stop President Trump and Elon Musk and what they're doing is Tish James, Alvin Bragg and the source backed apparatus with these Upper west side juries and this kind of compliant New York City liberal media. And it's a danger, big danger.
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Jimmy Dore
So in this article, it says that after the hearing that you called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James and investigate Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, both of whom brought successful cases against Trump. Now, Letitia James, she lied and said she didn't campaign on prosecuting Trump. And of course, I showed the video on the show where she did repeatedly said she was gonna prosecute Trump. And so that made it a political prosecution, which 100% was Alvin Bragg. Cuomo was on Bill Maher and said that nobody. This would not have been brought. This is the case that should not have been brought against Donald Trump. He would have never brought it. It should have never been brought. Even Cuomo said that. Right. And so you said Letitia James is an existential threat to The Trump administration. So, so right now. So you're saying. So you, you did ask Pam Bondi to do this and she's already doing it.
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Steve Bannon
Well, well, let me say I didn't ask. And by the way, I signed yesterday the lowest level felony for, For, I think for, for, you know, intent to do it, not actually do it, but the intent, conspiracy to do it. A conspiracy charge. Okay. And I signed what I signed and I stand by that. But when I had the deal offered of absolutely nothing, no restitution. The reason is no restitution. They used to have up. And when, when she came, Letitia James, because she's never quite great about the facts, she and Bragg accused me stealing $22 million from hundreds of, of people in Manhattan. Right. And that didn't, they didn't even the charging document didn't say it didn't say I actually stole a penny. Was no dollar amount in there because they didn't. But this is how they come at you and how they use the media against you. So I did sign it. But like my lawyer said, he's been doing this a long time. He's never seen a situation where they essentially say it's going to be there, there's going to be impossible to convict you, but they'll grind you. And this is what they do. The feds or the locals, if you're working with Trump, they come after you. People got to understand, you know, they will bankrupt you. They will put you in bankruptcy. Hey, this thing right here on these trials, and I've already spent millions of dollars get to this point to do a trial is a million to $2 million a roll. And if you get a hung jury, right, which is the best you're going to get, you're just not going to get acquitted. They picked these juries in the Upper west side. Look at the Trump. Trump got 32 of these bizarre, you know, the bizarre felonies on top of whatever the misdemeanors were, you know, bizarre, you know, and it took them a couple hours. You just never, you're never going to get a fair trial in New York. They've got a perfect system up there. And so I'm warning people, don't think that your big threats, these federal courts. I think today when the judge ruled on one of the more controversial, which is about the buyouts, he said, hey, look, buyouts look like they're okay, going to proceed. I think all of these federal court things that they're doing right now, I think that they will all either be overturned at appellate court or even have to go to the Supreme Court, maybe on the impoundment. But I think the threat to Trump is the source backed apparatus in New York City. And what they're going to claim is, remember the trading desk of the Treasury Department, the trading desk of the Fed are the two biggest trading desks in New York City, bigger than the Solomon Brothers or Goldman Sachs. Every piece of commercial data goes there, every piece of trade data goes through there, all financing transactions. So they can claim a broader, you know, hey, the stuff's coming through here, particularly some of the stuff Doge is doing. Right on some of the information Doge is getting. So I'm just warning the guys don't think that Letitia James and Bragg and this team they've got around them, particularly source backed, is not thinking about this. They are thinking about this. And they called on Pam Bondi one to do the criminal investigation that goes back to Trump's trial. And when they had Matthew Colangelo and all these guys from Main justice go up there and help him, that should be done. But I also think they got to look into the situation of the current deconstruction, the administrative state and the destruction of the deep state, because I believe that Tish James is going to stick her nose right in the middle of this and then you're going to have a fight. And remember, when it's in a state court, she's, she controls, not you, she controls. So it's, it's something I think is very concerning.
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Jimmy Dore
So Trump picked up the phone, he talked to, he talked to Putin and the Ukraine war is on. It's over, so prepare for. So the headline is Trump says he spoke with Putin and he will start peace talks on Ukraine immediately. So Kit Klarenberg says, prepare for Ukraine to hand over considerably more territory than Russia currently holds and any and all continuing military support to be outsourced to Europe, which is to say none. It's over. Finally effing over. Wow. So history is being made. After a lengthy and highly productive call, President Putin, Trump is taking the lead in brokering a peace, a war he says should never have happened if he were president. Both Trump and Putin have agreed to immediate negotiations and Trump is already reaching out to President Zelensky to get it done. This could mark the beginning of the end for the war. Trump's peace team includes Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe's National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Special envoy Steve Witkoff. Here's what Trump actually said. I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle east, energy, artificial intelligence, the power of the dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the great history of our nations and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II. Remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people and we likewise lost so many, we each talked about the strength of our respective nations and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia and Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong campaign motto of common sense. We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together very closely, including visiting each other's nations. We have also agreed to have our respective team start negotiations immediately. And we will begin by calling President Zelensky of Ukraine to inform him of the conversation. Something which I will be doing right now. I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe. Michael. And so all those people to lead the negotiations, which I feel strongly will be successful. Millions of people have died in the war. That would not have happened if I were president. But it did happen, so it must end. No more lives should be lost. I want to thank President Putin for his time and effort and respect this call and for this release yesterday of Mark Fogel, a wonderful man that I personally greeted last night at the White House. I believe this effort will lead to a successful conclusion, hopefully soon. So, as a show of good faith, Russia released that teacher that they've been holding since 2021. And here's from Zero Head. Zelensky offers a land swap with Putin to end the war.
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Shama Sawant
What?
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Co-Host
Hey, well, it's up to Ukraine, right? How it ends. That's what all the neocons said, to swap that land.
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Jimmy Dore
So Zelensky said in comments published Tuesday that he's all he's ready to swap territory with Russia as part of a deal to end the war. He described that if President Trump gets the warring sides to the negotiating table, we will swap one territory for another. When asked in the Guardian interview precisely which territories Kiev would demand back, Zelensky responded, I don't know. We will see. But all of our territories are important. There's no. And September 2022, Russia declared the annexation of four eastern Ukrainian territories. Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporofisia. I don't know how to say that.
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Co-Host
Wow. So they're going to end up with less than they started with.
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Jimmy Dore
Yep.
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Co-Host
They could have had population ground up.
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Jimmy Dore
In it they could have had a much better deal in I think March or April of 2022 when the war.
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Co-Host
Resounding loss for NATO and obviously it's.
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Jimmy Dore
Worthless in some of these areas. Frontline war zones are still being fought but the consensus that Russia forces will soon conquer them fully as the Ukrainian army has been in slow but steady retreat. Moscow considers to forked territories to now be part of the Russian Federation. And they have been key to Putin's war aims giving also that they are largely Russian speaking from the start Putin has stressed he will never give them up. Ukraine's cross border offensive into Kursk which sounds like when Popeye it's like when he oh boy I wish I would Kirst like I'd curse but there's a lady but I curse but there's a lady here to force the Kremlin to divide its forces in order to defend its land. But by and large that that didn't happen or in other words Putin is not taking the bait. Instead there have been long so it's, it's so it's all it's all over.
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Co-Host
Time at the end of the day.
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Jimmy Dore
It'S all over the Zelensky makes similar statements in order to hide the true scale of disaster for the armed forces in this direction. While somewhat of an embarrassing blow for Moscow in the beginning, even in Kurds events and Kurds have not caused the Kremlin leadership to panic. Instead, officials have constantly downplayed a strategic importance in a bigger context of the war. For this reason, Moscow is shrugging off Zelensky's offer of a territory swap, which means Kiev doesn't have the leverage it thought it had in taking dozens of Kursk towns and villages which has been long evacuated of the Russian population at this point anyway.
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Co-Host
So we're going to take all their minerals so Lindsey Graham will be sated and Russia is not giving them any land so they're going to end up.
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Jimmy Dore
In the worst, the worst case at.
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Co-Host
Least going to rehab. Is that at least going to happen?
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Jimmy Dore
So this is the monumental shift. The US finally renounces NATO membership for Ukraine after 17 years of trying. There is no this is no cause for celebration. It's a tragic reality. Had this, had this position been taken in 2021 instead of doubling down on NATO expansion, the war and its hundreds of thousands of casualties over a million would have undoubtedly been avoided. And we know the US could have taken this position then because they're doing it now. This intolerable cost of hubris by the Biden administration and by Antony Blinken and all the neocons in Biden's administration, which of course, no one will pay a price for except all the people dead in Ukraine. Here's what he said.
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Government Official
The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non NATO mission and they should not be covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US Troops deployed to Ukraine.
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Jimmy Dore
So that's it. And you know what? As Aaron Mate says, hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive had Biden been willing to say these this three years ago. Instead, Biden refused, fueled a proxy war, presided over Ukraine's decimation, and then turned around and said, the Ukraine isn't ready to join NATO anyway.
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Co-Host
We covered that before. We had the tape of Zelensky saying, we want to join NATO. And they said, no, you can't.
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Jimmy Dore
No, you can't act like you're going.
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Co-Host
To, but you're not going to be allowed to.
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Jimmy Dore
It was all a bait and switch with one goal only, to use Ukraine to bleed Russia. Whoever went along, whoever went along with this epic disaster, and that sadly includes progressive lawmakers and media, should ask themselves, was it worth it? No, it wasn't. And so here's Trump. So. So it's over. So it's all over. Donald Trump is going to, is seems to be fulfilling the promises made, promises kept. He's going to end the Ukraine war. He's ending it could have happened three years ago. War should have never, would have never happened if he was president.
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Steve Bannon
Yeah.
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Co-Host
Don't settle for just this because this is just how it should have been.
- [25:51]
Jimmy Dore
Yeah. Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member. We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week and it's a great way to help support the show. You could do it by going to jimmy door comedy.com clicking on join premium. It's the most affordable premium program in the business and it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards. Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member. And if you haven't, you're missing out. We give you lots of bonus content. Thanks for your support.
- [26:27]
T-Mobile Advertiser
Unlike what you're listening to T Mobile's coverage is no joke because T Mobile helps keep you connected from the heart of Portland to right where you are on America's largest 5G network. Switch now keep your phone and T Mobile will pay it off up to $800 per line via prepaid card. Visit your local T Mobile location or learn more@t mobile.com keepandswitch up to 4 lines of your virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualified unlocked device, credit service port in 90 plus days device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card is no cash access and expires in six months.
- [26:57]
Jimmy Dore
We have a special guest. Shama Sawant is with us back on the show. She's a socialist politician, economist. She served at Seattle city council from 2014 to 2024. She was the first and only member of the Socialist Alternative party to date to be elected to public Office on Saturday, February 22. This is why I'm having her out so she could talk about this. She and her organization on February 22, her organization called Workers Strike Back. Workers Strike Back, they're going to have a organizing conference in Seattle that will also feature Chris Hedges and Jill Stein. So that's on February 22nd. Welcome back to the show. Shama Sawant.
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Shama Sawant
Thank you for having me.
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Jimmy Dore
Hey, so can you give us an update? And I know your mother's ill in India and they wouldn't give you a visa. Could you tell us what's going on with that?
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Shama Sawant
Yes. Some of your viewers might know India's government is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party or bjp. They are a right wing reactionary Hindu fundamentalist regime and there's been wide scale repression of protest movements of people who are critical of the regime. And one of the mechanisms that they're using to attack their critics in terms of political retaliation is to either deny visas to visit India or to revoke long standing visas or revoke residency status. And that's what they're doing against me. And it's obvious why they're doing this because my office, when I was on the city council, my office passed a resolution that was the first ever resolution condemning some really horrendous so called citizenship laws that Modi had passed. At the time. This was in 2020, these were anti Muslim, anti poor citizenship laws. And then in 2023, my office alongside a movement here passed a historic ban on caste based discrimination which is widespread in the United States among in the Indian community in the tech sector especially. And so all of this has angered the Modi regime And they're engaging in political retaliation. I mean, a consulate official actually told me that they have a reject list. In other words, he admitted that there is a black list that the Modi administration maintains and that I am on that blacklist.
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Jimmy Dore
So. And that's it. So you don't have any avenues to try to get this fixed.
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Shama Sawant
But if you look at what's happening to others as well, for example, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented at least 100 people that they know of. I think it's many more than that who have been either denied visas or have had their residency or other visa long standing visa status revoked. And so I think when, when it, when you have a situation as you do in India right now, where much of the state institutions, the media, all the powerful people, I mean, you know, the Modi administration represents the billionaire class, just like Trump and Biden represent the billionaire class. And so when you have all these powerful entities in lockstep with this reactionary regime, that regime gets emboldened to continue attacking in this draconian manner. So our only hope, it's not just about me, it's others as well who are being retaliated against. I think we should be. Our only option is to get organized in a working class movement. And ultimately it has to be an international working class movement. And you know, we showed a small example, small but important example of it. I don't know how many of your viewers have seen. When we went to the consulate last, my husband and I, we engaged in civil disobedience alongside other of our fellow workers, Strike back activists. Peaceful civil disobedience. We're going to need that type of mass civil disobedience. We're going to need that on a mass scale. We need mass protest movements and mass strike actions.
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Jimmy Dore
I like that flyer there. Fight the rich and their two parties and the wars. That's important. Medicare for all. I'm a big backer of Medicare for All. Stop mass deportations. Tax Amazon and is Amazon not taxed?
- [31:20]
Shama Sawant
Amazon is taxed thanks to our fighting strategy. Actually, last year alone, the Amazon tax that we won in 2020, last year alone it raised $450 million by taxing Amazon and other big corporations. But the reason we say tax Amazon there is first of all in Seattle. That's not enough. We are going to need far more because the crisis is so acute. But also this is a call to action for nationally, for working class people. So the organizing conference that we are hosting is going to be in Seattle, but the organizing conference is for working people nationwide to get organized. And I should say, you know, the reason we're doing this and the reason it is left to worker strike back. It's a small organization, but it's a very important organization. And I would say it's historic work because it is happening in the absence of any fighting strategy or any strategy whatsoever being presented by the labor leadership, by any of these mass NGO organizations, let alone by the Democratic Party. And, you know, in fact, that's why we say fight the rich and there are two parties, because I think it is really, really important for working people to understand you could not have illusions in Biden and you cannot have illusions and Trump in reality. Both these parties, including Trump, despite his idiosyncrasies, represent the billionaire class. And we have to unite. And that's part of the call to action that we're doing in this organizing conference as part of our message is that we don't care whether you voted for Harris or you voted for Jill Stein, or you voted for Trump, or you didn't vote at all. I mean, tens of millions of people didn't vote at all, which is completely understandable. But what we want is principled unity on the basis of understanding that regardless of whom you voted for, if you understand that neither of these parties represents us and that we need an independent fighting alternative, then this conference is for you. One of the calls to action we are making is that we need to build mass movements, mass strike actions, mass civil disobedience, all of that. Also part of that has to be a call to build a new party for working people because both these existing parties are parties of capitalism and we cannot put our faith in either of them.
- [33:41]
Jimmy Dore
So, you know, I did a story a couple of weeks ago where the head of the, the dock worker during the port deal that was just reached between the owners and the union, and it's a great deal for the port. They credit Trump. They say that he sided with the workers and he threatened the, the port owners. And they put a big, their front page of their website was thanking Donald Trump, saying that he was the best friend that their union had ever had. Are you aware of that story and is that just like a one off or what, what do you think happened there?
- [34:25]
Shama Sawant
Yes, I have heard about that, of course. And, and you know, what happened there is that it's very important. I mean, there's all kinds of lessons there for what. The first point, of course, is that doc workers have enormous leverage because they are workers who work in what I would call strategic choke points of the economy. So in other words, if DOC workers, just like Amazon workers or UPS workers, if they went on a massive strike action, that would help shut down the entire economy, it would shut down the profit machine of the capitalist class. And they had that kind of leverage. And I think the port, the longshore union leaders, they used that leverage in a limited fashion. And in that sense, that pressure was primarily just in terms of timing was on the Biden administration. And they had already won some leverage on that basis. And the writing was on the wall that they were going to win some crucial gains on that basis. And in reality, I would say that it wasn't so much Trump doing it, it's more that the workers had built in leverage and they exercised that leverage. Although in my view, they should have gone much farther. They should have actually gone on a strike action. And then fundamentally, I will say I don't agree with any of the labor leaders who now are paying respect to Trump, saying that Trump is different than Biden. In reality, he's not. I don't agree with Sean O'Brien, the president of the Teamsters, who is going, even going closer and closer to Donald Trump. I think that would be a historic and absolutely disastrous mistake for the labor movement to put any faith in Trump and the Republican Party any more than it would be sensible to put our faith in the Democratic Party, because ultimately they are going to stab us in the back. We saw what happened in the Reagan era as well. The air traffic controllers, patco, the union at that time, they were justifiably angry at Jimmy Carter, because Jimmy Carter also sold out union workers. And we saw the famous sellout of the truck workers at that time. And so they were justifiably angry at Carter and the Democrats and they decided to put their eggs in the Reagan basket. Reagan made all kinds of empty promises. And what happened? One of the first actions that Reagan did was this brutal, absolutely brutal attack on the air traffic controllers. He broke the back of that union. And there was not an attack on just that union. That was Reagan and the whole capitalist neoliberalism at the time giving, sending a message to the international labor movement. And Thatcher was doing the same thing across the Atlantic that we are going to go under massive attack on you. And it was like a declaration of war. And so I think it is important for us to take the historic lessons and understand that neither of these parties stand on our side. Trump does not. Trump. Trump is happy to take easy rhetorical gains by taking shots at Biden, which oftentimes that will be based on the truth. Because Biden is no friend of working people either. He blows the railroad workers strike, unfortunately. Bernie Sanders, aoc, all of these people have sold us out. So my point is not that Democrats are better. My point is that neither of these parties is going to represent us ever. And so it is, it is a fool's errand to put our faith in any of them.
- [37:59]
Jimmy Dore
So, you know, you talk about that the port workers had all this leverage, but didn't the railroad workers also had this, if not more certainly equal leverage? Because, you know, the railroad system is the glue that helps that make, it's, that makes capitalism run in this country. And so why do you think they couldn't? Is it just because the Biden administration was so against them? And of course, you know, the whole Democratic Party voted to break that union, break that strike. Is that what happened? So why, why was it so favorable for the port workers and the railroad workers just got crushed?
- [38:45]
Shama Sawant
I think it was a different in strategy. And even though I might have disagreements with the port workers leadership there, there was a significant difference in strategy. And it was really, ultimately the strategy that the railroad workers union leaders used was completely disastrous. I mean, it sold the workers down the river. And what they did was allow basically the union leaders by refusing to go on strike, by using legalistic arguments that, oh, we are, you know, under law, we are prohibited, and so on and so forth. They refused to go on strike. And because of that, they gave a serious opening to Biden and the Democrats to sell them out. And also what happened at that time, and this is something that unfortunately I was one of the few public figures who called this out, that AOC and Pramila Jayapal and all these so called progressive Democrats, including the squad members, they gave the Biden administration cover to break the railroad workers strike by doing this. I mean, it's too long of a story to go into it, but a sleight of hand mechanism that they used in Congress in order to sell out the railroad workers. So yes, Biden was and is virulently anti labor, the Democratic Party is anti labor, but unfortunately, so is Trump. Trump didn't do anything for the longshore workers, the longshore workers themselves. I mean, the leadership had a slightly better strategy. So we should credit them, not Trump. I mean, look at Trump's record in his first term. Trump's tax cuts, they hurt working people dramatically. I mean, 98% of those tax cut benefits were for the, for big business and the rich and the vast majority of working people were hurt. They were not gained. They did not gain. And so corporate tax cuts, whether they're from Republicans or Democrats, will always hurt working people. Trump does not support Medicare for All. He does not support a $15 minimum wage, much less the $25 an hour minimum wage that Workers Strike Back is fighting for. But neither do the Democrats. I mean, Biden betrayed his promises on $15 an hour canceling student debt and a public health care option. I mean, one of the things just to, just to explain the relationship of all of this analysis with the conference we are organizing is that one of the proposals that I want to bring forward to this conference, obviously there'll be discussion and debate there, but I think that the moment is ripe for us to carry out ballot initiative battles on Medicare for All. So in fact, concretely, we are looking into Workers Strike Back, and I and my organization, Revolutionary Workers, we are looking into the possibility of carrying out a ballot initiative option in a city level or a state level on Medicare for All. The point being that we cannot hold our breath for either the Democrats or the Republicans to pass anything like this. In fact, we can. It is guaranteed, it is absolutely guaranteed that both of them will be, will be completely opposed to anything close to Medicare for All. I mean, who have been the gatekeepers against any kind of serious public option, let alone single payer health care? It's been the Democrats and the Republicans both. So I think we have to be very clear about that.
- [42:05]
Jimmy Dore
Oh no, no doubt. You're completely correct about that. I mean, we were both on the same side of forced to vote. And that was a big eye opener for a lot of people. A lot of people turned on me over that. And people like the Democratic Socialists of America, the dsa, which is a completely co opted organization by the deep state and they're there just to serve as an arm of the Democratic Party. But I just. So what would you say if a worker who voted for Trump, you know, is interested in your organization? And then they see, because this was from Reuters, they say that the, the ILA leaders, which is the Port workers union, Harold and Dennis Daggett, they called Trump a hero to the union and gave him full credit for the resolution of their talks. So is that, I'll say this.
- [42:58]
Shama Sawant
Yeah, I mean, I'll say this. I'm glad you're asking this question because it helps clarify. You know, Jimmy, the thing is, I don't trust a labor leader praising Trump any more than I trust a labor leader praising Biden or Harris or the Democrats. So it is an Equal opportunity liar kind of situation. They are both lying, they are both misleading the working class and we have to condemn both those things. So in other words, my criticism, and I don't hold back, as you know, my Criticism of Sean O'Brien for cozying up to Trump is trenchant. But just as trenchant is my critique of Sean Fain cheerleading Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, shamefully. And then now turning around and publishing an op ed in the Washington Post saying, I am ready to work for Trump. Work, sorry, work with Trump. These are both, these, these, these ideas that are peddled by these labor leaders. They are both snake oil salesmen and we have to reject both because both of them are going to sell us down the river. I mean, union leaders declaring Democrats to be heroes and union leaders declaring Trump to be heroes, they are both being dishonest. When working people do win victories, it is because the rank and file end up fighting back because they are angry. And so in terms of Trump voters, I know a lot of people watching this might have voted for Trump or might have been tempted to vote for Trump or maybe they didn't vote at all. That's why we're saying that it doesn't matter to us whom you voted for because that was a very limited option kind of scenario. And a lot of people were unfortunately tempted by looking at Trump as a real alternative. I mean, in my view is a con man. He presented himself as a friend of working people. But in reality, if you look at what his policies are, they are all anti worker. So I would urge everybody who wants to fight for Medicare for all, who wants to fight for a $25 an hour minimum wage, who wants to see an end to the genocide in Gaza and the west bank, and wants to end US Military funding for all these wars, including in Ukraine, then you should join us. Even if you're not in Seattle. You can watch the, watch the organizing conference on Livestream and I would urge people to join Workers Strike Back.
- [45:23]
Jimmy Dore
So Trump proposed. So I'm just trying to think of how your organization, which is a much needed organization, right, for workers to come together, how it could reach out to. Because the parties have flipped, right? So the Democratic Party got more big money, got more dark money and the more wealthier people as a percentage voted for Democrats then voted. So more workers and blue collar people actually voted for Trump. And I think a lot of that is because they don't have anywhere else to go. And but Trump did like his proposal to take the tax off of tipped wages, which I thought was politically a brilliant stroke. You would support that, correct?
- [46:11]
Shama Sawant
Absolutely. Any, any relief for tipped workers or workers as a whole is to be welcomed. But here's what I would warn. I don't see Trump delivering on anything like that. As you said, it was a ploy. It was an election ploy. Just like Biden promised, he's going to pass $15 an hour. So I think we have to be able to see these election year ploys by both Republicans and Democrats. We should not, I'm serious, we should not fall for this idea that Trump is somehow fundamentally different than the Democrats. He is not. He is different than them in the sense that he's not a predictable and sort of going in line always kind of stooge of the capitalist class. He does his own thing sometimes, but ultimately he's a billionaire himself. Look at whom he is surrounded by, Jimmy. He's surrounded by the richest man in the world and other billionaires. You've seen all these supposedly Democratic leaning billionaires like Mark Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg and others all go over to Trump. So he's surrounded by billionaires as much as Biden was surrounded by billionaires. And if four years from now a Democrat is elected, they will still be surrounded by billionaires. You just saw Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, go to Silicon Valley saying he wants to mend fences with the billionaire class. When was the last time the Democrats or the Republicans ever came to working people and poor people saying, we want to mend fences with you? At the end of the day, we have to rely on independent organizing, meaning independent of both these parties, we have to base ourselves on what we can organize. And I want to be clear, we have to have illusions in neither party. I mean, just to give you a clear idea, those of your viewers who may not know about our work on the city council, between 2014 and 2023, we won the $15 an hour minimum wage. We were the first major city to win that. And that wage is now $20.76 starting January. So it's the highest minimum wage in the nation. We won the Amazon tax, as we talked about, we won a whole host of renters rights. What did the Democrats do? I don't talk about Republicans in Seattle because they're not really a big force. It's the Democratic Party that runs the political show here. So they represent big business. So at every step of the way, I would not have won any of these victories alongside working people had I not used my office as A vehicle to build those movements. And you have seen Bernie Sanders, aoc, none of these people willing to use. They are much more prominent officers. I mean, they have congressional and senatorial offices. They could do what I did 100 times over, but they are not going to because ultimately they are part of a party that represents the interests of the capitalist class. And right now, you know what the Democrats did last year in Seattle? They tried to undermine by legislation. They didn't succeed because we defeated them. Workers strike back defeated them. But they tried to undermine our $15 an hour minimum wage. And had they succeeded, they would have ensured that tens of thousands of workers would have lost the $20.76, the full minimum wage increase. We defeated them. We said, any Democrat voting for this, we're going to. We're going to, you know, they deserve to be brought down. So that's the kind of fighting strategy we need. But my point is that you need that fighting strategy against both the Democrats and Republicans. We cannot afford to have illusions in either. And, you know, we should ask questions. Those of you who voted for Trump, you should ask questions to yourself. If Trump is pro worker, why is he preparing to attack Medicare and Medicaid? If he, if he is pro working class families, why is he going after, in a draconian way, funding for education by going after the Department of Education and Department of Public Education, Why is he going after the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau by saying that this is, you know, this is the deep state, this is government. So, I mean, I am a socialist. I want to overthrow capitalism. I am not peddling any kind of faith in any kind of federal institution in any way whatsoever. But if you look at what he's attacking, he's attacking the meager protections that working people have. I mean, working people should understand. What did the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau do? In 2022, they went after Wells Fargo. In 2023, they went after bank of America. In 2024, they went after Apple and Goldman Sachs. And these were, you know, these were just fines. I mean, they were fined to the tune of hundreds of millions or in some cases, billions of dollars. So it was not, it was hardly what we need. But the point is that these are meager protections for working people against these big banks. These are Wall street billionaires. These are rapacious, plundering entities that target ordinary people, poor people, working class people, elderly people on junk fees and denying them the rewards they have earned on credit cards. I mean, they go after real, the really the little people in such shameful ways and they make Hundreds of billions of dollars for themselves. So we have to be very clear who they are.
- [51:34]
Jimmy Dore
So the. Yes, and I've talked about that a little. I'm going to talk about it more. I think everybody, most people I know anyway, support the defunding of usaid because that's just the CIA and that's about overthrowing governments and things. But then they shoehorn in this consumer Financial protection Agency and that's actually a good thing like you've just been describing, that they actually fight back against the big banks and they fight for the little guy. And so they're conf. So Elon and Trump are conflating those two things. And so I think that's a, you know, I'm gonna do my best to try to make people realize that those aren't the same thing as they're trying to conflate that. But the weird thing was for me was that, sure, go ahead, clarify.
- [52:21]
Shama Sawant
You may not agree with me, but yes, I mean, we should clarify those things. But even in the case of US Aid, in my view, the reality of what they are doing, I mean, these are nefarious people. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, I mean, these are, these are arch enemies of any decent idea of what society should be for working people. So as far as USAID is concerned, yes, of course, US Aid has been peddling sort of, sort of, you know, what they call regime change, basically CIA operations against working class or other left revolutions. We know what they did supporting the Saudi regime, Saudi Arabia regime against people in Yemen. That is all true. And I should mention the hateful Samantha Power. You know, she has been under Obama. Of course, you've talked about her on your show. So again, we don't have, and we should not have illusions any of these. Samantha Power is a peddler of war and bloodshed. We should be very clear. However, my point is this, that in my view, what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing with US Aid is not that they are going to stop the CIA type of operations against working people's movements in other countries. They will do it. My claim is that they will do it in another fashion. It will be under, you know, it won't be visible probably to us. It'll be some sort of covert operation. Many of CIA's operations have been covert. But what, what they are going after, in my view, what they're actually going after is the billions of dollars in actual aid to very, very desperately poor people in many desperate regions around the world. Now, again, as a socialist, I don't Think that we can solve the problems of poverty and misery in the world by USAID being propped up. My point is that you can't have illusions in what Trump's actual agenda is.
- [54:16]
Jimmy Dore
Right. Were you just as disappointed in me because you talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Elizabeth Warren was the champion of. Right. And then to see her do such a underhanded to oppose RFK Jr. S HHS, it was just despicable the way she was trying to make him. You know, he's sued corporations his whole career, right. He got the Hudson river cleaned up. He's been suing chemical companies and huge polluters and General Electric and Big Pharma. And he's won over and over. He's won against Big Pharma. And she tried to make that sound like a bad thing. And she tried to get him to admit to stop suing Big Pharma. And so that's, so I don't, I couldn't square that circle with. She's supposed to be supporting the consumer protection finance. And then she's doing that. It was real. And you know, Bernie Sanders did the same thing. It just, I mean, that was just them doing the bidding of power on parade. I was just, I don't know. You could, you could comment on that if you'd like.
- [55:22]
Shama Sawant
Oh, Elizabeth Warren is a fraud. I mean, she's a long time fraud. I mean, we saw, I mean, you're talking about rfk and I think we might have some differences, you and I, on what RFK is doing. And you know, we can talk about that at some point. But your essential point about Warren is, I think the more, more relevant one here, which is that she has always been a fraud. I mean, look at what, how she went after Bernie Sanders in 2016. Remember, her whole campaign, her whole, the raison d'etre, the whole objective of her candidacy was to help bring down Bernie Sanders. So in other words, she is one of the countless people who carry water for the capitalist class and we should not have illusions in her either. And AOC is now an arch water carrier for them as well. And so when we look at, okay, what is it that working people need to do in order to get organized? One of the main questions, in fact, you can't build successful movements if you are not able to answer this question correctly. And this is part of why we have succeeded so historically in our efforts as socialists in Seattle, which is, and the question is, do you understand who working class people's enemies are? If you don't understand, if you can't answer that question accurately, then it will end, you know, you will end up being defeated. And so not only should we understand that Democrats and Republicans, you know, the top Democrats, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and top Republicans like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. Yeah, Mitch McConnell, all of them there, I mean they may have differences amongst themselves, but they all agree on their progress, pro capitalist agenda. So they are obviously our enemies. And obviously before that, the billionaire class themselves are our enemies. So billionaires, multi millionaires, that's where it starts. Then the top Democrats and Republicans. But then you can't stop there. Then it is all these people and these are some of the most nefarious entities, you know, because they look progressive, they sound progressive, they act like they're on your side, but their real purpose is to deflect away from, you know, to take working class anger towards, you know, just vote blue Democratic Party. Don't build working class movements. And so that's the role of the squad members. Elizabeth Warren, of course, I mean she's just rotten. And then you have the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I mean there's hundred members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The chair is Pramila Jaipal. Her role is to deflect working people's movements away from actually what could succeed which is building independent movements. And then we also have to keep in mind who else is not on our side. Most of the NGO leaders, most of the labor leadership, they are all carrying water for the Democratic Party. Dsa. You mentioned the DSA leadership. So it's all like a, it's a pipeline of people who peddle snake oil and working people cannot have illusions in any of them.
- [58:28]
Jimmy Dore
Well, so February 22nd is the workers Strike Back. I was holding a big rally. So in Seattle, everybody, do you have a, what's your website that I can point people to?
- [58:43]
Shama Sawant
So if people can go to Workers strike back, all one word, workers strikeback.org you'll find the registration form for the organizing conference on the homepage itself. And like I said, if you are anywhere in driving distance of Seattle, please come in person. We want you there in person. But if you can't, then join us on the livestream and join Workers Strike Back itself.
- [59:04]
Jimmy Dore
And I just, you know, would just say it's, you know, as Christian Smalls did when he organized the first Amazon workers union. You know, I've been involved with several organizing efforts and he did it the right way. You know, he got, he got all types of people together. I mean there's lots of MAGA votes, voters on Staten island. And he's a black guy who got them to organize around class issues and that we share a common enemy and he didn't muck it up with identity politics, which is what a lot of people do. Like Code Pink. When we were doing an anti war rally, they wouldn't speak because they didn't like some of the speakers views on lgbtq. And I'm like, you know, that's the equivalent of saying yeah, I'd like to stop a nuclear war, but not with those people. And that's the opposite of what organizing is. Organizing is when you find common ground, ground with people you disagree with vehemently on other topics but you can work together on one. And the big thing is an economic issue. So if you're, if your organization is built around economic issues and class struggle, that's going to be a winning message. And if you can, I just hope that you can resist the, you know, the, the infiltrate because the deep state as Christian Parenti has taught us on our show that the deep state likes to insert and identity politics to try to split up working coalitions. And so my best to you.
- [60:25]
Shama Sawant
Can I, can I just quickly say a few words about that?
- [60:32]
Jimmy Dore
You know what, I have another guest. I'm already six minutes over but I'd love to have you back on and we can talk more about it.
- [60:40]
Shama Sawant
Okay.
- [60:40]
Jimmy Dore
Is that good? Okay. Shama Sawant, thank you so much and I really a big supporter of your work and I wish I could be there. I'm going to be on tour or else I would be at that rally in Seattle. But good luck and we'll talk to you again soon.
- [60:54]
Shama Sawant
Thank you so much.
- [60:55]
Jimmy Dore
Okay. Hey. Become a premium member. Go to jimmy dorecomedy.com sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business. All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae. He can be found at mikemcrae.com.
- [61:18]
Shama Sawant
That'S.
- [61:18]
Jimmy Dore
It for this week. You be the best you can be and I'll keep being me. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Out. Don't freak out. Don't freak out. Do not freak out.
- [61:44]
Steve Bannon
I'm not kidding.
- [61:45]
Shama Sawant
Do not.
- [61:45]
Steve Bannon
Do not. I'm not.
- [61:47]
Jimmy Dore
I'm not. I'm not.
- [61:48]
Shama Sawant
I'm not. I'm not.
- [61:49]
Steve Bannon
I'm not.
- [61:52]
Jimmy Dore
Freak out. Do not freak out.
- [61:58]
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