Economist: Give me a give me a kind of scorecard just going
around Italy, France, Germany, Britain of where these parties lie. Will Farage
be a prime minister?
Economist: I don't agree with a lot of what you've said, but
I have a much better understanding of what it is you're trying to do.
Link to YouTube Video
Steve Bannon, welcome to The Insider.
You definitely have a very different worldview. You're a
populist nationalist. We're classical liberals, but we really think it's
important to understand world your worldview better.
I want to start by really getting you to paint a picture for
me of what the America that you want to create is. I mean, you are now partway
through the MAGA revolution. Let's assume you're successful. Just paint a
picture for me of what America looks like when you're successful.
In America where the little guy, the person that the
system is based upon, the working class and middle class in our country,
sharing the prosperity we actually have. A return to capitalism because we
don't have capitalism today ….. this is corporatism. So, we have to break that.
We have to give the little guy an opportunity to thrive
since the whole system rests upon him. We're in a political war - I don't say
that every day.
So, what's the end point of a war?
The end point is we are in charge. We control the
institutions. We control the political process. We actually have reclaimed this
country, turned it around, put citizens first and created an entrepreneurial
capitalism paradise for the average people in this country who happen to be
citizens. And we're not going to back off one inch until we get it. And guess
what? We're winning.
You use the war world war a lot. If you really think there
is a risk of civil war and there and the situation is as bad as you are saying,
don't you have a responsibility as someone who sees this and who's a student of
history and has seen what has happened in history to calm things down.
Not to calm things down at all; to warn people! Do you
think if we calm things down, they're going to stop? What planet are you living
on? This is my problem with this whole concept of liberal debate. We're in a
revolutionary time both technologically, geopolitically, financially. You're
talking, you in this magazine, you tell me we're heading to financial
Armageddon. There's no other way you can read this.
Hang on. If you don't warn people about it and say
We must go to the ramparts. Because if you're just
passive and docile and just flick the channel and watch the National Football
League and go to Taylor Swift concerts, it's over. You need to rally people to
say no. You represent from time immemorial, from every patriot's grave back to
the beginning, the basic working man and woman that has always saved this
country in moments of crisis. In the revolution, in the Civil War, in the Great
Depression, World War II, it's always come back to the little guy. This is the
fourth turning.
The strength of the populist nationalist MAGA movement in
this country is we're anti-fragile. We're resilient. You can give us your best
shot. You can put us in prison. You can take our credit cards away. You can
debank us. You can deplatform users. You can have all the tech stuff that
happened. We can't be beaten if we don't quit. And if that takes hot rhetoric,
you ain't seen nothing yet.
Because we're now getting into the middle of this fight. And
we’re never going to kowtow to these people. We're never going to get on our
knees to these people. We're never going to apologize. We're never going to say
we're sorry. All we care about is victory begets victory begets victory. And we
know that we're in the ascendant and they're in decline.
So Steve, when you when you look at history and you map the
lessons of history onto the situation today, the crisis we're in today, is it
your belief that the only way through this crisis is through some sort of
conflagration? And if so, do you think your role is to accelerate that to bring
it out so that it happens fast and you come out on the other side better and
faster? Or is it to stop the crisis? Is it a belief that, you know what, we can
work to stop the crisis, and actually change is better brought about through
evolution rather than revolution.
This is not evolution. I think that to avoid actual civil
conflict, which I think you're seeing right now, the beginning of the harbinger
of it. If you want to stop that you have to bind together tighter.
We as a populist nationalist movement as a MAGA movement
we need to do for example the redistricting fights. This is why I was down in
Texas. We need to get the House (of Representatives) in a situation that is
permanently defendable by the MAGA movement. Right? So, it's a blocking
mechanism and take that. Like I said, you have a maximalist strategy with a
sense of urgency, and you seize the institutions and that's what we're doing
right now.
I don't see how that is a recipe for diffusing this crisis.
I think that what happens is, when people feel shut out of power and interest
groups cannot get representation and cannot get an input into the way that
policies made, that's precisely when you end up with civil war.
I think no, because I think the mechanism will be that
people in the Democratic party will adjust and change. They’ll say, hey we have
to start winning elections and we have to have a message that can resonate with
many Americans that we can start getting back control of the House of
Representatives. We can take the Senate and most importantly, we take the
presidency. I think that you'll force the civil war to be inside of those guys (and
they'll say these radicals are saying violence and – not clear what he
means)
We have to seize the institutions. Seize them and then
purge them. We seize the institutions, purge them. And that's why you've got
guys; it's not the Doge crap.
This is serious, people like Russ Vought and others that
have spent years thinking this whole plan through. We must strike and we must
strike now. I know all the haters hate it, but is this is the age of Trump?
He's totally redefined politics and power in America. And how did he do that
with no political training? Because he was a populist and he was a nationalist
at the very moment you didn't have populist nationalism. He stopped the managed
decline of the country by the elites of the nation.
And does he need a third term in order to see that job
through?
Well, he's going to get a third term.
So, Trump 28?
Trump is going to be president 28 and people just ought
to get accommodated with that.
So what about the 22nd amendment?
There are many different alternatives. At the appropriate
time, we'll lay out what the plan is, but there's a plan and President Trump
will be the president in 28. We had longer odds in 16 and longer odds in 24
than we got in 28. And President Trump will be the president of the United
States and the country needs him to be president of the United States.
We have to finish what we started. And the way we finish
it through Trump, Trump is a vehicle. I know this will drive you guys crazy,
but he's a vehicle of divine providence. He's an instrument. He's very
imperfect. He's not churchy, not particularly religious, but he's an instrument
of divine will. And you could tell this by how he's pulled this off. We need
him for at least one more term, right? And he'll get that in 28.
You're not driving me crazy. I'm simply trying to understand
the coherence of the things you've just told me in the last few minutes. On the
one hand, you've said the Constitution is fit for purpose, secondly, you've
said that President Trump needs another term, even though the 22nd amendment
makes pretty clear that he cannot have another term. Why does it make that
clear? Because he's on his second term already.
At some point in time, we will make sure we go through
(Xany?) and define all those terms.
But you will be undermining the spirit of that amendment
even if you find some way around it.
If the American people with the mechanisms we have put
Trump back in office are the American people tearing up the constitution? Would
that be tearing up? Would the American people be going against the spirit of
the constitution?
I think yes actually because I think what you are going to
what you will end up with a populist justification for a quasi-dictatorship.
That's not true at all.
It sounds like it.
Trump is not a dictator. Did you just see the compromises
he had to make on the Big Beautiful bill? You see the compromises he has to do
on everything, on accommodating Zalensky. President Trump is nothing but a
series of negotiations to kind of keep this thing rolling forward, where he's
having trade-offs all the time.
You've just been you just spent the last 20 minutes telling
me we have to smash the other side. There's no room for debate. There's no room
for compromise.
We must smash them.
And now you're telling me this is a negotiation.
The only way President Trump wins in 2028 and continues
to stay in office is by the will of the American people. Okay? And the will of
the American people is what the Constitution embodies. And so I think we're
going to be in good hands there. We need to finish what we started. And
President Trump is the instrument, a providential instrument to finish that, to
finish this job.
A few minutes ago, you talked about uh populist nationalists
and populist internationalists.
Globalists
You were something of a populist globalist in when you spent
a lot of time in Europe.
I'm not populist globalist at all. It was all national.
Look, we're a nation in the world. We're not isolationist. I've never said
that. I'm non-interventionist. I don't want to be in the bloodlands in Ukraine
or in the Middle East. It's a sideshow. I'm all for direct engagement with the
Chinese Communist Party because we see what they're trying to do. Now, I'd like
not to send troops there (Where? Taiwan?) because there's other ways we
can do that without putting in people.
The European project. Remember in this very room is where
Nigel Farage first talked about Brexit before it even became a thing. We had a
gathering of the beginning of the MAGA movement. This is in like in 2012,13, 14.
Nigel would come over and we'd host these huge dinners and Nigel would stand up
and give these talks about getting Britain's sovereignty back. We had all the
populists; the Alternative for Deutschland and the Salvini group … and people
in Fox all these different people would come because we saw they were all
fighting a common fight.
Give me a give me a kind of scorecard just going around
Italy, France, Germany, Britain of where these parties lie. Will Farage be a
prime minister?
Of course he'll be prime minister. I mean look you have
you have two parties that are the Tory party's 250 years old or older. If you
take Labour and Tories right now the Reform party is bigger than both. I think
it's 36% of those two are 35%. Of course he's going to be the next Prime Minister.
And France is going to be it's going to be Front National … or I hope it will
be Le Pen and not the the younger guy. If you think I'm enthusiastic about what
we've accomplished here, I'm really enthusiastic about what those people have
accomplished because as hard as our fight was, they had state media suppress
them. Because it's much more concentration of power and wealth over there. They
had everybody fight them. And look at everywhere from Hungary to Poland to
Germany to Italy to Vox and Spain. Everywhere we're getting momentum.
It's not perfect. I told people at the time, you're not
going to win everything. It's a process. Just look at the critical path. Look
at the event horizon. Keep your heads down and remember you're not alone. And you're
anti-fragile. As long as you don't quit, they will surrender. As long as you
just keep pounding.
And look at Farage. Look what he's done over his career
to do this. I mean, he's brought British sovereignty back and now he's going to
be the prime minister one day.
Now Nigel's come our way. Nigel forever would never talk
about mass deportations. He's now talking about that. I think we're actually
helping drive some of those people to the part of the right that you actually
need to be to fix the problems.
This is the age of Trump and we have to get all the
squeeze out of the lemon. This is why 28's so important. We have to finish what
we started because Trump knew in 21 that they were going to try to bankrupt
him. They're going to try to destroy his family. They're going to try to put
him in jail and they're going to try to assassinate him.
I would talk to him about this. He understood that he has
more moral courage than any political person we've had, I believe, since
Abraham Lincoln.
If you look at Trump over the arc of history, what he's
accomplished and what he's been able to to lead us to, I mean, he's equivalent
of of Moses. I mean, he has led our people back right now to the bank of the
Promised Land to make sure that we're very close to actually redoing this,
making the changes that have to be made to save our country and to return
America to her greatness, make America great again.
I don't agree with a lot of what you've said, but I have a
much better understanding of what it is you're trying to do.
