Steve Bannon: 'President Trump will serve a third term' | FT

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Thank you, Steve, well, for walking on stage with an FT.

It's my comfort blanket.

And I said to somebody earlier, you're the only person I remember, at least, being photographed going into jail with an FT.

That was prison.

Prison.

Yes.

No, I appreciate the distinction.

And did prison radicalise you, or were you already radicalised?

I was radicalised, but it opened my eyes to a lot, to a lot. These prisons are very dangerous, extremely dangerous for the non-violent young drug offenders put in there for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. Danbury is a very small place when you have to live the next 20 years of your life in a prison that's 100 years old that's supposed to have 800 inmates; it has 1,200 because of the overcrowding because of so many foreign nationals. It's very dangerous.

And the prisons have to be reformed. I'm working with Jared and Peter Navarro to get the BOP candidates in and start to do some serious prison reform.

And Jared, and I know, actually, this is a rare cross-party issue. Jared hasn't had jail experience, but you and Navarro...

Well, his father went to prison. Jared's in back of the First Step Act. First Step Act is revolutionary. It hasn't been implemented. The thing I found shocking, it hasn't been implemented.

I don't to say it's because it was Trump's bill. I think a lot of it was incompetence or just lethargy. But the First Step Act could cut inmates', non-violent criminals' time in half, and it hasn't been implemented. So Jared is really the author of that. He did a brilliant job.

I wasn't that into it when he first did it. I got into it late to help get it passed because of the politics. But it's brilliant and we're trying to do so much more. The prisons are a disgrace in this country, absolute disgrace.

I think a lot of people would agree with you. I want to get into the meat of what Maga is and what the real end game is, beyond the trolling, if there is a beyond the trolling, I mean, which is sort of my suspicion and you can allay it if you like. But let me start with current affairs, which is the Cardinal Prevost, who is now, of course, Leo XIV. You said a couple of weeks ago - or, no, 10 days ago, whenever it was, that he was the dark horse candidate.

And then he became Pope. So you you've got a pretty good predictive record. I mean, I have to say I find there is a sort of Trump reaction going on around the world. And I see it as Canada, Australia, the Vatican. And you've described him as a basic, I think a cultural Marxist. Can you...

Well, from Bergoglio. Remember, Bergoglio was anti-Trump from the beginning in the '16 campaign. When he did the mass down on the border, he criticised our building the wall, at that time, candidate Trump. And I recommended he come back strong on that. And Bergoglio the entire time has been virulently anti-Trump.

But it's not just being anti-Maga, anti-Trump. That's the politics of it. And Prevost is a continuation. But it is, for the traditional Catholics in the crowd, the Latin Mass Catholics, the pre-Vatican II Catholics, we're close to a schism in the church between Bergoglio and this kind of radical way he's taking it.

And Prevost, what my research found, and we have lots of contacts in the Curia. We have lots of contacts in the Vatican. I've spent a lot of time in Italy. We had a monastery that we actually owned before the government took it away from us to be kind of a counter to what was going on in the Vatican. So we have a broad network of the traditionalists.

And Prevost, and I'm saying this. The conclave for the Pope was more rigged than the 2020 election. Now, why do I say... let me back it up with some facts. On Piers Morgan's show 10 days before the conclave started, I called it. I said, Prevost is the dark horse. He wasn't in any betting pool, If you look at Italian TV, nowhere.

The reason is is not only is the... he's only been a cardinal less than two years. He was the perfect acolyte for Bergoglio to continue his thing, and the front page of The New York Times says that today, if you read the whole huge front-page story. More importantly, because of our efforts and other... because the traditional church in America is on fire with vocations and young people and vibrancy and urgency, that we help cut off the money going to the Vatican.

And so the Vatican. The Wall Street Journal had a huge article this week that showed the Vatican has tons of assets, but they're illiquid. They need the American cash. They would never put a traditional American in that role because they think the American church has too much power. Prevost is going to be the contact for the big American donors.

There was a joke at the time, a couple of days ago when he got made Pope that Mayor Daley had rigged another election, the Chicago cardinal. But, I mean...

His brother did say...

You're underestimating the reaction against Trump here and the influence of Pope Francis on having appointed two-thirds, three-quarters of the cardinals, whatever.

That's true, but he was.. it is. And he worked in the dicastery for the archbishops. However, he was virtually totally unknown. The American cardinals came out today and said, he's the least American of the cardinals, and we don't really know him. This was a true dark horse.

And it only took three ballots, folks. It took one day. They had one vote late in the afternoon. Next day, they came back. It is impossible... The Daily Mail reports he talked to his brother two days before the conclave, and they were talking about picking Leo, he wanted to pick Leo, but he thought it might be the 13th, and then he figured out it was the 14th.

How would you talk to your brother about that? This was totally rigged by the Curia to be both anti-Trump and to drive... we're going to have a schism in the church because the traditional Catholics are not going to go along with the continuation of Bergoglio.

So let's park the pope for a moment. I want to get...

No, no, I asked you about the Pope, just to be clear.

I told you not to go there. Let's start with taxes.

I'm not yet regretting having gone there, but let's park him. I want to get into... I think it's fair to say that you are the best explainer of Maga, particularly to audiences like this. And you read the FT for a reason, and that you present a theory of the case.

And I was trying to think... you were a strategist during the 2016 election and then in the White House in Trump's first term. And you have been the chief explainer of Maga to many, many audiences. Who is the equivalent of you?

And the answer I came up with, from past eras of figures who aren't necessarily elected but have a sort of command over shaping the zeitgeist, was Grover Norquist. And Grover Norquist had a huge influence, very different, but a huge influence over Republicans in Washington by getting them to sign the anti-tax pledge, which was binding and sort of militantly enforced. And he really shaped the Republican Party into being purely a party of tax cuts.

You're quite different. But I want you to explain first, before I follow up, why you're different. I mean, you don't believe in tax cuts, right?

I believe in massive tax cuts for the middle class and the working class, and permanent. I believe if we can't cut federal spending, that the wealthy in this country, at least the millionaires, ought to be at 40 per cent as a start. The country's in a financial crisis. We've had the greatest concentration of wealth under President Obama because of the bailouts in 2008, how they were done. And now, because of Covid, we have a tremendous concentration of wealth in this country, such that we have a capitalist system with very few capitalists. I think 75 per cent of the people don't own any real assets or financial assets.

So we have to have fundamental change in this country. Part of that has to come from the tax structure, I think you see from Grover Norquist, they're playing from a playbook. We've changed the electorate in the Republican party. We are a working-class and middle-class party.

And the reason is the Democrats, the credentialed class completely abandoned the Democratic party. I come from a Democratic family. We were Irish people - firemen, phone workers, cops, that type of thing, union people. And the Democratic party abandoned us.

And that's why 100 and some days into this, there's no real theory of the case on the Democratic side. Bob Reich, the labour secretary, wrote this brilliant piece in The Guardian the other day calling for a left-wing populism. But there's no left-wing populism until you start talking about economic issues. You can watch MSNBC or these things all night long, and you never see - Ro Khanna is never on. Fetterman, they're trying to run out of the party. Sherrod Brown's defeated. They never talk about the core issues of economics that are important to the American people.

And we're going to get into that. Quickly, how often do you talk to President Trump?

I think if you watch the show c- we're four hours a day - he gets clips every day. And I think you can see that a lot of the Truth Socials or things come out of some of the stuff we say, but it's frequently enough.

Frequently enough.

But listen, he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. The last thing he needs is a Steve Bannon calling him up all the time, hey, here are my thoughts. My thoughts are out. My thoughts are on that show every day. The reason the show is so powerful - it's a working-class audience and a middle-class audience who are activists. It's all about using your human agency.

No, I get that. We'll get to that.

And so by doing that...

Is it once

a week, once a day? ...he sees it.

Is it sort of daily, weekly?

No, no, no, I don't talk to him once a day. No. He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. What does he Bannon bugging him for on some...

The reason I ask in this context is there's a budget before the House. And that budget says we will pay for the tax cuts with cuts to Medicaid, essentially $880bn, whatever it is, to the middle class.

Well, hold it. He's not on the...

And Trump is clearly conflicted on this. He's got Elon Musk on this shoulder and Steve Bannon on this.

Right.

Or maybe it's Tucker Carlson. I don't know. But he has different...

Well, Tucker not on the economics.

He has different perspectives on the economics.

On both Medicaid and the tax cuts, he watches the show. He knows where I stand. We send the staff a lot of information. And the Jason Millers in the world that are not in - remember, there are many prominent people that give advice to President Trump - Boris Epshteyn, Jason Miller - who are not in the administration.

Scott Bessent was a contributor on our show. Navarro was a co-host. Russ Vought was a contributor. So it's not that we lack for these things. And President Trump, I think that shows you the difference.

The Republican party that you talk about with Grover Norquist is dead. The electorate has totally changed. We haven't changed the apparatus on Capitol Hill. That's why we still have these fights. They want to cut $880bn out of Medicaid. And you can't do it, because Maga is on Medicaid because there's not great jobs in this country.

OK, so let's say that it happens. Let's typify it as the Grover Norquist bill because that is a Grover Norquist bill.

I'd rather say I was Mark Rylance in Cromwell in Wolf Hall than Grover Norquist.

It's certainly more gripping to... no, no, it's not. This is gripping to watch. And right now, it looks like Grover Norquist's bill is going to be passed, in some form.

I totally disagree with that.

OK.

First off, Grover Norquist doesn't want no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. He's a protector of what the Republican party was. And still part of it is a big donor party. It's one of the problems with the Democrats. The big donors run the Democratic party also.

Everything you see on MSNBC and Fox is all pro wrestling. It's not the heart of it. The heart of it is money and power. And that's what we're trying to do. And we're trying to do this by breaking the Grover Norquist mentality on Capitol Hill.

And it is a struggle. But I think if you see this bill right now, that's why they didn't... they haven't put out whether the upper brackets are going to be permanent. There's all types of moving pieces on this. And the date you have to look at is the debt ceiling in August. This is going to be fought and negotiated, marked up, debated intensely over the next couple of months.

Now, I take it you would support a tax increase on the very wealthy.

Oh, definitely.

A serious one or a symbolic one?

No, seriously. The math doesn't work unless you do that. For the upper bracket - I think the entire upper bracket, but I would go to a million dollars and above - have to pay 40 per cent. And they definitely don't get a tax cut permanently.

And if they can't help on cutting the spending, which they're one of the drivers of, eventually taxes may have to go up from that. But the system we have is unsustainable. You can't have $2tn deficits annually and continue to try to finance those. We're the world's reserve currency now, but the Brics nations and the rest of the world are getting smart to the scheme.

The reason I'm sort of pressing you on this is because you are really... I agree with your diagnosis of what's happened to the middle class in the last 40 years or so. They have been squeezed, and there has been a rising inequality. And there has been populist resentment. Some of it comes from that, not all of it. And we can get on to the other bits, but some of it comes from that.

And so you identify inequality as an issue. But the simple way of looking at this thing is if you want to redress inequality, you're going to have to reduce freedom. Freedom and equality are a zero-sum game. Yet your...

Freedom for the billionaires? Is that my trade-off?

Oh, well, that might be, but that's rhetorical. Let me finish my...

I'll hit the bit on that.

OK. But the freedom and equality thing is generally seen as a trade-off. And yet your solution to the, I think, correctly diagnosed, for what it's worth, middle-class problem is for more freedom. It's the deconstruction of the administrative state, which makes life easier for billionaires. There's a real tension there.

Yes, but look, OK, but hang on. Let's be specific. Right now, and this is what populist nationalism is doing. Right now, in this city, we have the oligarchs up against the wall.

We have Google... this is the FTC under President Trump, Ferguson, Gail Slater and the team over at the Antitrust Division at DOJ at Main Justice, the FCC. And, hey, we're all advocates of Lina Khan, who was one of the best chairmen the FTC ever had and hung out to dry by the Democratic party because they're owned by the oligarchs.

We're breaking up Google. We have the search engine in one court in Northern Virginia, and we have the ad sales apparatus in the other. Facebook, he went and begged Trump in the Oval Office multiple times, don't send me to trial. He's in trial right now.

Are you sure this isn't a shakedown and that, at some point, Google, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai will be able to call off these antitrust actions by going to Trump and saying, we'll give you a billion dollars of free legal advice...

President Trump, by selecting this team - this team, we are neo-Brandeisians like Lina Khan. This is the most aggressive antitrust apparatus we've ever had. This goes back to Teddy Roosevelt or to FDR.

You're confident that this is actually...

Here's where I'm confident. I'm confident that they all came and begged for mercy. They all came to beg for mercy. And they're all in federal court getting broken up right now.

Now, people know this. The city is run by big pharma, big tech, and the big defence industry. Let's not kid ourselves. Let's have an adult conversation. They own it.

They own the law firms. They're partners with the private equity firms. They own all the lobbyists. They own the media, except for The Financial Times and a few brave others.

No. But you know this. And so, yes, it's an uphill struggle. And I think President Trump's been particularly heroic in this and hasn't gotten any credit. But, look, every day in the Oval Office is a pressure cooker where they're coming at him from every different angle.

And the broligarchs - Elon Musk wrote a big cheque to back a ground game that without that cheque we would have won, but it would have been a much tougher tractor pull. And I don't think we would have heard about it at 10 o'clock at night on the 5th.

OK.

So they get some runway. But Trump is crushing the oligarchs right now.

You described Elon Musk as, I think, a parasitical illegal immigrant. Is that right?

Or words to that effect.

Words to that effect.

Yes.

And being illegal...

I'm very proud of the fact that I'm the only person, except some folks on the left, that stood up to him because of the H1-B visas. That's where it started, which is a total scam to do nothing but take jobs away. This is why we have no minorities, no Blacks and Hispanics in Silicon Valley, because the H-1B visas were bringing indentured servants over here from other countries who shouldn't be. It's outrageous we're doing that.

But that was just one. Elon Musk and I had many, many fights. But Elon Musk is gone, right? Elon Musk is gone, and I'm still here.

You are. I will concede that point. And you also called him a racist and said he should go back to South Africa. And what we are seeing, though, on the other side of the ledger, is that the only refugees being admitted to this country are Afrikaners, Boers or whatever.

I disagree with that totally.

It does look... I understand that there is a sort of fortress America element to Maga. But do you see how the rest of the world sees this?

Look, I don't agree with everything. You're not going to agree with everything. There's so many huge things going on. And President Trump, on so many different levels, is delivering so far beyond, whether it's national security strategy, America-first economics or the deportations, the sealing of the border in 60 days, when people told us it's going to take 10 years and 2 million more invaders.

He's doing so much. Some of the stuff I don't agree with. I think a lot of that's on the margin. I'm a believer that right now, to protect the African-American and Hispanic community in this country, working-class and middle-class people, that we ought to cease, at least temporarily, all visas into the country - all. I don't care if you're from Norway, South Africa, or wherever, just so we can...

All work visas.

No work visas. When President Trump said he wanted to put a green card, staple it to every college degree, I said, look, I love the president. I know he wants to make this the best and the brightest. I would staple an exit visa that gives them 30 days to go back home.

American kids in this country under 30 can't get jobs they can buy houses on. The only way you're going to do that is stop having the world come to their country and compete against them. And so I'm a hardcore, we have to stop it temporarily. Get all the scams out of these visa programmes, because they're riddled with scams by the corporations. We have to make them for the American citizen first and the country first and then open it back up.

So has DOGE been a failure?

DOGE was not... look, I was deconstructing the administrative state and destroying the deep state. What DOGE did, I think you did have to give kind of a trauma blow to the administrative state to get their attention. What I didn't like about DOGE and I said it from day one.

It's getting the people on Capitol Hill off the hook on the smart cuts we have to make to federal spending - we spend about $1.7tn trillion discretionary - before you get to the entitlements, because you're never going to get to the entitlements. The American people will never trust you until they see what you can do on discretionary. And discretionary has to start in the Pentagon. We can't afford and we don't need a $1tn defence budget.

But you have to do it smartly. Look at all the Congressmen were running around like little kids thinking he's some fairy godmother that's going to give them $1tn in fraud. That's not going to happen. There is fraud in the system. There's plenty of fraud over in the Pentagon, of which they didn't... or at least they didn't expose any.

So it gave people off the hook. So now we're in May with a debt ceiling that's going to come due - and Scott Bessent is as smart as you get - with a debt ceiling that's going to come due in August. And if you look at these cuts, it's kind of ephemeral. It's $163bn, but they didn't touch defence. You don't know if they're really real cuts.

We've wasted, in that regard, I think, three or four valuable months because DOGE didn't deliver. And if they have, I would love to do it. I keep asking Russ Vought every couple of days, have we codified the waste, fraud, and abuse that was supposed to be seen by DOGE? I saw it yesterday on the Hill, I think the Senate voted against some bill to actually codify the DOGE cuts in one department. So, no, I think, overall, what it's done is OK, but it's been like an IT department.

So one of your most-quoted comments is 'deconstruction of the administrative state'.

Yeah.

You want to cut the fiscal deficit, right? I mean, you've just been outlining what...

It's 6.5 per cent of GDP right now. We have to get down to 3 per cent 3.5 per cent.

Is the IRS part of the administrative state?

Yes.

So how are you going to cut the deficit if you're not collecting taxes?

Well, I didn't say... listen, it's, do you cut blindly? No. The administrative state has become a fourth branch of government that's not elected. Whether AOC - and I saw it up close and personal in the White House - whether AOC is president or Donald Trump is president, the administrative state and the deep state run this town. You're just passing through. That's what we have to break up, this fourth branch of government that was never conceived in the Constitution.

This is where I'm confused, though.

OK.

I mean, is the DOJ and the FTC that are prosecuting Google, are they the deep state?

No, the deep state is the, no. That's the administrative state. And we fought...

Or the administrative, sorry.

But the administrative state is the bureaucracy in the administrative state that runs things. The deep state is the kind of rogue Praetorian Guard of certain elements - the Defence Department, intelligence, FBI, DOJ - that run the deal and have to be rooted out, root and branch.

The administrative state, we fought the other day on the show. We lit up Jordan's office when it came that they wanted to do away with the FTC. They magically wanted to do away with the FTC and make one agency as a cost cutting just when FTC's got Zuckerberg in court. And we came on and said, no, you can't do it. And they backed off the other day.

I'm not an anarchist. And we're not libertarians. We don't say you can't have any state. What you can't have is an administrative state that has a $7tn budget that is out of control. You have to deconstruct that. You have to get down to the limited government. Conservatives have talked about it forever. We're actually doing it now.

And you can do it. And you can keep an FTC. You can keep an FCC. You can keep a DOJ, FBI. Quite frankly, I think the FBI should be eliminated. And Kash Patel is a very close friend of mine, and Kash Patel clearly has other ideas because he went to Congress yesterday and asked for a billion dollars more than President Trump put in the budget.

So, no, there are aspects of this that have to be taken apart. There are other aspects that have to be streamlined for more efficiency, more effectiveness. But we're not anarchists. We don't want to get - we don't want to do away with all of the state.

So I'm aware of the time. I've got tons of questions, but I'm aware it would be selfish to take up all the remaining time. And so there will be some left for the audience. The other phrase that you're most quoted as having said is 'flooding the zone with shit'.

Now, flooding the zone with shit implies some of the stuff you're flooding isn't shit, right? So I promised I'd get back to the Pope. Clearly...

Clearly, Trump, picturing himself, sending out a picture, a meme of him as the Pope, that's shit, right? And we all get outraged, and our outrage is part of the pleasure of politics.

It's two or three...

...or Maga.

In the first term, because we came from behind, We had no team, no organisation. There was no bench. And I said at the time to PBS, we were trying to put up two or three things a day so the media jumps on one, and the other two - they're not trolling. We get... now, this is why it was so...

Well, that was trolling, though.

What do you mean?

And then it worked, right? I mean, I'd like to be Pope. I'd be a great Pope. Elect me Pope. Clearly, the reaction was outrage, and it's quite amusing. Even I was amused.

But that's how the left... the left kills themself because they jump all over this and they have

So that's trolling. That's trolling.

Right.

But then some of the stuff isn't shit.

No, no, no.

Some of the stuff is real. Do you know instinctively when Trump... however often you talk to him, do you know instinctively which is shit and which is not shit?

No, because you can see - this is Project 2025, the phrase that shall not be used, right? This is why the providential win in '16, the steal in '20 was actually just as providential from our perspective. We could see just how radical this government would be.

Remember, all of us in Trump's inner circle and Trump himself - debanked, deplatformed, IRS audits, eventually prison. They tried to send Trump to prison for 700 years. But in doing this in the coming back, as Trump did, and understanding what they're going to do, a political strategy was the precinct strategy to get people active, to use your agency to go take over every precinct, to take over the Republican Party, and build a real base of Maga for Trump.

The other was these public intellectuals - Stephen Miller at America First Law, America First Policy Institute with Brooke Rollins, Russ Vought at CRA, DeMint and Meadows over at CPI. And the kind of overarching was the Heritage, Dr Roberts and Project '25.

That was to take every vertical that we had to hit the deck plates, and we had not done it in the first term. And actually, when you hit, this time, instead of two or three things, you're going to have five executive orders. You're going to have five executive actions. You're going to have actual things that you're going to flood the zone and so overwhelm the opposition they can't cope. And that is what the first 100 days, I think, has shown you. There's been some trolling...

But you can decode what Trump really means from what - I mean, presumably, trade wars are easy to win. That's something he's believed for many decades, or that at least trade wars are worth fighting. The trade deficits are a measure of how much we're being ripped off. That's not flooding the zone with shit, right? That is something that he actually believes, whereas...

Yes, we believe that to the core of our being. Our movement believes that.

And so can you tell - because there's stuff in between - can you tell, I don't know, when he says Abrego Garcia has MS-13 on his knuckles - I mean, we know that's photoshopped, right?

But hang on. But when you've got... he's a Maryland man, and you know that he worked for a human trafficker in Houston. He was picked up in his car in Tennessee. We have police reports about that. And the media is going to sit there like he's some innocent victim? Stop it.

This guy's a hardened criminal, and he's leaving the country. And if the Democratic party wants to argue about a guy like that coming back from El Salvador from a prison, go ahead and argue it. It's a 90/10 issue. And this shows me how out of touch the Democratic party is because that issue is about protecting Hispanics and African-American working class in this country.

You might be right about him. I don't know. But I think that the argument is also, does he get due process? That's the real argument. But the MS-

Hold it. You don't get...

The MS-13

There is no due process.

...was photoshopped.

If you're not an American citizen, you're here illegally, there's no due process. And I'm telling you, this is coming to a head because President Trump, we started it on the show, and this is how it picks up momentum. We are going to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if the courts keep ruling against this and don't allow these mass deportations to continue, just like President Lincoln.

This was an invasion. The country is at war. He's commander-in-chief. It's Article II power. And this is going to come...

Are you predicting that will happen or are you...

I'm predicting...

...arguing it should happen?

First off, there is going to be a Constitutional crisis before the court leaves. You just saw the federal judge in San Francisco last night ruled against him, his Article II power to basically rearrange and fire people in these agencies, et cetera. There's a challenge - the only way the Democrats are even winning right now is to delay, is to deny, is to delay.

They have no political operation. They have no counterargument. They have no populist economics. So what they're doing is getting more and more radical on these raids, like they did in New Jersey yesterday. And the judges are trying to stop him. The Supreme Court's going to have to make a decision about President Trump's Article II powers, and we're going to see it.

And I believe, if the courts keep trying to slow him down, you're going to see him, as Stephen Miller laid out pretty well yesterday, and it'll be, I'm sure, developed over time, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, just like President Lincoln did in the Civil War.

But if... and I'm asking for a prediction. If the Supreme Court votes the wrong way from your point of view, do you predict that Trump will ignore it?

I think we'll have to wait till that time. That's what I'm saying.

What's your instinct?

First, I don't think we'll lose. We'll win at least 5-4, probably more. But I don't want to handcuff President Trump on what he's going to do and what his possibilities are. He's the commander-in-chief. We have been invaded.

This is the easy part too. These are the criminals and the terrorists. We have 10mn more people that have to leave the country or we don't have a country. We have to do it humanely. We have to do it with Judeo-Christian values. But they have to go.

And this is what the Democrats know, by jamming us up in court right now and making this so painful, how tough it's going to be. But before the Supreme Court leaves for their summer break, there's going to be a Constitutional crisis.

We have, like, a four-minute rapid-fire round before I'll open it to the audience. Will Trump run for a third term?

Yes.

So...

And he'll win the third term, and he'll be the president...

What does the court think about that? I mean...

We'll have to see at the time.

OK. I mean, the 22nd Amendment is pretty clear on this, right?

It's pretty clear what his Article II power is, and I think we have 250 lawsuits in federal court right now. So when people tell me that it's pretty clear, it's pretty clear what the president's power is. It's pretty clear what his power is to basically reprogramme And he had a federal judge yesterday said, gave a temporary restraining order for the entire nation on 21 different agencies.

So when I hear that argument, I say, hey, the Constitution is clear on a lot of things until it's defined. President Trump will run again. He will run again, and he will win again. And he'll be the president on the afternoon of 20 January 2029.

But you're justifying him breaking 22nd Amendment by saying you think, you're questioning judges' orders on various executive actions as saying...

I didn't say we were going to break... I never said we were going to break the 22nd Amendment. There are multiple workarounds.

You mean running as running mate...

There's...

...to JD Vance.

Multiple... at the appropriate time, probably after the '22 midterms, I will lay out the case of the... President Trump has nothing to do with this. He's already said, hey, look, I want to be here four years and do a great job. And you can tell... the pressure on him every day. He's leaving for Saudi Arabia, what, tomorrow. The pressure on him every day... this is something that we're totally doing on the outside, but it's a very serious effort.

And the reason it's a serious effort... a guy like Trump comes along once in a country's history. We've had General Washington at the birth of the country. We've had Lincoln at the rebirth. We've had President Trump.

This is the age of... folks, you can it or not like it. Let me give you a fact. You're living in the age of Trump. This is the age of Trump. He's totally redefined American politics. He's totally redefined politics going forward. He's saved our nation from going down at the hand of these globalists.

So let's get back to rapid-fire. And I was going to move... the question was going to be, is Vladimir Putin a force for good?

No. He's a KGB agent, not a force for good. The Russian people... you saw the ceremony the other day. Russian people were our great ally in World War II. 35 million gave their lives fighting the Nazis, like Lao Beijing, the Chinese, and we abandoned both of them at the end of the war and threw them to the dogs. And then, in '89, with both of those systems' collapsed, we threw them to the dogs again. Those are our allies. No, Putin is not a good guy. He's not a force for good in the world. He's a KGB guy. Was Joseph Stalin a force for good in the world?

Are you asking me?

No, I was saying because we were partnered with Joseph Stalin. He's right up there with Hitler. OK? We partnered with very bad people in the past. And what you saw happening in Moscow the last couple of days was Xi and Putin looking like two teenagers on a first date... is not good for this country. We had every opportunity to try to have a Russian rapprochement and pull Russia out of that relationship with China. And this is going to have now a massive, terrible impact, not just for our current generation, but for future generations.

Are you turning a bit on Putin?

No, I've never been a pro-Putin guy. He's a KGB...

Do you think Trump is turning a bit on Putin?

I don't think so. I think, look, he understands these guys are... the mullahs, Xi, the criminals in Beijing and in Moscow, these are bad hombres. Nobody says they're good guys. They're bad hombres. Trump knows that.

They didn't cross Trump. They wouldn't have gone to Ukraine... they didn't go to Ukraine when Trump was there because they're not going to cross him. But President Trump's seeing it right now and trying to get to some solution in Ukraine. He sees exactly how they act. They're going to do what's in their interest.

And this is going to be a grind. And that's... I think President Trump going to the Gulf Emirates this week is a start. They had some sort of involvement in this Kashmir thing. I think what people don't understand that arc of instability from Ukraine all the way down through Turkey.

Arc of instability.

That arc of instability is like a tinderbox right now. You're one misstep away from the whole thing going up. This is the kinetic part of the Third World War. It's much bloodier- - what's happened in the last - since Ukraine than what happened from Poland to June of '41 with the Wehrmacht going into Russia.

It's much bloody. It's five times bloodier. We're in a kinetic part of a global struggle right now.

So two very final, I mean, rapid, if possible, more rapid than it's been. Which Democrat do you most fear?

Right now, none, really, because they haven't embraced economic populism and economic nationalism. There's a lot of talent over there. It just seems to kind of wander around.

You have a lot of governors that could be very competitive, although I think we're past that era. You've got, maybe it's a Mark Cuban. You don't know how Newsom is going to reposition himself. And we'll have to see. They have to get an idea of how to turn the country around economically.

The final one, then we'll go to the floor.

Yeah.

The comment that Trump made the other day with Terry Moran of ABC that, no, he's not going to run for a third term, he's not going to take your advice, and it should be Vance or Rubio. That sounded to me like a classic set your underlings against each other.

Or, he said, among others.

But if you were to choose who would Trump's successor be, who would that be?

Trump.

It's going to be Trump because, otherwise, you're going to get around all the court intrigue. We have to focus. We have to... we need a sense of urgency on what we're doing. And that, to me, is the best way, is to just focus on it's going to be Trump. We'll figure out how we get there. We're already way down the road on that. Focus on now, between now and the midterms, of everything that has to happen national security-wise, the economy, the deportations.

You got so many huge... think about it. Every day, there's some historical event going on. We have to focus on that. And if we get caught up in the court intrigue, and that's what the media wants. The media wants a horse race. They want court intrigue inside the White House between Marco and JD. It's not relevant. It's irrelevant. What's relevant...

Trump wanted that, though. I mean, that was my point. So, sorry, I've been stealing time. First of all here and then there and then Dimitri, yes. 1, 2, 3.

Steve, can you preview... hello. Can you preview what's going to happen locally in DC if the Bowser Act passes and home rule goes away? Do you have any knowledge on that?

Well, as a resident of DC, how could it get any worse under home rule? I mean, home rule has been a disaster, I think. That's why I wanted Ed Martin to be DC attorney. And those people who didn't like Ed Martin, Judge Jeanine will be 10 times a bigger hammer.

But they already took down the crime, I think, 20 to 25 per cent. This is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It ought to be one of the safest cities in the world, and it's a very unsafe city. I live right in back of the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill, and it's very unsafe there. And so we have to do something. And I think it's got to be pretty dramatic.

Second, then third, so the gentleman there and then and then Dimitri.

Hi, Steve. I'm James Ladi Williams. Would you say the American people have a common narrative or perception of how well the country is doing or not doing? And secondly, would it be advantageous to the president's success in leading the nation for the people to have a shared narrative on how well the country is doing or not? And finally, what is the role of the media in driving to that shared narrative, if it is indeed advantageous or desired?

I think the shared narrative, if you look at working-class people, there's 9mn people that are working two jobs. There's $1.4tn of credit card debt. 10per cent of that's nonperforming.

The life of the working class of people that get up every day - Black, Hispanic, white, Asian - and go to work is terrible in this country. They can barely make it. They're falling behind every day. This is why... they don't want to be on Medicaid. The reason Maga is on Medicaid is because the jobs... we shipped all the high-value-added manufacturing jobs, Wall Street did, and the private equity firms did, overseas so that they can make Lao Beijing slave labour.

So there's a common narrative, and the media doesn't go look for it. And this is why Trump keeps coming up as a surprise. Why does Trump keep winning? Why does Trump have increasing support among particularly Black men? Why does Trump have support of Hispanics?

Starr County in Texas is 97 per cent Hispanic down the Rio Grande Valley. It's the most hardscrabble county in this country. We lost it by 60 points in 2016. We won it by 16 points in 2024.

The Hispanic community is coming our way. The Black community is coming our way. That's the common narrative. It's right there. If the credentialed class of the Democratic party gave a shit, they just went out and just saw what they saw, they would understand what the common narrative of this is, that the working class and middle class in this country are getting screwed by the elites in this nation.

Yeah?

Steve, Dimitri from the FT. How do you defend to the Maga camp that you are a fan of the newspaper that's loved by the credentials class in America? That's my simple question. My other question is, in the last few decades, one of the most conservative justices in the Supreme Court, Scalia, he and Ginsburg didn't agree on very much. They both agreed that people in the United States, whether they are citizens or an Irishman like me, are afforded the same rights under the Constitution. Why was Scalia wrong?

I don't think foreigners are accorded the rights, but I'm not a Constitutional...

They are.

It's my... well, it's my own personal belief. But I think that'll also be tried again with... the same with the 14th Amendment. Your first question, I teach this. How is War Room so powerful? To a blue-collar and working-class audience, we teach this newspaper every day. We pull Ed's clips on Morning Joe.

And it's interesting. The only time you see The Financial Times, the only time you see people really talking about issues on MSNBC, either Morning Joe or Stephanie Ruhle early in the morning or late at night... the whole rest of it is nothing but pro wrestling, totally irrelevant. That's why the Democratic party is not going to change. It's just grievance, and Trump, they're blowing their heads up.

This paper... you guys are globalists. I understand that. I don't fault you with that. The best way to teach a working-class audience how the nation really works... not what they see on Fox, all that phony crap on Fox... is to show them how money and power work, to show them what capital markets are, why the 10-year bond is so important, why Liz Truss got turfed out by the bond market, why we as Americans are now going to have our own moment with the bond market because when this comes this August with the debt ceiling, don't think we have unlimited alternatives.

We as Americans, because we either kick the can down the road or let the elites in the country make decisions, we are every day having narrower and narrower alternatives. This is why now we have to go into discretionary spending. That's going to hurt.

And guess what? That's just the first level. It's going to hurt a lot more. So the FT... and also, when I taught my class in prison, I used the FT.

All right. Sorry. I didn't see hands. No, I can't believe there are no questions. I can see a hand there. Sorry, it's a bit bright.

Thank you, Steve. Can you speak to deregulation and AI and the effects on the electorate and how the administration may reconcile that tension between achieving that and helping American workers?

It is the most serious thing, I think, we have. And I do respect the Pope yesterday when he said he took Leo XIV because Leo XIII was about social justice and the Industrial Revolution, and he wanted to be that about artificial intelligence.

Right now, a nail salon in Washington, DC, has more regulations than these four guys running wild on artificial intelligence right now. We have no earthly idea what's going on. Remember, the Democratic party made a deal with those oligarchs when Obama ran that they would have no antitrust - Facebook, Google, Twitter, all of it, all the big five.

And what happens? The Chinese come out with TikTok and showing the social media side that we're years behind. We're like Model T cars compared to their addictive social media. And then DeepSeek comes out, whether it's a Chinese psyop or real, and shows us that our method of artificial intelligence is not the best.

And what did the oligarchs ask for right away? They asked for a bailout. They want $500bn and they want us to turn the national weapons labs over to them. These people's greed and avarice know no bounds. And they are working on things right now that we will not be able to control.

I call for... I think we ought to have tremendous regulations on artificial intelligence, and I don't want to hear the Chinese are so far ahead. OK? That's an excuse. We can work this out. And if we have to, you're going to get to a time that you're going to have military intervention on these data centres to take care of out-of-control artificial intelligence going down the path we're going, which is quite dangerous.

So I think time for one - depending on the length of your answer, maybe two more questions, but certainly one. Sorry, I can't really see. We haven't had a woman asking a question. Yeah.

Hi, Steve. Thank you. I have a question about jobs. So you said that you'd like to bring good jobs back to America. So two-part question: first is, if you deport all the illegal immigrants, who is going to mow your lawn, clean the kitchens, pick fruit, and all that? These are not very good jobs. So who's going to do them?

And then the second question is about good jobs. So the good jobs are for lower-class is building iPhones and for middle class is tech jobs. And a lot of people have said that there are not enough skilled people here in this country to do these jobs.

Tech companies are not stupid. They hire H-1B people because they're skilled. They have the skills. There are not enough...

No, no, stop, please stop. That is not true. That is not true. This is the false narrative they put out.

I have asked for the millions of H-1B people that are here, I have said, show me one - not two lor three. Show me one that has a higher education level or a better job training for the bill that they're in than an American citizen. This is a total scam. And your question, quite frankly, is this is all the Wall Street. Oh, no, the American people are too lazy. They're too uneducated.

You know what? The American people have freed more people and built more wealth than any other nation on this Earth. And if I got to bet, I'm going to bet on them. And we're going to win this bet.

So, yes, the people here, you have indentured servants that came into the country illegally that are going to cut your grass for less money than you pay an American and that's appropriate? It's not appropriate. You don't have a country like that.

But it's not a good job. We've destroyed the working class and middle class.

Mowing a lawn is not a great job for anyone for any money.

I started mowing lawns. This is how people start. And if, at some point in time, you need worker visas, whatever, you can work that out after you've taken care of the problem. Let's see if that's a problem. Let's see where these labour shortages are.

And right now, you can't tell me there's not enough qualified American kids coming out of engineering schools that could fill every job in Silicon Valley. The reason is they're paying them 50 per cnet less. And the lifestyle they're working, it's like slave labour.

It's not right. It's indentured servitude. It should never go on in our country.

And we're not going to show the working class in this country... and particularly we're not going to show African-Americans and Hispanics that you actually have a way in a modern industrial society until we make these changes. And, yes, they're going to be hard. I'm not sitting here saying it's going to be easy.

But we're America. This is what we do. We're not going to just sit there and go, OK, let's have the whole world here because Americans are too dumb and lazy to take these jobs.

Sorry, I can't really see anybody. Am I supposed to end now? It's been at 0 for a while.

So we could end on lawn mowing if...

Is anybody...

Ed, over here.

All right. Oh, Mark. Sorry, all right. Mark Blyth.

Steve, long-time listener, first-time caller.

I agree with so much of what you say is your diagnosis. But then we break, there are certain bits where I just can't take it. And one part of this, to follow up on what was just said, I absolutely agree. We shouldn't be celebrating people mowing a lawn for $2. It's ridiculous, right?

But there is such a thing as demography. We didn't have enough kids. The population is getting older. Look at the average age of this room. Right?

Hang on.

No, seriously, Steve, Steve.

Why do we have... we don't have family...

Immigration is...

People under 35...

Wait, let him finish.

No, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Steve, no, come on, let me finish. Immigration is part of the human experience. I am a Scot who lives in America. I'm a naturalised citizen. I love this country. Do you want to deny that to everyone? What is going on here?

Of course I don't want to deny it to everyone. But we got to get our own house in order first. Let's talk about demographics.

Why are we having fewer kids? Because the economic formation of people comes later. Young men don't have great jobs right now in this country. Young women, there's not... my dad was a foreman for the phone company. We had five kids that went to Catholic school and a mum who was a homemaker who raised us. That's the country we got to get back to, and that's the country we can get back to.

I didn't say that you had... come on. I didn't say that the wife had to be the homemaker. You can make a pick. This is why you're not serious. This is why you're not serious.

We have a demographic problem in the country because of an economic problem that underlays it. You've got to solve that economic problem. Kids under 40 today, they're nothing more than Russian serfs. They don't own anything, and they're not going to own anything.

And we haven't done this for 14 generations to leave it like that. That has to be changed. We have to change that.

And, yes, the people that want to come over here and immigrate, there's a system for that. And we're not going to shut that down. I think we have to shut down the scams of these visas right now to give priority to American citizens. And, yes, we can get back to a situation where you have one provider, whether it's the husband or the wife, the other is at home, and you can raise kids like we used to raise kids in this country with hands on from their parents. And that's where we're going to turn this country around. And if you're going to laugh and mock at that, fine. Laugh and mock at it. But that's what we're working on, the family as the unit.

Steve, I mean, first of all, let me just say, I have to end it because it's now sub-subzero.

And they've had enough, you can tell?

I have to say... no, no, I think it's been very engaging. And I will say one thing. I mean, you engage with this, and I can think of people who manage institutions not very far from here who are not very engaging on your side of the political spectrum. And so thank you for being here and engaging with us.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. You're a good sport.