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Steve Bannon
Trump Adviser
Steve Bannon is a political strategist and the host of the podcast War Room. He served as an adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and later as chief White House strategist during Trump’s first term.
The following interview was conducted by the Kirk Documentary Group’s Mike Wiser for FRONTLINE on April 3, 2025. It has been annotated and edited for accuracy and clarity as part of an editorial and legal review. See a more complete description of our process here.
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Trump’s Speech at the DOJ
One place we're thinking of starting the film is the moment when President Trump goes to the Justice Department to speak in the Great Hall.
I'm going today.
Tell me about what was going on on that day.What was he doing?What did you see?What was the point?
Well, that's one of the keys to the unitary theory of the executive, that in the office of the president is executive power of being the chief executive officer of the United States government; being the commander-in-chief of the military, the uniformed armed services and everything to do with national security and the military; and third, which has really been lost since the Watergate, is he's the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, and the attorney general reports directly to him; the FBI director reports to him.It was hived off for 40, 50 years because of, quite frankly, the judicial insurrection that took place that removed Nixon from office.
Nixon, when you look at Watergate, you think of Woodward and Bernstein.That's all kind of nonsense.It was a judicial insurrection.A guy named Geoff Shepard, who was there, really has taken a couple of books and documented this quite well.1Afterwards, the radical left essentially separated the attorney general, that entire system, particularly from Republican presidents.
1
And President Trump, I think that was a historic day, a very meaningful day, to basically assert that the chief executive, the office of the president, is the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer in the country.
That's sort of the theory of what he was doing.Was it also personal for him?Because he talked about the Justice Department being weaponized against him.He's talked about lawfare.
Of course.Look at it, look at it.Listen, he’s had 92 indictments.Jack Smith, the indictments around Jack Smith, I think, were 300 years in prison.They wanted to put President Trump in prison.Remember, they wanted Trump to die in prison.They want Trump still to die in prison.This game is not—this fight and battle is far from over.If Hakeem Jeffries raises $2 billion and this all comes down to a handful of seats in California and New York in 2026, and if somehow we don't hold onto the seats, this very thin majority, the first action Hakeem Jeffries will take will be to move to impeach Donald Trump.
And if somehow the election's stolen in 2028 like they stole it in 2020, the first thing they're going to do is, it's all going to go back, again, to try to indict Trump and to try to indict people around Trump and put Trump in prison.2
I say this all the time.It's quite evident this is a long war.It took us many, many decades to get here.It's going to take us many, many decades to get out, and the Trump, particularly the phony Republicans that kind of say they're with President Trump, etc., are not in for this long fight.This is a long, tough fight.
The left understands it's a long, tough fight.You see the way they organize around it and how they embed into these institutions.This entire process we're going through now is to purge these institutions of this, and it's a long, tough fight, and it's far from over, and it's going to last.To actually get it done will take decades.
When he's there, one of the things, when you talk to Justice Department lawyers or former Justice Department lawyers, that they’re sort of shocked by is that he's at the Department of Justice; he's naming individual people, like Norm Eisen is one of them who he calls—3
Absolutely.
—“scum.”
But just right there, see?Even in your question, you just said it.They're “shocked” that he's there.Now think about that.And they are shocked, but in just that question, you've answered for the American people exactly what the problem is.
The president of the United States, the chief executive, the office of the president, OK, who is the chief executive officer, the commander-in-chief and the chief magistrate and chief law enforcement officer, they are shocked that he's in the sacred temple of the Justice Department.F--- them, right?This is what democracy is about.These are anti-democratic forces.They have to be broken.
They are shocked because the president of the United States, and worst of all, Donald Trump, actually soiled their temple by going in there.I happen to think President Trump should go there every week and give a talk about lawfare.
This country, what they did is so radical in turning the apparatus of the government against its people.It was almost like East Germany.We used to, on the show, in the years '21 and '22, tell people a film they should watch is <i>The Lives of Others</i>, this amazing film about the Stasi in East Germany, and it's in German.The War Room posse, who are blue-collar, a lower-middle-class audience, took to this film and loved it and could see exactly what was going on in a government turning citizens against each other.
So no, you're exactly right.They were shocked, and they're going to be more shocked, because we are going to tear apart what they have done in the justice system, and this is one of the big reasons of going after the law firms.We're going after the actual mechanics, right, the structure.This is why what President Trump is doing and the team around him is so fundamental to basically get back to being a constitutional republic.
So the reaction, though, that he's doing what he's accused the other side of doing, that he's weaponizing it, that he’s naming—
Exactly the opposite.He's not weaponizing it.He's doing the exact opposite.He's actually opening it up and making sure and guaranteeing we don't weaponize it.You haven't seen any weaponization of this Justice Department.You haven't seen a huge—which hey, I think there should have been named massive investigations already.I think the House should have named massive investigations.I think we should impanel grand juries to the criminals that we've driven out of here.I'm a maximalist.President Trump, I think, is being very evenhanded on this.He's going to go out of his way not to weaponize it.
I think you actually have to purge out the criminals that were there.… I think you should impanel grand juries now.I'd be going hard.I don't think we're going nearly hard enough, and I think the left and the people that hate Trump should understand one thing.In our movement, President Trump is a moderate.He's somebody that balances every part of the equation in thinking through what action should be taken, and he makes, I think, decisions that are like Solomon, right?Very evenhanded if you see what he's doing compared to elements around President Trump.
And I consider—I'm proud to say I'm to the right of President Trump on this and always to the maximalist of what we should do.We have to.The system was so out of control, and so, so dangerous to the American system, American people.It has to be purged so it never happens again.
Trump’s Executive Orders
Let's go to the first day in office, signing the executive orders starting at the Capitol One Arena, going onto the White House.He signed a lot of executive orders the first time when you were with him.Was this different, the beginning of this term, the types of executive actions?
It's no comparison, but here's why.The first time we came from behind at the last minute and closed and won a come-from-behind victory, probably the greatest come-from-behind victory ever.We had no time to do a transition.It was a very tight, small team, and Chris Christie, the transition team, the books and the announcements, were a total joke.You just had to throw it out, and he had to start over again.
Also, we didn't have a deep bench.There hadn't been—there were a lot of Republicans, but when you take over the government, everybody, whether it's President [Barack] Obama or President Trump, you essentially have about 4,000 or 5,000 executives you can put in: 3,000 to 4,000 you can put in right away, another 1,000 have to be Senate confirmed.So you can hit the deck plates running with 3,000.We never had more than 1,000 because you just didn't have a deep bench of training.
The second time—and this is why the big steal, stealing the 2020 election was providential—we were able to—the two things we started right away was the political effort, the precinct strategy, to actually get some traction to build the MAGA movement, particularly with low-information and low-propensity voters so that President Trump could have a political wave to come back on and not just win the primary but win the presidency.
The second part—and this is what was so powerful—public intellectuals, who heretofore had been at places like Heritage and these other places, bought into the idea that if we were coming back, we had to actually have a policy prescription.And so there you had, in the years '21, you had coming up things like the America First Policy Institute under Brooke Rollins.You had Stephen Miller's America First law institute.You had Russ Vought's Center for Renewing America.You had the Heritage organization start to look at an umbrella, maybe this thing called Project 2025, which everything would come together.
It was twofold: number one, to build cadres, to actually build networks of people working together that were subject-matter experts so that we could hit the deck plates running.On Inauguration Day, it was as close to 3,000 people as you can get, and I think we were the fastest, Sergio Gor kind of heading up that operation became very involved in it.
I think we hit 1,000, 2,000, and now it's close to 3,000 in record time because we had years of going through and working with people.On the policy side, you had all this coming together.It actually got published in a book, <i>Mandate for Leadership</i>, but it was many, many different elements of coming together.
One of the central aspects of that was the thesis of deconstruction of the administrative state, and in deconstructing the administrative state, first off, you have to anchor that into a “Who's in charge,” right?And that's why you get to this unitary executive theory of which it all comes together in the office of the president.
And so this time—I think I did your show years ago, where I said, “Hey, we're going to flood the zone.We're going to do two or three things a day.”If you go back in time, that was a huge deal.It was a huge effort for us, and if you look at some of our executive orders, except for the travel ban, some of the executive orders were a little shambolic, right, because you just didn't have the time.Here, you've had years and major public intellectuals, and the hidden story here is how many public intellectuals we had that bought into the fact that Trump was actually coming back politically.There was a buy-in by '22, right?By '22, early '22, I think when Project 2025 came together, but all these other elements had taken that first year along with Mark Meadows' group CPI.So four or five of these came together in that year '21 and bought into '22 that we were actually going to win and come back.That is historic.
Because these people, I think, realized by throwing in with the MAGA movement and President Trump, they were going to be excluded from the Ron DeSantises or Nikki Haley, more of the traditional Republican Party.That effort led to what this is.This is why, on the very first day, they had a meeting with President Trump in Mar-a-Lago around New Year's, and I think Susie [Wiles] and the team walked through, and Stephen Miller walked through kind of a program of, “Hey, we're going to do this,” and Trump goes, “No, I want to sign 100 on day one, right?I want to hit it and just overwhelm the system with action, action, action.”
And it came close to that.4They were a little more spread out, but that's what we called the “days of thunder,” and we monitor this every day in the War Room.At its height, there were 10 or 12 either executive actions, executive orders or other things he was doing, pushing legislation or being commander-in-chief and taking certain actions as commander-in-chief.There were a dozen a day.It overwhelmed the system.
I say all the time: There are six to eight major stories or major things going on that even the mainstream media can't cover.The editors are too overwhelmed on assignments, and to be blunt, they kind of bit—because the mainstream media is kind of lazy; they always want to go either to the court intrigue or to the horse race—they bit right away on Elon Musk, and I kept saying, “This is like in the confirmation hearings.”A guy like a Matt Gaetz or a Pete Hegseth serves a purpose, and you draw all the fire.You can get a Bobby Kennedy and a Tulsi Gabbard because the media has a tendency to want to focus on one big thing, to tell the story.
The Elon Musk part of it essentially gave tremendous cover for so many other actions that were taking place.Elon Musk, whether you like him or hate him or think he's doing a good job, strategically he was perfect for what he did as far as media narrative because it all centered on Elon Musk and the DOGE effort while so much other stuff was going on.
Was that effort, all of those executive orders, were they part of an intentional attempt to test the limits of executive power, to push forward what the president could do?
I think if you talk to President Trump, when you talk to President Trump, he's not looking at testing.He's flat on, this is the way it is.This is the unitary theory, right?It works.It's endowed in the office of the president.“Give me the action—I'm going to take these actions, so make sure that we do it in a proper way.Make sure we do it with executive orders that are cleared by Office of Legal Counsel.Make sure we've gone through all the process.”
But it's action, action, action.And if you look at every different element—remember, for your viewers, of the 4,000—let's say 4,000, 3,000 non-confirmed, 1,000 Senate-confirmed—of the 4,000 roughly individuals you get to staff a government, whether Obama, Bernie Sanders or President Trump you're managing an apparatus that spends about $6.5 to $7 trillion a year,has assets, I don't know, of they say $80 to $100 trillion, right, and has people.5You have essentially 2.5 million civilian employees, people called bureaucrats or civilian employees.You have about 2, 2.5 million, let's say, military, who are in the military.6
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Bureau of the Fiscal Service: Management's Discussion & Analysis. The Government's Financial Position and Condition
But you also have contractors.Now, there are 18 million contractors.7They've done a lot of this so they can get the pension situation and health care, but they have contractors.About half of those contractors are the people that clean the buildings, do all that type of work.About half of them do administrative work.Of that, about half, let's say 5 million, are actually kind of executives or at that level.
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Federal News Network: Opening up federal contracting jobs for more Americans
So essentially, if you add it up, you have about 10 million people, individuals or billets, that run the government, and this is what you, in deconstructing the administrative state, this is what you want to radically take down kind of programmatically and make sure that the people, the billets go with it.
In the court case that we're involved in about the foreign aid with USAID, the controversial $2 billion, remember, the $2 billion, the argument about the $2 billion, it's paid to contractors who did an executive action or actually took action.They're not employees of the government.They're not military.It's that bucket of contractors.
And so that is what the deconstruction of the administrative state, right, to basically take the bureaucracy but take it apart brick by brick, is all about and the focus of it, and many times, it's with money that's being paid to contractors.
So President Trump, I believe he doesn't—when you talk to him, he doesn't think of this as some theoretical exercise.He says, “Hey, the office of the president is endowed with this power, and I'm going to take executive action around it.And hey, if they want”—just like he said on the travel ban—“if they want to take us to court, let him take us to court, but we'll win in court.”
The Unitary Executive Theory
That’s what I was wondering.Does he know unitary executive theory?Does he know these ideas that lawyers around him have, or is this an instinct for him?
Well, one, it's obviously an instinct of an executive.Remember, Hamilton said in <i>The Federalist Papers</i>, the key, when they were debating the Constitution, the key about the executive is that's where the energy is going to be.That's the driving motive force of the government.The framers of the Constitution wanted a strong executive and wanted an executive that drove the action.It had that urgency of the moment.That's President Trump.He's all about action, all about getting things done and all gas, no brake.
So does he—?Yes, he understands the theory of it, but President Trump is not going to sit there and spend a lot of time with constitutional lawyers debating the finer points of the Constitution.He sees the plan: The office of the president is endowed with these powers.Let's get on with it.And when we get on with it, let's look at the verticals that what we want to do and make sure that we've got actions and executive actions that could do that and executive orders that can do that and can be backed up.
And then, because people should understand this, just because a guy sits in the Oval Office and signs things, it doesn't mean it's happened.This is the thing about the administrative state and then its rogue element, the deep state.You have a massive bureaucracy, and they think whether the president's AOC or Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, they're the permanent government, and they're just going to wait out anybody that's there.They've got their own way of doing things and their own processes.It's called the interagency process, right?It's this kind of apparatus of interchangeable players, but an apparatus that's just going to wait people out.You have to hit with motive, force, anything to get it done in the bureaucracy and make sure it actually gets done so that on the deck plates of America, where the citizens actually live, those actions actually go all the way through.
That's what President Trump's focused on, not some theoretical debate about this.
But if you think about players that have had this, it's actually pretty well thought through.Mike Davis is a key player.Now, why is Mike Davis a key player?We call him the viceroy now, but he was absolutely unknown when I got to know him.He's the guy that put Gorsuch—so we had a list of judges initially in the spring of 2016 to try to show that President Trump was actually a conservative.Remember, they put the—and I think Leonard Leo in the Federalist Society put it together.Later, after I took on the campaign, we expanded that list.I think we got it up to like 22 or 23 people to show—this is in the heat of battle, as we're moving forward, to say, “Hey, look, Trump is a conservative.It's the only time it's ever been done.These are who we're going to pick these judges from.”It looks like there could be a couple of judges because Hillary Clinton was not forcing the issue about Garland taking the Supreme Court role.They wanted somebody more progressive.And so this whole thing of the Merrick Garland billet or slot became quite big.
Mike Davis, who had worked for Grassley, and I didn't even know at the time, he fought to get this young judge that nobody really knew, a guy named Neil Gorsuch.Gorsuch is absolutely central to the entire thing because Gorsuch, in the transition, he kind of comes out of nowhere.I sat on the five-man committee to select the next Supreme Court justice with Don McGahn and Mark Paoletta, right?These are guys that are very focused on this theory of the deconstruction of the administrative state.And Gorsuch was looked at as the young, intellectual jurist about the Chevron deference, and this is this policy or this court ruling that's gone on for 50 years, that, by the interpretation of law, you defer to the administrative state to kind of govern itself.He had this theory that you had to go back to the court.You had to take away, strip away the power of actually the bureaucrats to govern themselves, to manage themselves, to basically set law for themselves.It was absolutely fundamental.
Gorsuch then became the first selection, and I will tell you, it wasn't all that competitive.Gorsuch, by his intellect and his opinions—and the focus then was not so much on social issues.<i>Roe v. Wade</i> or those things were considered kind of settled law.The focus was going after the administrative state.That's the legal aspect of what you see every day coming out of the Oval Office in this unitary executive theory.
And like I said, President Trump doesn't have time and patience.He'll hear it.He understands it.Don't get me wrong.We've been working on this for years.But he's not sitting there looking for a debating society of constitutional scholars.He's a man of action and said, “Hey.”This is why he ran for the presidency in the first place.This is why in his first term he understood the block, blocking.Just because you're president and sitting in the Oval Office and signing things and talking to the media doesn't mean that your actions are actually flowing through this apparatus and having impact on people's lives of the American people.
Trump’s First Term
What did he learn from the first term?We know about his frustration when [U.S. Attorney General] Jeff Sessions recused himself.We know [U.S. Attorney General] Bill Barr was not cooperative in his attempts after the election.There were clashes with White House lawyers.What did he learn about lawyers from the first term that informed him the second term?
I think he learned that if you see the Mike Davises of the world and the lawyers that are there today, right, and particularly people at the Justice Department, and look at—One of the things that I think all of us learned, because all of us used name-brand law firms and white-shoe law firms.We have the legal bills to show it.
After President Trump left in January 2021, your audience should understand that President Trump and the core team around him, we were deplatformed by big tech.We were debanked.All my banks I've been in business with for four years, I was debanked from every bank.I had all my credit cards cut off, as President Trump did, debanked, deplatformed.All of our law firms fired us.My law firm, one of the top, the top two and three law firms I used came to me and said, “Hey, we love you, we have no problem with you, but because you're associated with Trump, our corporate clients are saying, ‘If you're retained by Bannon, we're out.’”
And this is one of the reasons I detest corporations.The people in them are inherently evil, right?You saw this in the whole DEI and the woke but what they did to people—and this is this consolidation of power.This is why I'm such a neo-Brandeisian, that this concentration of corporate power and governmental power combined can create oligarchs like you've seen on Wall Street and, in particular, like you've seen in Silicon Valley.
I think President Trump—the years '21 and '22, which are never really looked at, are the central ground of really taking the experience from the first term but really thinking through, because people have to understand: There was never any doubt with his inner team and himself that we were coming back and winning.That's what I think is lost on people.They sit here today and say what the hell?This stuff so overwhelmed—Rachel Maddow is now doing the show every night, 100 days, for her First 100 Days, because she's got to be the anchor, and they're, like, overwhelmed by these actions.
This gets back to the fact he had a core group around him and drew in public intellectuals, and he had working-class people in the precinct strategy.That team 100% not just believed but knew that Trump was returning, Trump would win the primary, Trump would win the presidency, and that we had, starting on Jan. 20 of 2025, would have a mandate to make these changes to basically get back, get America back to being a constitutional republic.
Those years of '21 and '22, when we were—all our banks were gone.Our credit cards were gone.No law firms.What Boris Epshteyn did, I think, is underrated.He put together a team, kind of a pickup team of lawyers because none of the big law firms would represent Trump.And so in the years '21 and '22, of which the tremendous legal pressure came on President Trump, and that's where you saw the power of these law firms.These law firms combined with these private equity institutions are too powerful.They've actually taken on a life that the American people don't quite understand.They're not like law firms when I was at Goldman Sachs, about Sullivan & Cromwell, or how powerful Sullivan & Cromwell was back in the 1950s and '60s with John Foster Dulles and his brother.These are Bennett Williams in DC.
This is more than being fixers.These are apparatuses that actually control the imperial capital and are the linkage between the capital markets in New York and control of Washington, the political class in Washington, DC, which your audience should understand.These votes and people running around, that's all kind of pro wrestling.The decisions and the power are behind the scenes, right?And these politicians, because they have to raise so much money—look, $100 million was just spent in a race for a Supreme Court slot in Wisconsin, over $100 million in one state election.8The size of the money that has to be raised, the power makes Wall Street and the lawyers and the corporatists actually more powerful against the people.
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Wisconsin Examiner: A $90m litmus test - Wisconsin court vote becomes referendum on Musk
So this was many years in the making, and those years of '21 and '22, when the entire world was against President Trump and his team, and it looked like the odds were so incredibly long, for the people inside, we didn't think they were long odds.We said, “Hey, this is how it's going to play out.This is—have to be ready.”And that's why you've seen so much action in the first 100 days, quite frankly, more than I ever thought we'd be able to pull off.To wit, he's—and if you look at it, these are major things; they're not minor things.He's totally redoing the geostrategic structure of the post-World War II world, right, from the postwar international rules-based order, of which we essentially underwrite, through commercial relationships and trade deals, which were upside down in our security guarantees, this is why our defense budget's $1 trillion.9This is why we basically provide the defense of Western Europe, the Gulf Emirates and the Middle East, around the Straits [sic] of Malacca and the South China Sea, and all the way up to Japan and Korea, around the rim of the Eurasian landmass.
9
USAspending: Agency Profile Department of Defense (DOD)
President Trump is totally shifting that back to hemispheric defense from the Panama Canal to Greenland and the Arctic and the Pacific all the way to the island chains, to kind of hermetically seal the United States.That in and of itself on any one president's term would be monumental.That's one of a dozen things he's doing.
The trade situation he's done, totally geoeconomically, totally rewrites the wiring, the hard wiring of the international trading system.Everything he's doing, whether it's on—look, we've sealed the border.The New York Times admitted the other day that the border's essentially been sealed, and we were told by Republicans when they tried to pass that legislation, “This will take 20 years.10You have to basically give amnesty.You have to give this huge bill,” which we were criticized.We fought tooth and nail against [Sen. James] Lankford (R-Okla.), and [Sen. Mitch] McConnell says it's not done.It's proven now it didn't need to be done.President Trump sealed it.I call it “all quiet on the southern front,” right?Now, you still the problem with deportations.
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The New York Times: On Mexico’s Once-Packed Border, Few Migrants Remain
My point is that these things he's doing are not small things.This is not Bill Clinton's putting uniforms on kids in school.He is taking on the most fundamental issues, dealing with the sovereignty of this country, and particularly putting them, not just the country first but putting American citizens first in this entire globalist network.The things he's doing are breathtaking, and the depth of what he's doing.
And quite frankly, the media is only covering a very superficial nature of it because, one, just the staffing of the media.I can understand editors sitting there going, “Hey, what are we going to do?What are we going to cover today?”
The other aspect that I think is very powerful is he is doing something extraordinary, and he's trying to disintermediate the media, and the way he's doing it is, just about every day or every other day, when he has a signing, he'll just open up the Oval Office and invite the media in, and he will give sometimes kind of a stream of consciousness of what he's thinking about, whatever he's signing, or just what's going on, and then he'll open up to questions and take all comers.
I can tell from our audience, which is the tip of the spear of the Trump movement, how much they're learning every day because we cover it all live.We'll drop any programming and go live.And they're the people most engaged, and they're learning every day.
So I think it's just incredibly powerful.It's totally changing what the office of the president is, as far as the American people, the access to it but the power that can be generated from it.
Trump and the DOJ
Help me understand the people who he appoints to the top of the Justice Department, the top of the FBI—Pam Bondi, Kash Patel—and the critics who say they're chosen for personal loyalty.They see themselves as “his lawyers” rather than lawyers for the United States.What do you make of that, of who they are, how they're chosen, and that criticism?
[Former President John F.] Jack Kennedy chose his brother.[Former President] Ronald Reagan chose his personal lawyer, what, William French Smith?Obama chose [former U.S. Attorney General Eric] Holder, his bestie, right?So I think those criticisms are just—it's just going to be the criticism whoever you choose.I think the team he chose, and at Justice, I love Pam Bondi, but Matt Gaetz was our guy, and I'm the huge advocate.We should have stuck with Gaetz, and Gaetz would be over there right now and even be more aggressive.
I think the team's fantastic.We made a decision at the show, in War Room, and really the audience, that everybody had to be confirmed.There was a moment there they thought they were going to pick, particularly when Gaetz stepped aside, they thought they were going to lead with Pete Hegseth, and Pete Hegseth came within 30 minutes, I think, of having his nomination, or maybe an hour, of having his nomination pulled.
And our audience let it be known it was all or nothing, and we were going to go up onto the ramparts, and whether it's [Sens.] Joni Ernst or Thom Tillis or whoever was going to get in the way, you're going to pay a political penalty for that.President Trump wants his team.He's going to get this team.
I think the team has just been terrific so far.I think it's been great, and yet clearly, anybody who wants to pick people who are in sync with what you're trying to accomplish, particularly President Trump, has a sense of urgency.[British Prime Minister Winston] Churchill had this thing in World War II when he took over as prime minister.He'd get reports and things like that, typical bureaucracy, the administrative state then.And he would write at the top in red, "Action This Day."11He wanted action, right?He wanted to make the apparatus work.He knew he was in a wartime situation.We feel the same thing.I think President Trump feels the same thing.
11
International Churchill Society: Action This Day!
So he wants people not simply that are loyal but also understand exactly what his program is going to be, and I think he's done a great job of selecting it.That's one of the things of having four years to get ready and to actually refine, particularly on the personnel side.You don't have some of the mistakes we made in the first term because we just didn't have time, and we didn't have a bench.Now we have a bench.I think the team is really working in sync, and I think it's been terrific so far.
The Eric Adams Case
Early on, the attorney general sends a memo and says basically: I'm interpreting the law.12The president interprets the law, and if you don't want to sign a brief, if you don't want to sign something, it's time for you to leave.There's a big fallout around the Eric Adams case when the acting attorney—
12
Department of Justice: Office of the Attorney General Memorandum
I don't think there's been enough of that.… Once again, I'm a maximalist, but I think it's better to get it done at the beginning.I would have requested all the resignations of the U.S. attorneys immediately, and then I would have gone in, and this is something that's now a bit controversial.Can you actually get rid of the working prosecutors of, like, SDNY [Southern District of New York] or the Eastern District or Washington D.C. or any U.S. Attorneys’ Office?The answer to that is yes, and it should be done.It should have been done immediately, and many more should be done.
They serve at the pleasure—this goes back to Watergate.This goes back.Watergate was a judicial insurrection.The true story of Watergate is written by Geoff Shepard.It is not Woodward and Bernstein.It's not Deep Throat.Deep Throat, people should understand, was the deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt.13Think about that for a second, right?The apparatus turning on a president.
13
It was a judicial revolt by the House legal committee, the Justice Department, these radical lawyers of the Justice Department at the time, and Judge [John] Sirica in the same corrupt court you've got down here in Washington, D.C. right now, and that's the confrontation.The confrontation that's going on in these courts with the president's actions goes back to Sirica and Watergate.So when President Trump goes to the sacred temple of Main Justice, and Norm Eisen and these guys are shocked, and they're upset, and you have [Andrew] Weissmann up there, “Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk,” on MSNBC, “Oh, this is horrible.”F--- you.He's president of the United States.He's the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer by the Constitution.I think he should go to the Justice Department every week and make sure he has a talk with the lawyers and make sure that they're in sync with the president of the United States.
The left is in very dangerous territory here, because the same thing will happen to an AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] or [Sen.] Bernie Sanders or whoever comes in from the left.If the apparatus doesn't like it, they're not going to do it, and that's why the Constitution, the founders of the nation, understood that.They put executive power in the office of the president regardless of whether it's Donald Trump or AOC.It's the office of the president.
And President Trump is going to fulfill that, and you're going to have some massive court cases about this because it's working its way up right now.This is a showdown.One side is going to win, and one side is going to lose on this, and our side is going to win.
Elon Musk and DOGE
You said that the media may have focused too much on Elon Musk and missed the other things that people were doing.But that effort to do something like take on USAID, a congressionally created agency, to freeze all of the funds or not spend them, how big a moment is that?
I'm a huge believer, obviously, in the deconstruction of the administrative state.How do you do that?That gets back to the budget and the budget deficit.I've been a big advocate that we have to have political courage of the political class, and we have to address the actual structure of the spending in this country and why we're running $2 trillion deficits because of what's happened in COVID and the kind of spending that went on in COVID we haven't gotten rid of.14
14
FiscalData: What is the national deficit?
Your audience should understand, we spent $6.5 or $7 trillion a year.We raise in taxes $4.5 trillion.There's a gap.The reason you have inflation, right, it's not because of tariffs and not because of supply chains.The reason we have inflation is we have a massive Keynesian stimulus every year where now we've added, what, $16 trillion of debt in the last couple of years.15We flooded the zone with dollars.That's what's doing it, and until we get control of that—and the way to get control of that spending has to be programmatically, OK?You have to do that at the Defense Department, in the social programs, but you have to have the courage to say, “Hey, look, we've blown this, and we're so far past this that we have to start to get our house in order.”Either we have to get more external revenues through tariffs, we have to either raise taxes, or we have to have higher growth rates.And I'm all for higher growth rates and more tariffs, but I can also—I went to Harvard Business School and worked at Goldman Sachs.I can do the basic simple mathematics in back of this, and it just doesn't add up until you start getting control of federal spending.
15
USAFacts: How much debt does the US have?
Now, the DOGE effort.And my problem with DOGE, I want to make sure it's more reality than fantasy.Besides all the media it's gotten, what we need—their primary purpose is not statutory and not programmatic.A little bit of that's gotten caught up in that.Their primary focus should be waste, fraud and abuse, and I would certainly like—and Elon has committed that there's $1 trillion of waste, fraud and abuse.16
I'm from Missouri on this one; I want to be shown that.I want to see that.So far, as we've gone to date, there really hasn't been—there's been some marginal cuts, but those are almost like programmatic, and President Trump has said repeatedly the Cabinet controls that; we're going to follow statutory.Like, for instance, in VOA [Voice of America] and these places, USAID, they're taking it down to statutory limits.They're also going to put USAID, propose to put USAID under the State Department, but they're going to zero these out statutorily.
Go back to the unitary theory of the executive.The president of the United States as chief executive has the ability to make personnel decisions and to fire anybody, to fire people.You don't have permanent employment in the federal government, and no U.S. citizen will back that up, right?U.S. citizens right now live in an era of anxiety, could be let go immediately.
So the chief executive has the ability to fire, and he also has the appropriations process, which is the legal process that we go through to create a law to appropriate the money.That's a ceiling, not a floor.
Now, that is going to be contested, OK?But President Trump—and this gets back to the USAID system, about the $2 billion, of which the courts have found out so far that they don't believe he does.That money has to be paid.That, I think, is going to go up and take a ride to much higher levels, right, because the president has to have the ability to both impound moneyor not spend that money—if he decides programmatically it's either not working or there's some issue involved in it—also to get rid of people.
The DOGE effort is basically about fraud and waste.It's kind of because the media has taken up, and a little bit Elon is, I think, in the media taking on a little more of a mandate than he had, right?And the media's focus on that, which I think is fantastic because—Kari Lake's work at VOA, other work that's going around, like on USAID and these others—and at USAID, let's be honest, [Rep.] Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and these guys tried to zero it out in the appropriations process two years ago, all-night fights on the House floor.17And who saved it?The Republican establishment saved it and didn't even have the balls to look into where the money was going.The money was going to all these NGOs [non-governmental organizations] that were supporting the invasion of the country, all these NGOs throughout the world and the United States that were suppressing conservative voices.That was brought to you by the controlled-opposition Republicans.
17
Rep. Eli Crane: X Post
This is the reason you've got to differentiate between Republicans and the MAGA movement.The Republican Party is one of the reasons the country's in this situation.You mentioned Bill Barr and these guys.We've won—since Nixon, we've won as many times as we've lost.We've been in control as much as the Democrats have.How did the country get into this crisis?Because the Republican Party is like the Washington Generals to the Democrats' Harlem Globetrotters.They're just controlled opposition.It's all performative.They never really did anything.They just kind of went along with the system.That's the difference in Trump.Trump is direct action down a vertical to actually make fundamental change.
And that's why the system is reacting.The system is traumatized.I understand that.He's a blunt-force instrument.He's going to give the system a punch, and it's going to be traumatized.That's kind of the purpose of the exercise, and that's why he's relentless.He will not back off.That's different than these country-club Republicans, who have essentially gone along with this for 40 or 50 years and got the country in this jam.This is why the MAGA movement detests RINOs [Republican in name only], detests country-club Republicans.We hate them more than we hate radical Democrats.
When we've talked to people here, and they see the letters coming off of something like USAID symbolically in this town, there's a fear of who is next, what is next.
They should understand it's potentially all next.If we don't close this gap of the $2 trillion—this is why I think the media and particularly PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] and others that are a little more thoughtful are doing a terrible job.You don't explain how the system works, and the system is burying the country and working-class people every day because we have a system that's totally out of control.It's crafted by the elites in this country, and it works for them.
In the last six months, I think it is.The last six months, since the beginning of the fiscal year in Oct. 1, I believe that $4.4 trillion of wealth, stock market, bonds, etc., have accreted to the top 1%, and that's more than the bottom 50% of our country.18It can't go on.We've had the massive—since the bailout of President Obama and the progressives, and that's why he's kind of a tragic figure, because he depended upon his Wall Street guys about the bailouts of the crash in '08, which he had nothing to do with.That was all dumped on him when he won the presidency.In fact, the reason he won the presidency, I think people said, “Hey, I don't know what [Sen.] John McCain said, but the Republicans were in charge.We’ve got to have change on this.”
He reverted back to a standard—the people that caused the problem came up with a solution.We've never really gotten over that, and you had more concentration of wealth in President Obama's term than you ever had in the history of the country, and this is why I say everything you see on cable TV or all this stuff on Capitol Hill is performative.19That's not the real story.The real story is about money and power, and money and power are going to the top 1% more and more and more.
19
Pew Research Center: U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928
That was the start of it.Then you see, during the pandemic, you had another great concentration of wealth.That's what needs to be broken here.You need to break that.If you don't break it—and one of the reasons is that the elites in the country don't mind this massive spending because it's helping their hedge funds; it's helping their defense contractors.They want the spending.This is why it's so tough to even talk about cutting spending here.
And trust me: They're not worried about what happens to the American people—are they not going to get this program or that program?They want to have this continuous spending.Until we get a grip of that, and one of the ways you have to get a grip of, you have to downsize the government programmatically.You just can't do everything that you've been doing and paying for.
And principally, this is why I'm an advocate, strong advocate, until you get to the Defense Department, and it shouldn't be lost on anybody that DOGE is—we're the ones on our show that said, “You’ve got to cross the Potomac.You’ve got to cross the Potomac.You can't just be running around on Social Security.You’ve got to get to the Pentagon.”They've been at the Pentagon for nine and a half weeks, 10 weeks.I haven't heard one chirp, right, out of that festering sore.They spend $900 billion a year.20Trust me: There's a little bit of waste, fraud and abuse over there.We haven't heard—we haven't seen one email, one Twitter post on anything.I think they announced a couple weeks ago, [Defense spokesperson] Sean Parnell announced they found $80 million, which is basically Uber money over there.21
20
U.S. Department of Defense: Department of Defense Releases the President's Fiscal Year 2025 Defense Budget
21
U.S. Department of Defense: Last Week in DOD: Additional DOGE Savings, Strengthening VA Partnership, Homeschool Review
So it's all performative.That's why you have to—and your audience has to understand.This is not going to be easy.It's going to be tough.We've kicked the can down the road from decade to decade to decade.If you want inflation to continue, if you want the financial and economic opportunities to recede from you and your life, right, forget your children and grandchildren, if you want it all to recede, if you want to continue to have to work two jobs, if you want to use that credit card to make ends meet at the end of the month, if you want to be anxious every day of your life, the job you've got and how you're barely hanging on, if you were fired, you're 90 days away—I don't care if you're middle class—you're 90 days away from financial oblivion, but that ticking time bomb of what's going to happen to me when I get older, “Do I have enough for retirement?Is Social Security even going to be here?Even the Social Security at 1,000 bucks a month, is that going to pay for anything?,”that anxiety eats away at people like acid.
And if you want that to continue and get worse, then let's just have the system we’ve got now.Let's have $2 trillion—listen, it's not going to change.The elites in this country, if it was a crisis for them, it would change tomorrow morning.It's not changing because it works for the wealthy and powerful, and the wealthy and powerful people who are now waking up control the Democratic Party.The entire Democratic Party is kind of a phony.
And let me give you a specific example: When [former President Joe] Biden won, in the first 100 days, they put up this thing about taxing the billionaires.They were going to tax the billionaires, tax the billionaires.They controlled the House and the Senate.That never even got to a committee.There was no taxing of the wealthy under Biden.There was never even an attempt to tax the wealthy.Why?Because the wealthy control the Democratic Party.They've abandoned the working class, and we, for years, have worked and have the working class on our side now, right, including African American men, Hispanics, right?They've abandoned it to this credentialed class, this kind of phony degrees coming out of these universities and these people that hang onto these kind of marginal jobs that are all because of government spending and corporate spending that support this.
It's controlled by the billionaires.If it wasn't, where was your tax cut?Where did the Democratic Party for either eight years under Obama or four years under Biden—12 years—show me one effort at all to go after the 1%.It wasn't—you had [Sen.] Elizabeth Warren running around and setting up the consumer bureau.That's kind of—it's like the minimum-wage thing.That's a sop, that runaround.That doesn't get to the core of the problem.The core of the problem is you have to get to the administrative state, which is their mechanism of how they control things, and you have to cut.You have to cut spending, and you have to raise taxes on them.
I'm the only one on the right that is a strong proponent that this tax extension has to be more tax cuts for the working class.You have to cut tax on tips, tax on overtime, tax on bonuses, taxes on Social Security.That's another, I don't know, $500, $600, $700, $800 billion a year of decreased revenue.22You’ve got to make that up somewhere, so if we can't do it in growth—and I can do the math.I don't see us getting to 5% growth.I don't see growth getting us out of here.I think growth is important.I think President Trump and [Secretary of the Treasury Scott] Bessent are focused on that to get us to 3, 3.5%.There's going to be a gap.That gap has to come from the wealthy.You can't extend the tax cuts for the top, upper bracket.You can't.The math just doesn't work.
22
And that will be the first time we're putting them on notice, because I tell people just in doing that, we'll b---h slap them to say, “You've got to be a partner in getting this thing under control.No more are you just going to benefit from it,” because that's what's happening now, and the country is starting to wake up to this.This is why the economic message of populism and economic nationalism is getting traction now.People are looking around and going, “OK, I'm starting to understand it.”That is the wave of the future of politics in this country.This is where the big fights are going to be.
Trump Takes on the Law Firms
Let me ask you about the law firms, because you explained why that was part of this, why the law firms were so powerful, why they were part of this corporate interest.Can you help me understand the effect of when those orders come out?They're pretty shocking to a lot of people.
They're shocking to Steve Bannon.I know.I am so impressed.Here's why: These law firms are embedded.These law firms—and if you look in the old days of Edward Bennett Williams and [Robert] Bob Strauss, fixers in Washington, that's not what this is.These are highly sophisticated apparatuses working with private equity, like Latham & Watkins and Carlyle in the imperial capital, or working with these Wall Street hedge funds or private equity funds, essentially control the country.
The power of what President Trump did, and I don't think—only the most sophisticated on their side, but I was stunned of how brilliantly thoughtful it was, because they went after—the media bit on “They took away their security clearances; they took away their security clearances,” when really that was just the means to say: No more government contracts, no more government work.
The key—the killer line, though, which was absolutely brilliant, they embedded down in the executive order, “Oh, by the way, any firm that retains you will not be eligible for government contracts.”They went after Paul, Weiss [Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison] first.23Is Paul Weiss the most powerful law firm in the country? No.Is it the biggest law firm in the country?No, it's not a Kirkland & Ellis or a Latham & Watkins or a Skadden, Arps [Slate, Meagher & Flom], but behind the scenes, Paul Weiss is incredibly powerful.They have been the organizer—this guy [Brad] Karp, but the whole firm had been the organizer of kind of the opposition to Trump, particularly [among] Democrats.It shouldn't be lost on anybody that when [Rupert] Murdoch wanted to get rid of [Roger] Ailes, what firm did he pick?Paul Weiss, right, to do the independent assessment.They would do a lot of dirty work, and they're quite powerful.24
In that—and I was stunned.… After that was sent, essentially they collapsed in their opposition.25And why was that?The other law firms started poaching their clients.It was their partners who are unified in their hatred of Trump and Karp himself, who's the kind of ringleader.They cratered. …Why?Because the rest of these piranhas, immediately when they saw the executive order, they went after their clients and said, “Hey, you're not going to have any access to government contracts.”And here's why.The American people should understand.They all feed at the trough of public money.That's your money.You're paying for that.If you're making 32,000 bucks a year, and you're watching PBS on your small TV in your apartment in Chicago and working two jobs, right, and you're a liberal and you watch PBS and you feel better every day, you're a sucker.Why was this so massive?Why did they crater?Why did one of the most powerful law firms in the country [go] to the Oval Office as a supplicant and beg for mercy?Because they want access to your tax money.You're working two jobs and can barely survive and have no retirement and no health care, right?And the reason is your money, your hard-earned money, is going to pay to a system that every day f---s you, every day f---s you, and does it openly.That's why it cratered.They cratered because they weren't going to have access to government.It wasn't the security clearances; that was a means to an end.They weren't going to be able to feed at the public trough. …
And here's the thing.When you talk about the $40 million for philanthropic—he's going to do $40 million of pro bono work, or $100 million at Skadden Arps, the way that the systems works with the NGOs, all these radical NGOs, the color revolution that Rachel Maddow talks about every night, the reason that these guys are able to be so powerful, those NGOs, they have the best law firms in the country working for them.That $100 million is not because you want philanthropic work; it's to take away the opportunity cost so they can't work for the radical left.
The whole system changes with this.This is, quite frankly, brilliant in its conception, and it's even more brilliant in its execution.And here's what I tell people: They're not that powerful.This whole system has been so powerful and so overwhelming, they cratered … the most powerful law firms in the country.And guess what?People's now appetites are whet.They're going to go after all of them.You have to break them all, particularly the two you’ve got to break—we'll get down to the end—is Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins.Kirkland & Ellis is Obama's law firm.They've already got Covington & Burley [sic], which was Holder.26But Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, because those are the two big intersections between—they're essentially private equity organizations now.You'll get to those at the end and break down.
But no, people should understand, and this is why now, on MSNBC, this takes up 20 minutes of programming almost in each show every night because they now understand, “Oh, my God, this may be the mortal blow that destroys it.”This is going down to the mechanics of how the system works.This is so profound.This and going after the universities are—and what shocked me is Columbia folded. …27That was an historic day, and I've been a big advocate because I'm a maximalist.Don't go after just the Ivies, just Harvard.I went there; you should go there.They're all—but you showed it in Columbia; you can get to all of them.You have to go to the Public Ivies.You have to go to the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, University of Texas–Austin, Berkeley, UCLA.I'll throw on University of Florida and University of Arizona.Those 10, go to them today.
And it's not about this—because I think we're too narrowcasting this about the Palestinian/Gaza thing.It's much broader than that.It's not those kids—the kids on the common are not the problem.The problem's in the faculty and the administration.I would be much more radical.I would go to the big state universities today, these great Public Ivies, and say right off the bat, “You either purge the faculty senate or purge the administration immediately, or you're cut off from all money.”
In the state of Michigan, in the state of Wisconsin, there's no way—this is billions of dollars that go to these universities.These things would fold.They would crater in 24 hours, and then you would get to the root.You would lance the boil that's driving this radicalness on college campuses but also throughout America, because the common theme is that it's all public money.If you cut the USAID, why do they run around USAID?Because it's publicly—has basically fueled the revolution in this country.Once you cut off the public money, or once you cut off these law firms that are radicals, these neo-Marxists, right, culturally, not economically, once you cut off the public money or access to it, they fold.They're not that powerful.
You've seen a system that has had so many of the institutions under control.They got lazy.They never thought a Trump would come along, and they never thought a Trump could get that message out to working-class people and actually have power in back of his punch.That's the great struggle we have today, and it's not being reported correctly.Number one, I just don't think the media has spent time thinking this through about what's really going on.They're all running around with their hair on fire, “Oh, my gosh, this, this and this.”There's actually a very well-thought-through plan on this, and the opposition knows this.The law firms understand this.The NGOs understand this.Rachel Maddow understands this.Watch her show; watch what she's really talking about.She understands exactly what's going on, and she understands the stakes and how high these stakes are.
When they reach that agreement, what are they agreeing to?The president said they're bending to me; you said they come to him as a supplicant.Are they agreeing to not represent clients attacking the government?What's the crucial agreement that they’re making?Is it loyalty?
It's not loyalty.I think it's the fact that, first off, they're not going to fund—they're not going to do all this pro bono for these other organizations, right, and number two, that they're going to not attack the government, not sue the government frivolously, which I think is a huge thing.
It's not that—look, if they've got a case that's meaningful, I'm sure they'll take it and they'll continue on, or their partners will resign.You've already had some of the younger associates at Skadden Arps saying, “We'll never agree to this, and we'll go do it our way.”But it should not be lost on people that Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss, two of the most powerful law firms in the country, basically cratered. ...
Deportation of Venezuelan Migrants
Has the administration chosen immigration as a place to make a stand with the courts?Was that intentional, or do you think that's how it developed?
When you say immigration, I think—immigrant—look, the southern border has been secured in 60 days.28How can anybody on the left sit there and not be humiliated by the lies, quite frankly, the lies that were purported by your channel and your show year after year after year?And the Republicans picked up on it.I'm not just picking on radical Democrats.By the way, when you guys are shut down and all the money's gone, it's the lies and misrepresentation you told on basic issues like the invasion of our country.It's been stopped in 60 days, guys.… We started to get control of this immediately because of President Trump's just direct actions.
In the courts, I think you're talking about, it's not the mass deportation.Remember, I believe we're too—once again, in the spectrum of this, President Trump's a moderate trying to balance everything.His right wing is for mass deportations of all 10 million, and let's be specific, that just came in on Biden's watch.Anything that happened beforehand, we'll have to think that through in the future.I'm just talking about what's happened from Jan. 20 of 2021, all the way till Jan. 20 of 2025, in that four years.29What Biden did, which was very well thought through, in conjunction with the NGOs that were paid for by either your religious organizations like the Catholics, the Lutherans or the Jews, right, Catholic charities being the worst—and I'm a Catholic—or USAID, paid for by your taxpayer dollars to basically bring in economic competition that Wall Street wanted, that corporatists wanted, because they want to drive down wages.
29
FactCheck.org: Breaking Down the Immigration Figures
So if you're sitting in Chicago watching your PBS as a convinced liberal, understand that your government, that government at the time was organized.It wasn't chaotic.It was a very organized way to basically invade, bring in cheaper labor into the United States to drive down wages among lower-skilled workers, which is unacceptable.
So right now, we're not even talking about mass deportations, which is the point that MAGA wants to get to quickly because they all have to go home.They all have to go home.You're not going to have a country unless every invader goes back to the origin.What we're talking about now is a national security issue.Let's go back to the unified executive theory.He's commander-in-chief of the armed forces and can make decisions about national security.You have a radical judge that's inserted himself.This has nothing to do with immigration.This has to do with his role as commander-in-chief.Can a federal judge step in the middle of that and start making decisions about airplane capacity, lift, who's going to go, what's going to go, etc.?You have an organization he's designated as a terrorist criminal organization that's terrorized people from Colorado to all over the country, and he's shipping them out of here, and he's going to continue to ship them out of here.You've had a judge insert himself in that role.It's now at the Supreme Court.It'll get expedited, I assume, and we'll see.30… So no, you can't let these radical judges do it, and this is going to be a showdown.It has to be a showdown.
30
And the rhetoric about the judge, because a lot of lawyers say all of the rhetoric, calling for impeachment, the “radical left lunatic,” that this rhetoric is not the type of thing the president should say.He should appeal.He should abide by the court ruling and not—
By the way, was there any complaint from PBS or was there any complaint by the Democrats on the rhetoric used against the judges when the Roe v. Wade decision came out and they had to have police protection at their houses?31I don't remember.I don't remember anything about the rhetoric being too high.You guys are so f---ing phony on the face of it.This is why we're defeating the left.The American people, they see this, they go, these guys are a bunch of f---ing lying scumbags.Which you are a bunch of lying f---ing scumbags.You terrorize, you try to terrorize Supreme Court justices over a decision that didn't go your way. …
31
And now, I'm a huge believer of playing by the system.The system—we should get these judges, and I'm an advocate—I'm not saying impeach them right now.That's for the House of Representatives to decide.However, the Judiciary committee should immediately get [District Court Judges] Beryl Howell and was it [James] Boasberg, in immediately for a public hearing about their conduct.32Absolutely.And let's put it before the American people.Let's put what these two have done.These two are radicals.Put them on notice.You put them through this process; whether you impeach them or not, all these other judges are going to fold.
32
United States District Court for the District of Columbia: Senior Judge Beryl A. Howell
Here's what we know: If you take power and exert it, this system's not so tough.You know why?They're all gutless cowards.They've all hid behind the system for decades and decades and decades.So the university administrators, they're not that tough.The big law firms, they're not that tough.The media?Look who's cratered.How many times—look how they’re settling with Trump.They're not tough.
We're resilient, we're anti-fragile, and we're tough.You can put us in f---ing prison.You can take Trump up there and put him on trial every day.The people around Trump are battle-hardened, OK?You're not going to scare us, and we're not going to stop, and what we know is you guys are a bunch of p---ies.You will crater.PBS is going to crater.… You know why?You're not tough.You don't believe actually at your core in what you're trying to do, and you'll fold, like the law firms, like the universities, like the media, like all of these institutions.You will fold, because we're relentless, and we're not going to stop.
Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court
So when it gets up to the Supreme Court, which is where it's going to end up, how is it going to play out?A lot's going to come onto [Chief Justice] John Roberts.
And ACB [Amy Coney Barrett].
And ACB.
This is why I think President Trump—I think Mike Davis and some of the people that have been at the forefront of this have said comply—no matter how radical, no matter how some judge in Rhode Island puts a nationwide ban on the entire thing, comply with that, right, so that you don't rattle the courts because these are eventually going to go up to the courts, and they want to make sure you play by the rules.
Now, I actually, being a maximalist, some of these things I wouldn't have complied with, but they have.And I think you're going to have to see when it comes up to the Supreme Court.So I don't want to prejudge what's going to happen, but a lot of these, on every part of the theory, right, whether he's chief executive and can make decisions on personnel and money, right, and executive action.As commander-in-chief, can he actually ship out these criminal terrorists as the chief magistrate, things dealing with the Justice Department and the FBI?They're all going to the Supreme Court, right?And now there's, what, 82 lawsuits and more coming every day, right?
But you're going to see a lot of these are not pro bono work anymore by the big law firms.Kari Lake told me the other day on VOA, I think they got eight or nine.So that's how the system works, and we'll have to see how it plays out.
But yes, you have a constitutional crisis because one of the tests of this theory is that it's supposed to be checks and balances.We got into the system for years.You had judicial supremacy, and I kept even saying to the Mark Levins and these guys who were very smart and the constitutional guys, they're all—everything's getting down to Supreme Court decisions.I said the founders never gave the Supreme Court—you never agreed to judicial supremacy, and what you're seeing now is a judicial insurrection about somebody that's challenging judicial supremacy.That's going to have to be worked out, and that is, I would say, the courts threw us into a constitutional crisis because they want to be supreme to the chief executive.
And so this is going to play out, and we're going to see how it plays.I strongly believe we're going to win.
What’s Ahead in Washington?
… You said there were some court rulings you wouldn't comply with.The president has said that he would comply with court rulings.
I think he has.
Do you think that there's a—
Except there is, I guess, a question about the Venezuelan flights already as commander-in-chief.On that one, I think we're in a gray area.My belief is he's so set in on this issue of being commander-in-chief, and that's why I think it's the one that's expedited to the Supreme Court.We don't know, as of now, whether it's going to—I think it's going to be in the emergency docket.That's still up in the air.I think it probably will be because I think this one has to be sorted.That's one I think he's already—because they did send the 17 Venezuelans I think, on Sunday night to Venezuela, right, who accepted them.33So I think this is—but I think they're—if you look across, they're complying across the board with the rest.
33
U.S. Department of State: More Foreign Gang Terrorists Deported Out of America
Should the courts be wary?Do you think there's a moment where the president, the administration might say, “This has gone too far”?
I think the courts should be very wary.What did [former President] Andrew Jackson say?You can make a rule and go ahead and enforce it.You have to rein in the courts.They've been too radical.This is a judicial insurrection.I strongly believe that this is going to be a learning exercise, and what we're trying to do is go back and try to, more and more in the coming weeks, is make sure our audience understands this goes back—it really goes back to FDR [former President Franklin D. Roosevelt] and the packing of the court, but specifically, it goes back very much to Watergate and the judicial insurrection you had at Watergate in the same court, in this DC court that's out of control, with Sirica, OK?34Everything is—that's the real head of all this, and people have to understand, this showdown, which have you just had country-club Republicans who were never going to—Bill Barr and that crowd, but the Bush, all that crowd, and they talk about Cheney and all that. …This is actually a fight that had to happen.This had to happen between the courts and the executive branch, OK?
34
Britannica: John Sirica United States judge
It's happened because Trump and people around him understand the Constitution and understand what we have to do to get back to a constitutional republic, to take on the administrative state and take on the deep state.[Former Vice President Dick] Cheney and those guys, it was totally different.It was there just to self-aggrandize power and, quite frankly, I think hide a lot of abuses on the Iraq War that I was against, right?
So this is a real showdown, and this is for the highest stakes and this is from both sides, are going to give as good as they get.The opposition of this is, you're bringing your best.You've got the best lawyers; you’ve got the best thinkers on your side, and they understand what the stakes are.They particularly understand what the stakes are of cutting off government funding to the NGOs.They understand how much of this has been on the public trough.They also understand, as we go against things like ActBlue, the mechanics of how actually the stuff is funded—away from the government on the foreign billionaires.
So we're going after the infrastructure and the plumbing and the wiring of the whole system of the radical left.So the stakes couldn't be higher, and they know that.That's why this is such an important fight.And I keep saying, “One side is going to win and one side is going to lose.”There's no ground for compromise.You can't compromise with our opposition.They're not going to compromise with us.They don't believe in anything that we stand for.They think we're—all they talk about is autocratic breakthrough; this is the moment of autocratic breakthrough; this is the moment when Donald Trump becomes dictator.
What he's trying to do is trying to get back to what the Constitution says and make sure that we're not a dictatorship because we have been a dictatorship as you can see by how the Justice Department was weaponized against people and sent guys like—who tried to send Trump to prison for 300 years, which they still want to do, and sent guys like Peter Navarro and myself to prison, right, for discussions on checks and balances.
So no, these are the highest stakes, and this is going to be fought down to the bitter end, and I can tell people right now, we are not going to quit.We're not going to surrender.We're not going to take our foot off the gas pedal.It's all gas, no brake.
Explain that criticism of autocracy.The thing that we have heard is people who say the president doesn't seem to respect the rule of law or courts or—
He doesn't respect the rule of lawyers.He respects the rule of law.He's complied with all this.He spent all this time putting judges in.What do you mean we don't respect the rule of law?He absolutely respects the rule of law.It's the other side that didn't respect the rule of law, that went after people that—from school boards to people at abortion centers to people just opposing them on what they were trying to do and trying to break the Constitution.
Look, it's not me.Have your audience ask themselves a question.The J6 [House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol] committee, did they not crawl on their bellies to the White House and ask for something that's never been given in the history of this country?35A blanket preemptive pardon?Your audience should ask themselves, if they're so rule-of-law, why did they go crawling for something that's never been given in American history?A blanket preemptive pardon.And plus their staffs.… I happen to think they're not legitimate.I think they ought to be pursued because that's when we saw the breakdown of rule of law.They’re gangsters. …
A lot of people have said that there will be a moment where somebody's going to blink, the court or the president.And is he going to blink?
Donald Trump does not blink.Donald Trump's about action and driving through.Look, and this is what's so providential about the election being stolen in 2020.He had four years kind of in exile, right?Kind of a lion in winter.This thing has been so thought through.The team has been so put together.And remember, these are people that volunteered for this back in '21 and '22, understanding by getting on this Trump team and working through these issues, lawyers, people like Stephen Miller, Brooke Rollins, the people at Heritage, Russ Vought, who are now all the core team, they understood by signing up for this in those early years, you were basically anathema to the Republican establishment.You wouldn't be in a Nikki Haley administration.You would not be in a Ron DeSantis administration.
So it's all in.Trump is not only not going to blink; he's going to win.But you're absolutely correct.There's going to come—it's going to build up to a crescendo, and we're going to see, and this is what I keep telling people.One side's going to win, and one side's going to lose.There's nothing to compromise.There's two different theories about what the Constitution says, what the framers had in mind and what this country is, and it's either a constitutional republic under the rule of law or it's not, and that is what you're going to see in this kind of battle that's going to take place and continue till it reaches a crescendo.
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