Episode 5288: Economy Feeling Effects Of Iran War; No Amnesty And Freeze All Immigration

A few months ago, Trump posted that Iran is doing a very poor job of allowing oil through the Strait, adding, quote, that is not the agreement we have. An hour earlier, the president posted, there are reports that Iran is charging fees. They better not be. And if they are, they better stop now, because this is how we do diplomacy. Safe passageway through the Strait was actually a key sticking point of the president's ceasefire with Iran. But straight traffic remains at a near standstill, even though Iran still has an upper hand on this crucial shipping route, Trump once again declared victory tonight over Tehran. The contradictions, they just don't stop there. For the first time, we are hearing from U.S. troops, troops who survived Iran's attack on an American military outpost in Kuwait at the start of the war. The March 1st strikes killed six service members. Soldiers who were injured in the drone attack spoke to CBS News contradicting this version of events from Pete Hexett. Every once in a while, you might have one, unfortunately, we call it a squirre that makes its way through. And in that particular case, it happened to hit a tactical operation center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons. One of those injured soldiers said in response, quote, painting a picture that one squeaked through is a falsehood. I want people to know the unit was unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position. On their side, Anderson. Yeah, absolutely. You, I mean, you have a lot of experience in this region. You have seen that time after time. Yeah, well, as I said, I think really, I mean, it is their strategy right now, and I can't say that it's failing, is to make this so untenable for the rest of us that there's pressure on the United States to stop the war. Right, which seems to be working. Well, it is their chief leverage, and ours is an ability to impose punishing strikes on Iran. And so, as I said earlier now, he said, quote, I spoke with BB and he's going to low key it. I just think we have to be sort of a little more low key. He himself was less so in a social media post shortly before midnight last night about what would happen, he says, if Iran does not comply with whatever agreement emerges from the upcoming talks, which get underway on Saturday. Again, quoting the president, then the shooting starts bigger and better and stronger than anyone has ever seen before. In the meantime, he adds, our great military is loading up and resting, looking forward actually to its next conquest. The conquest in military terms means taking control of land or people through force. That is what the president of the United States now says our military is looking forward to. Trump declares premature victory in Iran. It says the unfortunate truth is that Mr. Trump put himself in this position. Inconsistent rhetoric on the war, claims of victory, and unleashing hell to Iran's civilization, raise global fears and undermine support at home and abroad. The next test for Mr. Trump will be whether he takes his two weeks ceasefire deadline seriously. So that you can sort of throw into a ball of coverage that is quite similar to that. What's your reaction when you see that, Mark? Well, I don't normally waste my time reading editorial pages because I don't care what about six guys sitting in a skyscraper have to say about anything. The fact of the matter is this. We wouldn't be where we are today, but for the fact that this president did something no president has done in half a century. He said enough is enough. We're going to take care of this nuclear issue. We're going to take care of this enrichment issue. They're not going to get the blackmail us. They're not going to get the fund terrorism anymore. They've killed thousands of American citizens and military personnel. We're not putting up with that anymore. They're spreading terrorism all over the world. They tried to assassinate me. We're not putting up with that anymore. We're going to take care of this once and for all. We're not going to push it off to the next generation. My envoy came back. Steve Whitcoff, he said they were bragging about the fact that they could have 11 nuclear bombs in 10 days. And I'm supposed to listen to Chuck Schumer. I'm supposed to waste my time with AOC. I'm supposed to care what some editorial page has to say. He's the president of the United States. He knows what he's doing. My issue here is they say premature. He's sending mixed signals. Or I don't think he's premature at all. And he hasn't sent mixed signals unless he wants to send mixed signals. And that's the way he negotiates and so forth. So the fact of the matter is this regime is dead. The question is whether we let it live, whether we allow it to breathe life into it. And that's why these negotiations are critical. 10 points, 15 points, right? How are you going to square that away during these negotiations? And if it's an objective to get there as quickly as possible, you're not going to resolve that. You're not going to come to an understanding. I mean, this will be two weeks of frustration. I'm kind of surprised that the ceasefire has lasted as long as it has so far, right? You know, this is, we've got to remember that the strategic objective was to remove Iran's ability to create a nuclear weapon. That is job number one. No matter how that's achieved, we need to commit ourselves to that. But we have to make the case to the American public. And we haven't done that yet, right? So this should be a time that the administration begins to work on that, to justify why we're there. Because again, as I mentioned to you the last time we were together, once you put boots on the ground, it's a completely different war. For them is a video game. This is a television series. You know, to listen to the Secretary of Defense. We don't have a Department of War people, but it's the Secretary of Defense sitting up here talking the way he talks. These young men and women, what is their expectation when they go into battle? And that's not going to be their reality. Their reality is not going to be this clean cut. Oh, yes, we dropped a bomb. Things blew up and everybody went scurrying back into their holes. That's not how it works. The enemy fights. The enemy responds. Well, I don't think we can. When you look at Kaleba or Orochi, these are both revolutionary guards people. They came out of the RRGC. They're not normal people. I think the only normal person you have is Pasechkin, who's their president. But the rest of them are revolutionary leaders. They've been fighting for 40 years against the United States. And you've got a picture up there with Tahiti. He's the same one. He runs the RRGC right now, but he's an old revolutionary too. So you're dealing with people who are steeped in believing the United States is the great scene and we need to go in there and realize this is not a business deal. This is war. And we're settling a war. We are the victors and we're going to come in like we are the victors. They are dead men walking. Now are we going to resuscitate them or not? As far as the straits go, that's international waters. They don't get to control it. There's eight countries on the shoreline of that navigable area. Who says Iran gets to make decisions about what goes on there? They have to be put in their place. If we're me, I'm not president, so I'm just projecting. I'd say here are my 12 points. You surrender or we'll see you in a week or two. And that's that. We're not there negotiating any kind of deal. We're negotiating their surrender. That's my view. This president has been up against the Democrats. He's been up against the woke right. He's been up against the media. He's been up against the UN. He's been up against NATO. And he's doing the right thing. They've had 50 years to figure this out and he's figured it out and he says no to all these other people. They're wrong. What would we do today, Martha, if they had a nuclear weapon? They control the straits and there's not a damn thing we could do about it. They control the entire oil in that entire region. That whole region would change with China's presence, with Russia's presence and so forth and so on. Moreover, they keep threatening us. These are terrorists. These are suicide bombers. They'd be suicide bombers with nuclear weapons. And they could use those nuclear weapons to kill tens of millions of Americans. Donald Trump's the president. He has to make those decisions. With the last 12 to 24 hours or so, there's been a little bit more optimism. And I know the president himself is hoping that once they are in person in Pakistan, that hopefully they can broach some of the really large daylight between these two different plans, as Nick laid out, the 10-point plan from Iran, the 15-point plan from the U.S. I am told they're expecting the meeting on Saturday with the vice president, Steve Wiccoff, Jared Kushner, to be the first of likely several intense negotiations over that two week ceasefire. And of course, they could ultimately extend the ceasefire further if they believe progress is being made. But one thing I just want to point out about Vance himself quickly is that, you know, one, I've been told that his presence here has really meant to lend a certain air of credence to these talks. He's, of course, the president's number two, has a lot of the president's full trust to negotiate on his behalf. But also, one thing that's been interesting as well from some of my conversations around this is that they recognize Vance as someone that the Pakistanis, the mediators involved in this, but also the Iranians know as someone who is a former anti-interventionist person in foreign wars that he was one of the few people who did not want the president to move forward with strikes, which could also give perhaps a sense of, you know, giving Vance looking more reasonable, perhaps in their eyes. We'll have to see how these negotiations go. But of course... Okay, look, this was a hot inflation report, and the fingerprints of the war in the Middle East are all over this report. The consumer price is surging by 0.9% between February and March. That's triple the rate of the prior month, and that's the highest in any month in almost four years. You've got to go back to June 2022 when gas prices were $5 a gallon. The annual rate ticked up to, well, went up sharply to 3.3%. That was slightly less than expected, but that's the highest annual rate, as you mentioned, in almost two years. In fact, this is the highest annual inflation in any month of either of President Trump's two terms in the White House. This is looking at the trend for inflation. You can see it had been moving in the right direction, had been cooling off. And it's like a straight line up. Yeah, it's going straight up. So why did this happen? Well, obviously gasoline is a major part of this. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says that three quarters of the monthly increase in prices was driven by the fact that gas prices skyrocketed by 21% month over month. That's the most since they started tracking this back in 1967 when LBJ was in the White House. Airfare also went up significantly of 3% increase in airfare. That's actually less than it could have been. I mean, jet fuel costs have doubled since the war started. So airfare up 3% is not good, but it's actually likely to get worse in the coming months. Tomato prices also up by 15% on a monthly basis. That's the most since 2011. Now the news isn't all bad here, right? Egg prices, among other things, eggs went down. Overall, grocery prices actually were down between February and March. Unfortunately, though, that's not likely to last, right? Because the war in the Middle East has interrupted the supply of critical materials, including fertilizer. And when you combine that and diesel, right? So you combine all that, that's why economists are saying that you could start to see food prices go up. Now one thing to note is core inflation, which economists say is a better underlying indicator of where inflation is really going. Core inflation only ticked up a little bit. But that's not likely to last. We do expect these other price increases to seep through the rest of the economy. Bottom line here, Kate, look, the war is clearly making life more expensive for Americans. And this is likely not over, right? This is not just a March story. We're going to continue to see the impact of the war in the inflation reports going forward, which just means the cost of living is likely to get worse. We're taking out that regime because it's our enemy. We're taking out that regime because it killed our people. We're taking out that regime because they wanted nukes. And if it remains in some form, you know, it's like a weed wacker. The weeds grow, they keep coming. You might get the top of it in the next level, but the weeds keep growing. And if we don't get down into the weeds, they're going to keep growing. Friday, 10 April, the year of our Lord 2026, Tel Aviv, LeVen, you got him right there making his case. We try to do it. I want to thank Denver, the Real America's voice team at Denver. Of course, our own crack team here at the war room, because I think these cold opens give the best summary of a range of opinions of what people are thinking. Of course, inflation data is out today, and we're going to get Eric bowling on here and break all that down in the fog of war. It looks like the team is hitting to Islamabad to negotiate. Now there's obviously these questions. The maximum list position of the Iranians and the 10 points, which are eight of them are completely unacceptable even to talk about. Of course, our 15 points, Mark LeVen would be correct. That would be essentially an unconditional surrender. There's supposed to be a modified 10 that they have somehow agreed to, or at least have agreed partly to. And it will find out about that. But it looks like the team is going to leave and going to go to Islamabad. We'll be covering it on the Saturday show. And even though there's a tenuous ceasefire, we're going to continue our seven day a week coverage, at least through the ceasefire. So we'll be live on Sunday to report on what's going on. Eric bowling is going to join us in a minute. We're going to talk about the markets. Also want to talk about I had Philip Patrick on last night about this Bloomberg report that central banks hit a tripwire in March and in the first quarter of this year where gold backed assets actually were increased actually more than dollar backed assets. The president's got a repost of a John Solomon, just a news article about a great reset. That would be a reset with the Chinese Communist Party. Thank God, because we certainly need one. Anyway, we're going to get into oil war, all of it. But we're going to turn our focus this morning back on inside the wire. The fight for the United States of America inside the United States of America, not from the rubble in Tehran. Take your phone out. 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This president has been up against the Democrats. He's been up against the woke right. He's been up against the media. He's been up against the UN. He's been up against NATO. And he's doing the right thing. They've had 50 years to figure this out. And he's figured it out. And he says no to all these other people. They're wrong. What would we do today, Martha, if they had a nuclear weapon? They'd control the straits. And there's not a damn thing we could do about it. They control the entire oil in that entire region. That whole region would change with China's presence, with Russia's presence, and so forth and so on. Moreover, they keep threatening us. These are terrorists. These are suicide bombers. They'd be suicide bombers with nuclear weapons. And they could use those nuclear weapons to kill tens of millions of Americans. It's 47 years. I got it. I got it. I got it. He does make some, I actually think, Mark Levin, Tel Aviv Levin actually make some relevant points. I would just like to note to him that the surrender document was the 15-point program. We're off the 15-point program. I don't say that. I thought there were many elements of the 15-point program that we should stick with. That's the White House's position. So you've got to get your facts straight. They've already agreed that they're not negotiating the surrender. The reason they're not negotiating a surrender is I keep saying not the reality, but the reality in the revolutionary guards' mind is that they didn't lose. Why do you think we're sending a team to Islamabad? So we've got to get serious now what we want out of this and how we get the hell out of here and let America's greatest ally do whatever they're going to do with whoever they want to do it with. Because now this is serious and it's starting to roll into, and I've been very adamant. Let's just keep the midterms away because every day is a major historical day here. And we've got to get through the day and keep the big picture. Now, the best news I've seen in the last 24 hours is John Solomon and his team over at Just The News has put up this about the oil, the sanctioned oil, which I keep bitching and moaning about, and about stopping it and seizing it and not letting China, not let the regime monetize it. And there's an article in the President Trump reposting said the greatest reset in world history. I'm down with that. That's good. I like that. That's why I'm saying let's shift the, if that's the attitude and that's the negotiating attitude, let's take that attitude and just go to Beijing. Don't deal with intermediaries in Pakistan or even the Revolutionary Guard. Go right to their sponsors, principle to principle. Anyway, there's a lot going on. Everybody want to say first, on our starting team, on our starting team in the war room, over the years, we had Scott Besant, Russ Vote, Peter Navarro, Dave Walsh. And people should know Dave's got a very big job in the government. And Dave Bratt, who hasn't been on long because Dave Bratt has got some huge opportunities. I think we're going to hear about shortly. And so we've had to restock. And you're doing such a great job here because we can just talk about the evidence that's shown up today. I don't think it's going to be too long before they ask Boling to take a 60 or 90 day hiatus from his hit show at four o'clock and go in as an advisor here. So walk through because today I just want to, in the Foggle War, we've got the Mac Daddy adrudge and Wall Street still saying, hey, there's 10 to 15 ships maybe going through through Hormuz, totally controlled by the Iranians, either Iranian flags or oil cargos for the Iranians, nothing else going through. There's still hundreds of ships backed up there. You've got this inflation data. You have the Bloomberg story yesterday about how this is going to have a lasting impact. And we had Philip Patrick on your side, but I want you to address it also. It's going to have a lasting impact on the dollar because now the world is seeing how we're using economic sanctions and going after the currency and telling UAE to seize their assets in the pirate town of Dubai. And so they've got more gold back assets in central banks now than dollar back. And although it should be a massive flight to safety, you're not seeing that. I want to take all that and just turn it to you because you've been so dead spot on with how you've been guiding us in this, but I want to specifically talk about this inflation number because you got some people saying, hey, it's not as bad as all that. It's actually okay, egg prices are down, food prices down. You got other people saying, I see the end of the world and it's coming. So Eric Bowling, make us feel smarter on this Friday morning, sir. Now you have the smartest audience, bar none of any, certainly any show I've been on. The number that cold open you ran, especially towards the end where you had the CNN analyst, I guess he's an economist, analysts totally surprised and saying, oh my gosh, can you believe this number? We've been, Stephen, we've been talking about this since I started with you 44 days ago. I said, this is coming. Energy inflation is coming. If you notice too, that you take that number down. So month over month from February to March, remember the war started last day of February. So March is the beginning. Bad news is it's only beginning. It's the gasoline price when this thing started was about 324 a gallon. It's now for almost 420 a gallon. For the whole 40 days it's gone up. That means inflation will continue to rise for another 40 days. It'll be baked into the next number and to do a triple, month over month triple from 0.3% to 0.9% is massive. And here's the worst part of it, all of it. All of it, they have this other number they break out called core CPI, consumer price index is the overall headline number which we're triple month over month. But the core CPI, they pull out food and energy, it was flat. So there's no inflation other than energy, food and energy. I went further and looked, food inflation is flat. Energy inflation is ramping up, it's ripping. And we've been, Steven, people call me a panic hand on the chats. I'm just showing what I know, what I've done for 35 years. It's gonna be worse, it's gonna continue to be worse. Gasoline's up 25%. Gasoline inflation is the highest it's ever, ever been recorded, just gasoline. Throw in diesel fuel which is even higher than gasoline. Prices are going up as we all know, first the energy goes up then everything that you input into a manufacturing process or a refinery, a food processing, a transportation, a trucking company, a rail company, a jet fuel company, those will continue to rise. The prices of those things have to rise because the feedstock, the input is oil and the back side of, or gasoline and the back side of that, it's inflationary. And people aren't, businesses aren't philanthropic. They're just gonna pass that along to the consumer. So my problem is I see CNN, I see CNBC, I see Fox News, totally shocked that this thing, the energy prices ripping our faces off. But if you've been watching the war room, you knew it was coming, even though you may not like me for telling you, but it's coming and I got more news. Two things, two things, and you're the, the people that throw out that panic hand, they're just not realists. They've got pom-poms up. And what the president doesn't need right now is people with pom-poms, trust me. You need to be able to say, hey look, there's just some real data, this is some real alternatives. What's the course of action here? Cause we're, the ultimate goal is the implementation of the Trump program, right? In the MAGA program. I wanna go back. Isn't the concern here, or one of the concerns is that in this month, we still, it's still most of the, of what we consumed was on the water or in the refineries at the time. So what's happened over the last 30 days, and now this, you know, it's up to 105 or it's back to 90, but it's still double, you know, when BB went to the White House in, you know, between Christmas and New Year's, it was around what, 50 bucks? Or maybe it had a forehand on the front of it. It's that increase, it doesn't seem like it's coming down. So is that a concern? Go ahead. Yeah, and late, late March, late March, we talked about this, there's some of the refiners that I talked to said that the last of the cheap oil was hitting our shores right now, or globally hitting shores from transportation, which means after late, even late March, when you're gonna start to see prices ramp up. So like I said, even if we get oil down to $70 a barrel again, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel prices have to continue to rise, cause they bought, they purchased very expensive crude oil to input into the refinery. They're not gonna take the loss on it. They're just gonna pass it on to the retail establishment to businesses, and that ends up coming out of our pocket. This is technical, but one thing that was very concerning about that number that I haven't heard anyone talk about, consumer sentiment dropped dramatically, which means people are fearful of their walls, their budgets because of what they see on the pump. Stephen, everything is tied to gasoline and tied to energy. Whether you feel it or not, toilet paper, wallpaper, paint, everything has a petroleum input to it, or transportation, which is tied to energy. People are nervous, they're scared, now all of a sudden. So you will see if the consumer- By the way, also wages, also the President Trump's, the wage increases he's gotten for people, that's starting to be eaten in the flageant. I think the real wages are starting to drop. Anyway, President Trump, the economic plan of President Trump and Besson, everybody in Navarro is all predicated, just like in the first term, is all predicated upon full spectrum energy dominance. Right, full spectrum energy dominance. And President Trump's done what he's done on this war to conclude it. I'm gonna ask Eric when we get back, when I ask it now, he'll give us the answer when we get back. He's made these efforts, we gotta cease fire. Why are the world's oil markets not responding as we had hoped? We wanna get this back to $50 a barrel or lower, as President Trump has targeted. We're gonna take a short commercial break, economics, capital markets, the war, but we're then gonna pivot to the war inside the wire here in the United States. 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And President Trump has this ceasefire that is, and you still have elements of the Iranians because they're very dispersed, they're not centralized anymore, that's their strategy. You've also got, this is what I keep harping on, you gotta be in a room with somebody, not just consign a deal and go in front of the media and talk about a deal, but they can actually be able to enforce a deal. I'm not so sure the guys around those tribesmen around the Straits or Hormuz are actually part of anybody's program. That'll all be found out, right? There is a reason that the United States Navy is not enforcing an open waterway, international waterway in Hormuz, but allowing these guys to still charge. And you can tell from the Bloomberg piece, not just our sanctions, but also the fact that that element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are trying to charge it in Yuan, in Chinese currency, or if they can't do that crypto. And if they're doing crypto, you realize they're gonna skim it right to themselves, even screw the Chinese, how's that? So President Trump's doing what he can do, and right now this is fragile. I think, Eric, the global commodity and capital markets are kind of an agreement of that. This is a big kind of catch your breath and kind of wait and see what President Trump can actually hammer out here, sir. Yeah, yeah, I think you hit it on the head. The markets are ominously quiet right now. And I'll tell you, Steve, we're still sitting at $98 a barrel as we speak. Just think about that for one second. We started this conflict, let's say $55, $60 a barrel. So oil is up 80%. Gasoline, although it feels like it's killing us right now, is only up 25%. Diesel up 30, which means all this crude oil that's up 80%, for most of this war, it's been elevated like this, will work its way into the gasoline price and diesel price, so we're going a lot higher. Now, I will also tell you this, you and I both know Donald Trump can get oil back to $50 a barrel or lower. I was there, you were in the White House, I was watching it on Fox and trading. He got oil negative. It didn't go to 20 or 10, it went negative. There was so much, we were so washing oil that people were paying to store their oil. He can do it again, I'm not saying zero, but he can certainly get that $50 handle if and when he finishes whatever the plan is for this straight up or movement, this is what I've been saying. Let's just rip the band-aid off one way or the other and get back to all Liberty above energy strategy, get oil prices down, get inflation down, and let the economy rip and let people really put some money back into their pocket, because they vote with their pockets, with their wallets, with their budgets, no doubt about it. I'm talking to the best political strategists on the planet right now, Stephen K. Bannon. Am I wrong in any of those assessments? Well, I think it's first things first, right? I think, and people have to have realistic, this is what I think Tel Aviv, Levin, although I do agree with some of his points, I just think it's unrealistic right now. The surrender document, the surrender, the instrument of surrender was the 15 points we put out, because it was a maximal strategy. Hey, it's Donald Trump. You know, he's gonna negotiate, he's gonna put out a maximal strategy. This even having the meeting in Islamabad shows you that it's gonna be something less than a full, un-conditional surrender. That's just not gonna happen. And you have to kind of figure this out as you go. President Trump, you can tell, is doing that. I keep saying that the central party in this is the sponsor of the Revolutionary Guard right now, is both in weapons and access to weapons and access to cash money, is the Chinese Communist Party. Now, that's why I think this meeting in May is gonna be so big. It's gonna be principle to principle. It's gonna be President Trump in the room with Xi. And I think that's gonna actually form, because I don't believe where we sit now, you're actually gonna get to full documentation, even if you get some sort of term sheet coming at Islamabad, some term sheet coming at Islamabad. I think it's unlikely that we'll ever get some written formal instrument of agreement between the two parties, because I think the two parties are just so far apart. I do believe though, that this issue of Hormuz and how's it gonna be, how you're gonna actually open it up and have the free navigation, have the free flow of oil, Eric, is gonna become more and more central every day we go forward, particularly if the Iranians keep playing their games, which is, I mean, you tell me, the number of ships coming through here is still a small percentage of what it was at its height. And particularly what it needs to be if we're to have a full booming world economy of which the United States is the engine of it. And I think the NATO meeting the other day was pretty obvious that he didn't, what Secretary General Rute did not come to the sticks right after us, had had a great meeting with President Trump, were fully committed to put the Royal Navy, the French Navy, the Italian Navy, the German, all the navies of Europe down here on picket duty, an escort duty with the United States Navy to take our burden of it. I didn't hear that. One of the reasons you didn't hear it is that they ain't got it, right? Because their people are taking the month of August off, they're retiring when they're 50 years old, they got full medical benefits. Everything US workers don't have, they got. And why they have it? Because they're not paying for their defense, the United States is paying for it and manning it with their kids. So we're facing some quite stark realities, but you saw in the numbers today to get those numbers back in line and to make sure we're back to driving the Trump economic agenda because everything President Trump worked for with the tariffs, with the big, beautiful bill, everything was about driving us back to being a manufacturing hegemon. And then you're clearly gonna hit some speed bumps. Eric, as you've defined for this audience, if the predicate for that is full spectrum energy dominance in oil with a four handle in front of it or a five handle in front of it, it doesn't work or let's say this, it works differently when you're at $90 a barrel or $100 a barrel, sir. So much done, Pat Kerr. The straight is technically partially open, but again, it's maybe 15 vessels per day versus the 150 vessels per day total. They're also being both directions. So it's not just oil coming out, there's vessels going back in. And this is the most important part of it, Steve. The ones that are being navigated through the straight right now are being directed by the Iranian people, IRGC, are telling them, because they know where their minds may be, or they're playing a game of like, we have to tell you how to navigate the straight, otherwise you run the risk of blowing up. All of this is an upward pressure on oil. Trump, here's another, there's two other things, right? So right now, if you wanna extend this for a while, you wanna, China does get hurt, but we should not forget that China has a reserve oil capacity of 1.2 billion barrels. They don't, that's about 100, I think it's 120 days, so four months of reserve. They can last on reserves until things get cleaned up. So hurting them, yes, but can they take a long time? Yo, yo, yo, hold it, hang on, hang on, hang on, full stop. Let's go and talk about that. That's all sanctioned oil, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know, we sanctioned these people. How did that get out? And how did they have a 1.2 billion reserve? At least that's what the intelligence services are telling us in the oil markets. But that was all sanctioned. That shouldn't be there. This is why we've kind of, I guess, looked the other way. I mean, you tell me, you're the oil guy, but how did they have this reserve, which I think is roughly 100 days of what they need and how they're still getting it? So how those 15 ships, how many are going to the CCP? And this is how the CCP, 20% of the tire Chinese Communist Party's energy needs in totality, I think is from Iranian oil. That's why they're the sponsors of Iran. They're the biggest financial sponsors of Iran. And you got these banks and financial institutions in Dubai, the pirate cove. Last time I looked, I think MBZ ran UAE and I think he oversees Dubai. I don't understand why they're able to use, Dubai banks, UAE banks to money laundering, get cash from sanctioned countries. President Trump said yesterday or two days ago, a 50% increase in tariffs on anybody that's breaking sanctions with the Iranians. And I assume that's the Chinese Communist Party put a 50% tariff on. This is also, let me make for full disclosure, in the Bloomberg piece in with Philip Patrick yesterday, this is one of the reasons a lot of people saying, hey, I don't know if we wanna be on the US dollar anymore. Not just as it has been losing purchasing power because of Biden's madness, but in the fact that the Americans with the Swiss system and the ability to go freeze assets, of which we did back the Europeans in the Ukraine war, and now they're doubling down. I mean, Scott Besin almost destroyed their currency in January, that's why hundreds of thousands or millions of, took to the street and 30,000 got killed by the regime. And the central banks of the world, led by the Chinese Communist Party in places like India, are saying, hey, maybe the Americans have too much power. So it's not, this is not a perfect world, but Eric, right now, when you go back and talk about China and their energy needs, we've somehow looked the other way and let that sank. All of that oil, 100% of it's sanctioned oil, is it not, sir? Well, no, not really, Steve, because is it, I don't know, it was, look at it, look at it this way. We have a 750 million barrel SPR reserve when it's full, Biden tapped it, Trump has tapped it twice. Now, we're down to about a quarter of that. We have about 200 million barrel reserve, which is 10 days worth of our oil. China's 1.2 billion, but that's been accumulated over time and they don't tap into it, they just hold it for an emergency. And I don't even think they've started using that emergency supply right now even. So my point was, they have some cushion there. I'm hearing a lot, China and India are, the only two countries are getting the Iranian oil right now, but those are escorted ships in and out and then sent on their way to India and China. So it doesn't really help the global market, it helps China and India out. The central bank thing is important because we, yes, dollar has lost value for a better part of four decades, consistently. It gets a little bit of strength in geopolitical turmoil, but it's starting to lose value again as things calm down, which is higher prices on everything, dollar down, you got more dollars to purchase the same amount of goods. So central banks around the world have reserved gold instead of dollars. And why do you think gold is $4,800 now instead of 2,000, which it was a year and a half ago? Because central banks are realizing that the dollar is not the place to store your value anymore, you store it in physical commodities like gold. All these things, I'll just tell you one more thing, I hate to say this, but you said something about Biden's horrible inflation was the reason for the dollar, well, we're knocking on that door, Steve, we're headed in a direction, I don't say it's 9%, but we certainly could see a 5%, which is historically horrendous for the economy. So get it done one way or the other, either open it, let them play their little stupid reindeer games, or bomb the crap out of them and regime change, civilization change if you want, but do one of the other so you can get back to, sorry, it sounds harsh, get back to $50 barrel of oil, one more little caveat to a $50 barrel of oil, you're approaching how much it costs for these middle eastern countries to pull oil out of the ground, the cost alone. You get it under 50, they don't make any money at all, another positive to lower oil prices. Well, Eric, what's your social media? We got a bounce, I know you got to get ready for today, we'll do a transition on the four o'clock show. Where do people go to get you? I'll tell you what, just keep watching War Room and bowling at Radvith 4 because that's where you learn stuff. Instead of watching puppy dogs in history on Fox, learn something. Thank you, brother, see you at four. Short commercial break back in the war room. The American healthcare system is broken, and for most Americans, nothing changes. There's still delays, denials, high cost, insurance roadblocks. So when I find people doing things differently, I talk about it. All family pharmacy is not your typical big chain pharmacy. This is an independent family-owned pharmacy that gives you access to over 400 medications delivered straight to your door. They've got ivermectin, antibiotics, antivirals, NAD+, even your daily maintenance medications, and so much more. If you already have a prescription, your doctor can send it directly. If you don't, their doctor's handle it. As long as there is medical necessity, they'll take care of you. And I'll tell you this, the feedback from people listening to this show and watching has been incredibly strong. People are using it, it's working for them, and they're sticking with it. That's because it cuts out the delays, the middlemen, and all the usual nonsense. This is about being ready before you need it. Go to allfamilyfarmacy.com, that's all one word, allfamilyfarmacy.com slash Bannon, and use code BANNIN10 to save 10%. The healthcare system is broken. Your pharmacy doesn't have to be. Ouroo, here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon. Okay, we're gonna have Patty Lyman, Republican National Committeewoman from the Commonwealth of Virginia. We had a technical issue, just had Patty, just dropped, we're gonna get her back up. We're gonna do Virginia, we're gonna do Texas. We got some important things to talk about, artificial intelligence. I wanna go back to Eric's thing, about the 1.2 billion reserve of the Chinese Communist Party, and they're also hoarding gold like crazy. The 1.2 billion would have been drawn down if the sanctioned oil wasn't getting through. I think what President Trump is telling people now is that it can't be any more games. We put in very tough sanctions. And you could tell some of them are being worked around. It's still very, I think, ill-defined, whether the UAE sees the assets of the Iranian Republican Guard in the Ayatollahs. And it obviously is gonna have impact on the US dollar and what we do going forward is a prime reserve currency. Like I said, I do believe we need a national debate on being the prime reserve currency and the whole situation with our central banks, all of it. Because something's not working for the American people. However, when we have young men and women in harm's way, and we're talking about a $200 billion, now that might be less, because this war came to a, looks like it's come to at least a conclusion, somewhat of a conclusion, shorter than the original objectives, which I think were another couple of weeks, or maybe even another couple of months, or may not be $200 billion, but when you got a, you know, Russ Fou, he's gonna get shredded next week, because they've got a budget that coming forward, has a $1.5 trillion defense spending, which I think is half a trillion dollars above the trillion. Also, and I'm not quite sure where even the $200 billion fits in, because that has gotta be paid for somehow. And there's no appetite among Democrats or moderate Republicans to cut social programs. If you think there's a appetite, you have 20 traders right now in the Republican Party, 20, that are co-sponsors of one of the most egregious amnesty bills I've ever seen, and I've been doing this a while. We had Rosemary Jinx on yesterday about Salazar's bill, and how awful it is, and she calls it the SAW bill, the Screw American Worker Bill. She says it's one of the worst things she's ever seen. And so that's where we are, and those are Republicans working with Democrats. So the issues that face us here in the country are enormous. This is why President Trump was elected to come back, because people realize in the stolen election of 2020, the illegitimate regime that is Joe Biden, of what damage they did to the country. This is why the mass deportation coalition has been formed. This is why people are coming up now with, and I keep telling people, you're gonna see more populism, and you're gonna see nationalism that's gonna go to ultra-nationalism. And what do I mean by that? More America first, but as importantly, something gets lost here in the equation, and you can see it in some of the statistics today, particularly about wages. President Trump's always driven this, the real wages always increase, and that's why people feel very comfortable when he drives the economy. When that starts reversing itself, then questions gotta be asked, hey, are we doing enough? Are we focused enough? That when I say ultra-nationalism, that American citizens must come first in everything that's done. Everything that's done. I equate it back to the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic. You had Roman citizenship, you had a special deal. People throughout the world, and where you were in the world knew you had a special deal. Wow, you got Roman citizenship, that's pretty special. Well, American citizenship should be far greater than that, and it's not. American citizens are screwed every day of the week. Every day of the week, in this immigration, all the scams, we should have a 10-year ban on all immigration. People say, oh, we're legal in Brazil, and then it's not legal, it's a scam. Look at the H-1Bs, look at this disaster down in Texas, where that's just right below the Islamic invasion issue. So you see these fights, and the way we're gonna win is not TV ads, right? It's not when Cornyn's done in Texas to try to destroy Ken Paxson and do it on TV. This is one of the things, and the central fight right now is Texas is also the Commonwealth of Virginia. Patty Lime, it now joins me. Patty, we got a couple minutes on this side, I'm gonna hold you through. National Committee Woman, you've been one of the leaders of the grassroots movement down there. You guys have really taken something that you were overwhelmed, and I think 10 or 20 points down on this redistricting, to basically radically change the composition of the Commonwealth of Virginia's congressional delegation from six, five, Democrat to 10, one, and I think ensure that President Trump will get impeached. You guys have fought back now that it's kind of a dead heat, maybe even a little bit up. Walk us through what the grassroots have done, this historic movement in the Commonwealth of Virginia to stop this, ma'am. Thank you for having me, Steve. I'm always happy to be here with my posse. My favorite title is enthusiastic member of the War Room posse. I am one of you guys. We in Virginia, the Democrats, when they had their win, the thing about Democrats, Steve, is that when they get power, they use it, and they use it fast. And what they did was shove through a completely illegal referendum to change the Constitution in Virginia, a change that we had changed it in 2020, and we said, we don't want politicians drawing our congressional lines. We want an independent commission to do it. And actually, the Supreme Court of Virginia drew our current lines, and they're quite fair, but they knew that they could do it. They broke every rule. They don't care about rules either, by the way. They broke every rule. We still have four viable lawsuits pending, but our Virginia Supreme Court will not rule on any of them. The issue is, is the referendum legal? The Virginia Supreme Court said, we're gonna make you do the referendum, spend tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of hours, and then later we'll decide whether it was legal or not. So we knew we had to win this. And I will tell you, Steve, from the beginning, the Democrats were bragging about the money advantage they have. I think they're at 50 million in counting, and they can always find more money, as we know they get it illegally from overseas, we're finding out. But I gotta tell you, in the polling that we've had done recently, despite the fact they've spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads, they are not moving the needle in their direction. The needle is moving in the direction of the no vote here in Virginia. And one of the things I think I'm so excited about, Steve, is that, you know, for a while it seemed like we were kind of having a top down approach here in Virginia to our party, but this is a completely ground up grassroots effort. Republicans as a party only survive as a bottom up party, and you know that better than anyone, Steve. And this has been the most revolutionary grassroots record we've ever had in Virginia, ever. Patty, Patty, hang on for one second, I'll hold you through the break. I want people throughout the country, not just to come to the wealth of Virginia to understand the revolution going on in the heart of the American Revolution. If you're 65 or already on Medicare, listen up folks and grab a pen, maybe even a number two pencil. Call 845 War Room, that's 845 War Room, call it right now, I'm serious, call it. Now here's why. The insurance companies and their lackeys in the Washington swamp have built a Medicare system designed to confuse you and rip you off. 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