WarRoom Battleground EP 988: Financial Markets Shaken Since The War; Stopping The Steal Of 2026

This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies, because we're going to make the evil on these people. Here's the thing, I've got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that. I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen. And where do people like that go to share the big line? Maga. Media. I wish in my soul I wish that any of these people had a conscience. Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bowne. It's Tuesday, 14 April, and the year of our Lord, 2026. We know that the David Perdue, who's a friend of the show, ran for US Senator, a long time US Senator, and a, shouldn't say long time, US Senator from Georgia ran for governor. But a guy that spent his business career, I think with Puma Arditas in China, in Hong Kong, knows China very, very well. He's actually in the Oval Office with the president. I think that's a good discussion. When the Chinese Communist Party and the impact of this, they are not happy at all. They've issued a bunch of statements. Dan Woodcage of the White House were going to go there momentarily and get up to speed on everything that's happening there. And maybe the president will call people in and have a chat about this. But I do not believe you're going to see any climb down from the president about this blockade, which we know already, and the media reported it incorrectly. We've, I think, turned back four or five ships. Basically every ship that was eligible to be turned back got turned back, according to criteria that we have laid out. I've asked Philip Patrick to join us this afternoon. What was about Scott Besant's comments last night at this, at this, this gathering of the Semaphore folks with all the top financial people really in the world, because I think the IMF meetings are here also this week. Also, Philip Patrick about the blockade. The Korean magazine had analyst Jason Ma did an analysis of the current economic environment. It took the reports of IMF and others talking about GDP going forward. His headline in the article is quite concerning. U.S. Naval Blockade on Iran will trigger a currency devaluation, spiral, and hyperinflation potentially ending the war more quickly. This is specifically about what he says is going to happen to the Persians and to the Iranian economy. Scott Besant was already pretty far down the road of trying to do this without an instrument of like a three-carrier battle groups to basically choke off any oil coming out and any cash going in. Walk us through, because one of the implications here is that if you use economic warfare on the Persians, number one, the world gets skittish that, hey, the Europeans and kind of with the Americans backing did this to the Russians in Ukraine, and now they're doing it to the Persians. Why do I keep my assets in Western banks and why do I keep an dollar denominated assets? Maybe I've got to get into a gold asset. That's why the IMF report for the first quarter of this year, for the first time since the IMF, has been keeping score for 30 years, showed that there's more gold related assets in these banks, these central banks than there are dollar denominated assets. Also, the second implication is that the world economy is still very skittish right now. A lot of growth rates are being cut because of the dramatic increase in oil and the inflation that's popping up and showing up in the inflation categories. We had E.J. and Tony on this morning, and there's not a bigger support of the president. E.J. was nominated to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he was the one that got it correct about all these recalibrations and how they were phony, how the Biden administration was showing millions of jobs, of new jobs created that just didn't happen and he was correct. He's very concerned about the economy. He's particularly concerned about oil getting back down to a $50 barrel instead of standing at a $90 to $100 barrel. The implication of this article is you take Iran down, you don't know it's the law of under 10 of consequences. It's a country with 92 or 93 million people. It's one of the reasons that we've never been able to really implement full sanctions because the UAE's banking them, other countries are trying to sell for them because they're a sophisticated consumer and it's 92 million people. Your thoughts about this article, particularly the implications that we can destroy and are destroying their economy with hyperinflation, devaluation, all that, what is that going to mean for the dollar and what is it going to mean for gold in the intermediate and long-term, sir? Yeah, look, the missiles have paused for now, but this is the more interest, at least for me, the more interesting fight and that's the behind-the-scenes currency war. Look, we ended up in a quagmire. This was a very tough situation. We've talked before about the Iranians' asymmetric strategy. They understood their leverage being the Strait of Hormuz and in the short term it gave them leverage over global trade. I don't think Trump had a choice. The US response short-term, the naval blockade, I think was smart because it ultimately removes the leverage the Iranians have and it puts the pressure right back on them and it was done at a good time. Cutting off their oil revenue could trigger, as you rightly point out in the article you're referencing, rightly point out a currency collapse in the country and potentially hyperinflation. We're already seeing early signs that prices in Tehran are just skyrocketing, reportedly up 40% in just a few weeks. As you mentioned, that was already on top of the pressure Treasury Secretary Besant did during the real day valuation last year. So in the short term, I think the strategy is working and it's forced the Iranians back to the table. Their economy was already disastrous. They cannot suffer, I think, more damage there. It's encouraging, though, to see the administration playing them at their own game. This is clear sort of Trump policy and I think it was necessary. The Iranians' leverage over the Strait of Hormuz long-term, though, I don't think really existed. It doesn't benefit the world to create problems there long-term. China and India included in that. Asian economies are very dependent on oil flowing through the Straits. So long-term, I think that was going to get wrapped up. What does that mean for the bigger picture? D-Dollarization. I don't think a huge amount has changed. We were talking about this long before the Iran War. China, for example, had been building alternative payment systems since 2013. That is a completely independent financial network. It is out there and available today. So when countries like Iran or Russia can't or won't use dollars, there's an alternative waiting for them. And that's the pattern that we're seeing. So, yes, I think the U.S. will win this round of economic warfare, but longer term, as you pointed out earlier, every one of these conflict sanctions blockades, they chip away at the same thing, which is global trust in a dollar-based system. What's been interesting over the last few years is to see how effective economic warfare can be. In many ways, it can be more effective than military warfare, but that is both a good and a bad thing. The reason sanctions and tariffs are so effective is because the dollar is still dominant, but that is also what's driving the long-term shift. Listen, if you're on the receiving end, Russia, Iran, or even China, you can't negotiate within the system, so you'll start looking for ways around there. And I think that's what's happening. I don't think anything's really changed longer term. And we're seeing it with the trends, right? Central Bank gold buying is increasing. U.S. dollar holdings broadly are reducing. And I think that trend will even, things like this, just reinforce the idea longer term. David Perdue, and this is an interesting thing, is that Perdue is not a politician. He's a businessman. He came from the consumer market. I think it was Puma and Adidas that he ran out of Hong Kong and had all of Asia, which is a huge responsibility. Trump is also not a politician. He's a businessman. And I think they're looking at, when they look at China and the CCP, they look at it through the eyes of a businessman and how he complete deals. It was interesting this morning, we had E.J. on. And you know he's one of the biggest supporters of Trump's economic program, although he is, and to be blunt, he said, he says, look, I'm really getting afraid given everything we've done, everything we've done to turn around this Biden fiasco. The big, beautiful bill is all starting to click. The longer this drags on, because he's like me, he says, hey, the Trump economic plan soars when you have full spectrum energy dominance and all is $50 a barrel. It soars a lot less when you're at $95 to $105 a barrel, just over time. And so he's very concerned about it. But what I found interesting, he was so concerned as an economist to open up her moves, whether you have a blockade now and then open it up or you go in and start doing safe passage for the ships. He said, look, I don't really, he says, I'm not into geopolitics. I don't understand it. But I'm not that concerned with free navigation. I'm particularly not concerned if the charging a $2 million toll, you know, if the charging a $2 million toll per vessel, and it's paid in Chinese Yuan or crypto. He said, in the overall scheme, I don't have a problem with that. Whereas I think you or I would say that's the worst indicator I've seen in this entire situation, where the CCP is making a statement with their Iranian proxy that they're prepared in the Gulf to challenge the petrodollar. Now, it's not a huge amount of money, but for the Arabs, it's incredibly symbolic. Is it not, sir? It's exactly that. And they're looking at it in terms of that. It's not a huge amount of money, but it is. It's the symbolism. Listen, you know, the petrodollar agreement was built on the idea that we would protect Arab nations. And in return, they would have a place to sell their oil. They'd reinvest dollars back into the U.S. economy. And it was a system that worked very well. But that system is fracturing around us. First of all, we're energy independent today. The biggest buyers of oil from Saudi Arabia are Asian countries. And you can see them now, kowtowing to China and others. But ultimately, like you said, it's precedent, right? We never thought that tomorrow the world would dump U.S. dollars and buy gold or buy Chinese yuan. It's this chipping away at dollar dominance. And every bilateral trade agreement, every toll paid outside of U.S. dollars creates a very dangerous precedent. And I think it's reflecting weakness. And the Arab nations don't want to see that. They're already starting to slowly cozy towards China. These precedents, I think, escalate what is ultimately, I believe, an inevitability longer term. Russ Vote, one of our colleagues here, is going to be, I think it's the House Budget Committee on Thursday. So I want to give the other pressure to the dollar. Because right now, President Trump has put up a guns and let's cut the butter budget. But the Democrats have already said that's DOA. So that budget increases up to 1.5 trillion, the defense budget. There's still some confusion about the 200 billion, or maybe it's a lot lesser amount because this war seems like the kinetic part is winding down, although we still have a blockade and all of our troops are there. But 200 billion for that, it's kind of uncertain where that's going to come from. Although, as I say, everything's going to be paid for. But the Democrats haven't agreed to that. He's going to get lit up like a Christmas tree on Thursday because they're going to be, the Democrats who have never concerned about deficits, debt, interest payments, are going to harp all over these interest payments being as high as they are, and the deficits being as high as they are. Tell me, what does that mean? Because President Trump was going to cut the budget. Unfortunately, he found himself with an economic mess with Biden. Then he found himself with a war. Now you have deficits because if the Democrats don't agree with his spending cuts and they've given every indication they're not even prepared to address it, you're going to have a guns and butter situation with pretty massive, potentially massive deficits. One, do you buy my theory of the case of what's basically happening right now? I think it's pretty obvious. Number two, how is that going to impact the dollar? What do you think that means long term for the physical gold as an investment opportunity? I mean, look, this is political theater. As you said, the Democrats had no interest in curbing spending while they were in office. Now it's their number one priority. Look, regardless Democrat-Republican, it's the trend that's concerning. We are heading massively in the wrong direction. We are spending more, not less. This is all based on the assumption that there's still going to be huge demand for the debt. Longer term, I'm concerned that that demand starts to wane. But I've said for years now, if we cannot get our fiscal house in order, this thing is over. There's no other way. If we're amassing deficits, printing money, servicing, it has only ever gone one way in history. Curbing the spending is going to be the most important thing. I've always believed that if President Trump just took over and rightfully got the election he should have won, his policies would have been much easier to implement. But the damage that was done under the Biden administration in four years made this an almost impossible job. And we're seeing it play out. Even for an administration whose number one focus was getting control of the budget, it's proving an almost impossible task to achieve. Then you get black swan events like Iran Wars and other things that hang over from the Biden administration and it's a disaster. But what I tell people is this, these people cannot get a handle on spending. What chance do we have that anybody else does it? This is the most important fight that we have. Republican, Democrat, I don't care we need to get a handle on this. So the Democrats are going to use this to their political advantage. But anybody who's been watching for a long time understand that is just nonsense. But the reality is we need to curb spending, whether it's Republicans, Democrats, I don't care. But until we get a handle on that, the problem's not going away. And you can see this from Iran. If you had to ask me what was a more imminent threat, their ability over a number of years with fairly high hurdles to get to a nuclear weapon versus the ticking time, so many inside the wire crisis we have and this one's big and it seems like no one can address it because as soon as you start to address it, you get smeared. Right? You don't care about kids, you don't care about, this is one of the reasons that 25 million illegal alien invaders have to go. We can't afford them. They have to go. One of the ways you cut is you cut the social, you cut the social programs, you're going to have to do it. One way to do that is make sure that only people here that are American citizens say, oh, Steve, that's ridiculous. Only American citizens get it. That's not true. You saw it in the situation in Minnesota. It's rife in California. The whole thing's a con and a fraud. And yet, Philip, it shocks me that because we know where the math goes and it's not sustainable. It impacts the purchasing power of the dollar and therefore gold in pattern recognition is one of the reasons that people are trying to get away from, to the degree they can, to the degree they can. And so, you know, the federal banks are buying golden record rates because they continue to look at the budgets here in the United States. And now they see with President Trump having a fairly dramatic increase in defense spending plus the operational tempo of these operations and what they're talking about $200 billion. It's just going to continue on because the Democrats will never give up the social programs and the Republicans aren't tough enough and strong enough to force them because you're going to have to force big government shutdowns to get there. You're going to be locked into this. You're going to be locked into the situation where continue on this unsustainable path every day. In that case, what should people be thinking about, sir? Well, they should definitely be thinking about precious metal, but I want to say something. I don't want to take away social programs. You don't want to take away social programs. We're spending 50% more than we're generating in revenue every single year. It is unsustainable. We need to get that in order and then we can worry about other things. But that is the priority. If this was a household, their line of thinking would be an absolute absurdity. If this was a corporation, we would fire them. It's not how life works and people need to understand that. And until they do, we're going to continue down this path of amassing debt, running deficits, printing money, devaluing the dollar. And we're going to be the ones that suffer. At the end of the day, we're going to have our wealth stolen through inflation and currency devaluation. I'm sorry to get frustrated, but it is frustrating. Painting this idea that we want to take things away from people, it's nonsensical. We're just dealing with the reality of the situation. But my point is simply this. As long as this continues, I think the dollar will continue to lose value longer term. That will drive gold prices up. And I think everybody needs to be thinking, look, if we cannot get a handle on this, I've got to have a hedge in place. And precious metals have been a hedge on currency devaluation for thousands of years, and they will continue to do so for thousands of years. So I would just encourage everybody to get information, read, learn as much as you can, and the solutions will present themselves. Yeah. This is the reason we did End of the Dollar Empire. The last thing I want to bring up, birchgold.com, Promoco Bannon, go there today. You can back order our Magnificent hard copy, or you can get the free seven installments today plus the eighth. You mentioned something I do not want to bury the lead. One of the reasons I thought Scott Besin would be a great secretary of the treasury, and I think at the consensus is he is. So thank you, Mr. Bannon, for taking on Elon Musk who wanted Howard Luttenack. Good God almighty. I think what a disaster that had been great judgment on Elon's part. A man of the world, no doubt. Because, and as you know, I agree with Paul Ryan on almost nothing. But Paul Ryan said something in interview a couple of months ago, and they go, well, look, the spending is unsustainable. How does it come to crisis says, look, I think how it comes to crisis, you have a busted Treasury auction. Scott Besin essentially has to refinance one third, let's say 25% to one third of our federal debt every year. That is now $39 trillion. Scott's out there having auctions all the time. Why do people, he said, well, in countries, other countries can't do that. Why, why can we do it? Because, as I said, there's lots of responsibilities for being the Dollar Empire, for being the prime reserve currency. The British knew this. It's one of the reasons they were shattered, not just militarily and quite frankly socially and spiritually, but they were shattered economically because they had the burden of being the pound being the prime reserve currency to keep it up. They're just, their, their, their grasp was, their reach was bigger than their grasp, right? It just, it was too much for them. Here's the same thing, because right now people still need dollars. That's where they buy our debt. That's where we can have these successful auctions. There's going to come a point in time, Phillip Patrick, you know this, I know this, that the world's going to say you're going to come from one of these Treasury auctions and go, well, you know what, I'm kind of, I'm kind of topped off, right? Maybe I want to dump some of this. Maybe I've got too much. Maybe the Americans can grab mine too quickly. The SWIFT system and this, and this is the complexity of what we're dealing with and the reason we try to talk geopolitics, national security, and capital markets with you. Because you are going to be a big decision maker in this. We just want to make sure you're not whipsault because this, we're going to have a national conversation about this. Regardless of the revenue and the spending, it's going to become quite evident that there is some point in time where the world's just going to say, hey, look guys, we just can't take it. We're just not comfortable continue to buy this at the rates we're buying it. Is that essentially the argument of why people are concerned about when you talk about the Dollar Empire and Bretton Woods and, you know, people need our currency to transact, whether you're doing a drug trade in Thailand or you're helping give a donation to a convent in sub-Saharan Africa, an orphanage in sub-Saharan Africa. You've got to convert it into dollars, sir. And that's why we're able to sell massive amount of, and Scott Besen is able to refinance this annually. Phillip Patrick. Yeah, it absolutely is. And, you know, there's still demand out there. I don't see a busted Treasury auction on the horizon very short term. But what I do see and what we are seeing is higher cost to borrow. And, you know, as we've said many times, this trend, I think, is set to continue. We have over years done significant amounts of damage. And, you know, I have to be honest, it is just less attractive for a foreign central bank to hold dollars today. They need them. They have to transact. But like I said, as the world continues to head in the direction we are chipping away at the dollar's dominance, there will be a time when that's happening. Listen, we're sometimes painted to be sensationalist. But this is the history of currencies, right? The history of currency is devaluation and decimation. The average length one nation ever holds global reserve currency status is 90 years. We're almost there. In the context of history, this lines up. Now look at all the alarm bells ringing. This isn't sensationalist. This is happening slowly, but surely. From the Spanish to the Dutch to the British to the Americans. Phillip Patrick, where do people go? I want them to have full access to you, particularly in times of turbulence. We saw this in the Treasury Department. That's why Scott Besen has been such a godsend. Let's face it. He's been such a safe pair of hands. I couldn't be prouder of the guy. And remember, he was one of the big voices that said, hey, look, if we're going to get real here, let's think about a naval blockade. Let's have a forcing function to flush out the Chinese and see where they stand on this. Phillip, I want people to get access to you. You are a safe pair of hands in times of turbulence. Where do they go? Very simple. Birchgold.com forward slash Bannon, or they can text Bannon to 989989, get access, end of the dollar empire report, guides on how and why to invest in gold under a Trump administration. So again, Birchgold.com forward slash Bannon. Thank you very much, sir. Appreciate you. Thank you, sir. Neil McCabe at the White House. Neil, I want to put, we're going to go to break them and come back and get the whole story from you on the other side. But I want to put people kind of in the West Wing and what you guys do that cover us for Real America's Voice. Upper press and lower plus. You and I were texting. There was a little bit of confusion. Who was going to be in this meeting? Some of the foreign press had some names that might not be correct. We know David Perdue was in there with the president. But you say, hey, I went to lower press to check. Tell the audience, we've got about two minutes here. When you're doing your job during the day, you and Brian Glenn and the other folks we have there on a day to day basis, upper press versus lower press, what does that mean? And why is that important for the audience? Well, upper press is where Caroline Levitt and the comms, the leaders, directors, deputy directors of the comms staff will be. And then lower press is basically your wranglers and your sort of the press secretaries who basically usher you in and usher you out. They're the ones who will say last question. But they're also the ones that you deal with day to day with individual questions about, you know, has that meeting started yet? Is the meeting still going on and whatnot, Steve? Upper press is also you. You're touching base on them all through the day. Upper press used to be, and that is literally right outside the Oval Office secretarial area. So it's feet from the Oval Office and the president having all these high pressure meetings and the cabinet room. If you remember JFK and the Missiles of October, where all the decisions were made there, but you know when President Trump and vice people. And so the press, you had people wandering around in the media, seeing the press team, they've kind of banned that now. Lower press is right side of the Oval Office. You take, you just go downstairs to this lower press and it's where the White House pool used to be. If you remember JFK would every now and again have a swim with whoever. So that is a little bit, but that is now still the polling says, I think as you built over, you got the press room built over it and you've got these cubby holes. And that's where when Neil needs to have an answer, you go down and get a Wrangler and say, Hey, what's going on here? You get the straight answer anyway. We're taking a short commercial break. If you want the ultimate guide, it's very short and to the point, ban it B A N N O N at 98, 98, 98, but make take avail yourself to talking to Phillip Patrick and his team over vertical short break back to the White House and then McCabe in a moment. No more. No more. And that's why I encourage you to consider diversifying your savings with physical gold from Birch Gold Group, but it starts with education. 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So this is another alternative and they give me a 30% off so go check it out today. Allfamilypharmacy.com-Bannon. Also chapter, another free consultation on your Medicare. Nothing could be more mind-numbingly complicated than these Medicare programs. It's actually set up that way. But chapter is a data-driven company that breaks the problem. Just call 845 War Room. Special number just for you. 845 War Room. I think they told me the average savings for a War Room policy member is like $1100. But go check it. It's a free, no obligation consultation. 845 War Room. Do it today. Neil McCabe. The biggest story in the world is the blockade. I think they're saying after early reports trying to mock the Navy and mock Trump and he's off the rails and et cetera, et cetera. I think five ships were kind of notified and five ships turned it back around. So a couple of those had OFAC warnings. This is the official kind of treasury when you're sanctioned and you're not supposed to move kind of the gray fleet. In my understanding that a great ally UAE filled them up in, let's say they were filled up in airports, not in Persian ports. And they're trying to head to the high seas when they got turned around. So I think that's a sense of how it's going as a former military person. Also the vibe in the White House about this as we go into the second day of the blockade, sir. Yeah, the White House is very confident about the way things are going. They feel like they flipped the script. There is some talk that Pakistan wants to reboot negotiations and there hasn't been any final word on that. President did say that he wouldn't be surprised if negotiations started up again. Certainly, Vance said that the Iranians had moved towards the administration in their position. The administration has proposed a 20 year ban on their nuclear program. The Iranians are at five. And so that's basically our gap right now. But as for the blockade, I've seen reports that it was six ships that have been turned around. And that's all been done, you know, bridge to bridge on Channel 16. There's been no boardings. There's been, you know, no hostility, no shots across the bow. Everybody's sort of playing it calm and loose. And that blockade is very effective. And it's especially effective when you consider that the Iranians send out about 2 million barrels of oil a day through the straits. And 90% of that is going to go to China. And the other big customers of that oil is going to be India and to a lesser extent, Indonesia. Not so much for the use of Indonesia, but because Indonesia has tremendous their state oil company, Pertamina, they have tremendous storage and refinery facilities there. And then that oil can be shipped out to other places or then further on to Northeast Asia, Steve. So you bring up interesting, you know, David Zeer was all over it. We just were so jam yesterday, we couldn't cut to it, but David Zeer was at the Pentagon and Zeer, who's got a great nose for news over there. And what's important was saying, hey, look, this Indonesia thing is just not some, you know, because they all have these type of honorary meetings that the heads of the military go. They shake hands. They review some troops, have a cup of coffee and get some photo op. This was not that. They were actually signing an MOU. You should understand if you've got the straight of her MOUs where all the oil and natural gas and the Persian Gulf comes out and you got the gates of fire down there by the Houthis in what the Gulf of Aden, I think, leading into the Red Sea, you have the straight of Malacca, which all of it from any notion, the South China Sea. And before you get to the Persian Gulf and before you get to the Red Sea, you've got that and everything going to China, everything going to East Asia, everything going Japan, Taiwan has to go through Malacca. That borders Indonesia. So this was actually very strategic yesterday. And I think it shows how the team of Rubio and Hexeth and Besant and the president are thinking strategically because all of a sudden we've never really been that close militarily to Indonesia. Although Indonesia from the 60s has a great hatred of the Chinese Communist Party, given what happened in Indonesia when Mao Zedong was trying to flip Indonesia and turn it into a totally Marxist country. How big a deal is this, Neil, this MOU that looks like it could be some sort of potential partnership between Indonesia and the United States? It looks like with your eye on the straight of Malacca, sir. Right. So like, let's just start at the beginning. Post-Saccarna, who of course was one of the leaders of the Third World Movement, post-Saccarna of the institutions inside Indonesia, the Indonesian military has been extremely close to the American military. They may participate in maybe 100, 150 different training exercises with the events with the US military every year. You always have the Indonesian generals and officers who are training here in the US. And so it's a very close relationship. So what Hexeth was doing yesterday was just amping that up. And so there's going to be enhanced cooperation for special operations. There's going to be enhanced training. But most importantly, there was a letter of intent which would grant the United States overflight permission to go over Indonesian territory with our airframes. And that is highly significant because Indonesia is very jealous of its sovereignty, Steve. But they're in the process of basically allowing the United States to overfly their country. And I think that's really the kicker that came out of that meeting yesterday, Steve. Mao Zedong realized, and remember, there's no love lost between the Chinese and the Vietnamese. There was less love lost between Chinese and Indonesians. But Mao realized for his revolution really to get traction, he had to export it to the countries of Southeast Asia down. And Indonesia is one he always had the target, had very bloody, many years of bloody confrontation with the Chinese. So there's no love. That military has no love for the Chinese Communist Party and kind of knows them, I think, as the butchers they are, right? Probably better than anybody. Neil, we're talking about the inside the wire issues. I know that you, particularly when you were there, Ed Martin's wingman worked on a lot of election integrity, particularly when you guys were over when Ed, before the confirmation issue, over as the U.S. attorney in D.C. And also as Ed came back and head of weaponization and DOJ, I think we got a clip. Let's go ahead and play that and we'll bring Neil McCabe in. The election was rigged, the 2020 election was rigged. We found that out. What you just said is just a piece of that. It's a big piece, but minor relatively speaking compared to what they did. They cheated on the election, they cheated on the vote, and they cheated in every way possible. And it's the only way we got an incompetent man to be a president. So Donald Trump can't get past his 2020 election loss now with less than seven months to go until the midterms, if you can believe it. Some of the same people who spread election denial conspiracies in 2020 are currently in place to oversee election security and infrastructure with the power to intervene or interfere. As the director of the nonpartisan campaign legal center tells ProPublica, quote, the election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government, and they are working together toward a shared goal of reshaping elections. As you know, we wanted to really take a deep look at what was happening inside the federal government. A lot of these guardrails they held in 2020. They've really been almost to the breaking point, but Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election, they failed. But in the last year or so, the Trump administration has had a lot of time and a lot of opportunity to try to overhaul the federal system to get ready for the midterms. And we wanted to take a very deep look behind the scenes to see what was happening as they get ready for the midterms. Now, one of those key teams, as you mentioned, is a group of people at the Department of Homeland Security. They've called themselves in the past Team America internally, and some of their members come out of a group called the Election Integrity Network, which is led by a lawyer who tried to help overturn the 2020 election. So is there any kind of effort to try to counter what these Trump appointees that his loyalists are doing within the government? Well, so, you know, the Constitution dictates that states actually, you know, run elections. And one of the things we found as we looked at how the Trump administration was changing things behind the scenes was that a lot of both Republican state officials, as well as Democratic state officials, are really trying to stand up counter efforts by the Trump administration to impose their way of running elections on them. You know, that can be Republican officials refusing to hand over voter rolls, which the Trump administration has sued them for. That can be Democratic state secretaries of states hiring more lawyers to try and fight what they believe is going to be a coming attempt to overturn potential results in the midterms. The Constitution is very clear that states have the responsibility to run their elections. What the federal government is doing, this administration is doing, is tearing apart that infrastructure because they want to influence and intimidate us and to compliance with what they think is the appropriate thing to do. So take us to the voter level of all of this. For Americans who had to the polls in November, what could be different? What could they see there? What worries you after your research and reporting? You know, so one thing that the Trump administration has really tried to do is they released a new executive order at the end of last month, which would have a, which would create sort of a master list of sorts of who could be eligible to vote. You know, there's a lot of worries about, you know, what the Trump administration might do to control about who could, you know, show up at the polls, who would be able to do this. There's talk of ICE agents or other people showing up at the polls. The Trump administration has, you know, said that the election is going to be free and fair. That's what they told us. But as we were looking behind the scenes, we found a lot of things that really broke down the old guardrails that prevented, you know, partisan influence on elections. You know, a really key moment that we found was when the Trump White House hired this lawyer named Kurt Olsen. Now, Kurt Olsen tried to help Trump overturn the 20 election in court and Trump has hired him to reinvestigate the results of that election. Around the end of this year, Kurt Olsen flew down to Georgia ahead of the raid to seize Georgia election materials. And, you know, Olsen met with the special agent in charge, the FBI special agent in charge there and said, you know, I have this report, you know, we've got to, you know, go and try and get these ballots. But the special agent in charge did not, you know, go along with exactly what he wanted and was eventually asked to retire. Now, that's really a key moment, you know, back after Watergate, we established norms, we established rules that tried to prevent the White House from leaning on law enforcement. And, you know, this seems to be a possible instance where that guardrail has broken down and there's really an indication of what might be happening in the future as we get closer to the midterms. This is all the propaganda they put out there. No, they're trying to redo the Constitution. The President of the United States is the Chief Magistrate and Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States government, full stop. Kurt Olsen is in the Executive Branch, he's special assistant to the President on voter integrity. When they talk about, I don't want to bury the lead, the election integrity network and someone, you know, they have many people from that network. That's, they're some of the leaders in voter integrity that have been working for years on this. That's Cleta Mitchell's group. As I said, a lawyer that's, you know, very involved, that's Cleta Mitchell. So they're trying to identify these patriots that have worked on election integrity for many years. Neil, you've seen this up close and personal, both at DOJ with the weaponization, also your coverage of media over since the 2020 election. I keep telling people this is going to be a massive firestorm. Todd Blanche at CPAC, being interviewed by Matt Schlapp, said, hey, I have no problem at all with ICE agents being near polling stations. Why wouldn't you? Illegal aliens can't vote. Of course, the media went melted down on the first day of CPAC. Neil, your thoughts and observations, sir? Well, first of all, Kurt Olsen is a great, great patriot. And it's absolutely crazy to me that an FBI agent would decide on his own that he wasn't going to follow orders. But that tells you how deeply ingrained this sort of election twist of this election stolen or whatever you want to call it. I think that Todd Blanche as the acting attorney general is really sending out signals that he's more open to what you might consider mega agenda items, certainly with the FACE Act report that came out yesterday. And so, you know, it's my experience that when I was inside Maine Justice that members of Todd Blanche's staff, not Todd Blanche himself, but members of his staff were hostile to any idea of reopening 2020 or looking into 2020. There was one attorney there, a retired JAG officer, and he was an elected official who was then working for Maine Justice. And he was told at the end of December that he was going to be transferred to a mailroom somewhere, and he decided to just resign. But that guy was in the midst of signing a contract for forensic examination of that Fulton County ballots. My first reprimand, first of many reprimands at DOJ was when I was working with this man to try to figure out how to get those Fulton County ballots. But I think now there's a sort of a different mood over there at Maine Justice. And I have every confidence that Blanche and his staff and frankly has a lot of new staff. A lot of staff that he had was handed to him by the transition team, and now he's sort of picking his own guys, Steve. I think that's very perceptive. I think there's no doubt, Neil, there's been a sea change. And I'm not saying it was because of this person, but there's definitely a sea change at Maine Justice. And you're right. When I get more time, I'm going to do that and get some of the folks at Danbury I was in prison with because of this fate about these incredible people that pray the rosary in front of these abortion centers. This report that DOJ put out is shocking about how the Biden administration, who's supposed to be a good Catholic, went out of their way, Neil, to torment these people and double their sentences. These men in this prison were absolutely in a place that was a little short of saints. These men were holy men. I mean, they were saints. They had no money, no resources, but the way they carried themselves, the way you could see the spiritual energy coming out of them, how centered their beings were, which is inspirational to everybody. And these people had the longest terms for literally playing the rosaries outrageous. So Maine Justice, I agree with you. I think you're seeing a sea change. One of the things I think you're seeing a sea change, Neil, is on voter integrity and election. What happened in 2020? This is all part of that conspiracy. John Solomon's on this morning. It's got to be dealt with. We're not going to sweep it under the rug and people are demanding more and more, but also going forward, particularly this fall, Neil, as you know, this is going to be a hotly contested. And I don't care if the left likes it or not, we're not going to have another election stolen by illegal alien voters. And if ICE has got to be at the polling place, then ICE is going to be at the polling place. And Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, already said that. Neil, we got to bounce. Where do people go to get your content, particularly overnight? There's a lot happening, particularly with the blockade, everything that's happening with the Chinese Communist Party in this war. Where do folks go? Steve, you can find me on all the socials at reporter McCabe. Have a good night, sir. Neil, thank you so much. Can we put up one more time in Hanover County on everybody, war room posse, even if you're not part of the door knockers, once you're there and to meet these incredible people that have gone door to door with what we call voter contact? In this modern age, there's nothing more powerful. Obama showed you that in the primary against Hillary Clinton when he took her out. Obama showed you that when he won the first time, second time, not so much. He had become already totally corrupted. Not that he wasn't grubbed before, but they did have a massive grassroots ever. You see this from Mondami. The difference in modern politics is voter contact from people who actually believe what they're not going to door for. It's just absolutely, absolutely the most powerful thing. And these folks in Virginia have taken their own time in a very long 45 days because the Democrats always want to stretch it out. And we know, I don't know, 60, 70, 80 million dollars of TV ads every second of television. All the white noise, just to bombard it, but these amazing patriots have stood up. And so this Sunday from four to seven, we want to have a thank you. We're going to have food, lots of good speakers, a lot of camaraderie interaction. Get to know each other and get ready. Take a breath at the end of early voting and get ready for Tuesday game day. When folks have to deliver in the Commonwealth or the 20, 20, 20, 26 midterms could be a very tough uphill struggle. I'm going to leave you with Natasha Owens. We're going to be back in the morning. Actually, it looks like I'm back in DC for a reason. May have a meeting tomorrow. It'll be if that's the case. We don't know. We're trying to figure all out. That will be Natalie and Joe Allen and I'll be back for the afternoon. If I don't have the meeting in the morning, I'll be here. And Harnwell and Joe will be taking over in the afternoon. We'll figure it all out. Just join us in the morning. Worst case, I'll call in from my meeting. Back here at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow morning when you'll be back in the war room. Leave you with Natasha Owens. We need help from the boss. You know, we still need help from the boss. We need help from the boss. 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. Rising premiums, denied claims, fine print. Nobody but a lobbyist understands. Millions of American seniors are paying too much and getting too little. And worst of all, most don't even know it. Hey, that could be you. That's why if you're already on Medicare or will be soon, you need to talk to our friends at chapter. They have a team of advisors trained to serve American seniors, not the insurance companies. 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