Video Fact Check Results

Steve Bannon, welcome to The Insider. I'm honored to be part of one of the first ones, I guess, you're doing early on. Absolutely. Last time I tangled with you was the 175th. Indeed, you remember well. In New York City. I think we kicked it off. That's right, but we're not going to tangle this time. One of the things we want to do with this show is that we want to have conversations with people who disagree, who have a different worldview than we do. Know thy enemy. Exactly. But you definitely have a very different worldview. You're a populist nationalist. We're classical liberals, but we really think it's important to understand your worldview better. I want to start by really getting you to paint a picture for me of what the America that you want to create is. You are now partway through the MAGA revolution. Let's assume that you're successful. Just paint a picture for me of what America looks like when you're successful. An America where the little guy, the person that the system is based upon, the working class and middle class in our country, sharing the prosperity. We actually have returned to capitalism, because we don't have capitalism today as much as you guys hawk it. This is corporatism. So we have to break that. We have to give the little guy an opportunity to thrive, since the whole system rests upon him. We're at political war. I say that every day. So what's the end point of a war? The end point is we are in charge. We control the institutions. We control the political process. We actually have reclaimed this country, turned it around, put citizens first, and created an entrepreneurial capitalism paradise for average people in this country to happen to be citizens. And we're not going to back off one inch until we get it. And guess what? We're winning. You use the word war a lot. If you really think there is a risk of civil war and the situation is as bad as you are saying, don't you have a responsibility as someone who sees this and who's a student of history and has seen what has happened in history to calm things down rather than... Not to calm things down at all. To warn people. Do you think if we calm things down, they're going to stop? What planet are you living on? This is my problem with this whole concept of liberal debate. We're in a revolutionary time, both technologically, geopolitically, right? Financially. You're talking... You, in this magazine, you tell me we're heading to financial Armageddon. There's no other way you can read this. Hang on. If you don't warn people about it and say, we must go to the ramparts, because if you're just passive and docile and just flick the channel and watch the National Football League and go to Taylor Swift concerts, it's over. You need to rally people to say, no. You represent, from time immemorial, from every patriot's grave back to the beginning, the basic working man and woman that has always saved this country in moments of crisis, in the revolution, in the civil war, in the Great Depression, World War II. It's always come back to the little guy. This is the fourth turning. The strength of the populist nationalist MAGA movement in this country is we're anti-fragile. We're resilient. You can give us your best shot. You can put us in prison. You can take our credit cards away. You can debank us. You can de-platform us. You can have all the tech stuff and happen. We can't be beaten if we don't quit. And if that takes hot rhetoric, you ain't seen nothing yet because we're now getting into the middle of this fight, and we're never going to kowtow to these people. We're never going to get on our knees to these people. We're never going to apologize. We're never going to say we're sorry. All we care about is victory begets victory begets victory. And we know that we're ascended and they're in decline. So, Steve, when you look at history and you map the lessons of history onto the situation today, the crisis we're in today, is it your belief that the only way through this crisis is through some sort of conflagration, and if so, do you think your role is to accelerate that, to bring it out so that it happens fast and you come out on the other side better and faster? Or is it to stop the crisis? Is it a belief that, actually, you know what? We can work to stop the crisis and actually change is better brought about through evolution rather than revolution? This is what's not evolution. I think that to avoid actual civil conflict, which I think you're seeing right now at the beginning, at the harbinger of it, if you want to stop that, you have to bind together tighter. We, as a populist nationalist movement, as a MAGA movement, we need to do, like, the redistricting fights. We need to get, this is why I was down in Texas, we need to get the House in a situation that is permanently defendable by the MAGA movement, right? So, it's a blocking mechanism. And take that, like I said, you move a maximalist strategy with a sense of urgency and you seize the institutions. And that's what we're doing right now. But, Steve, I don't see how that is a recipe for diffusing this crisis. I think that what happens is when people feel shut out of power and interest groups cannot get representation and cannot get an input into the way that policy is made, that's precisely when you end up with civil war. I disagree. Because there is no alternative. Because I think the mechanism will be that people in the Democratic Party will adjust and change, say, hey, we actually have to start winning elections and we have to have a message that can resonate with many Americans that we can start getting back control of the House of Representatives, we can take the Senate, and most importantly, we can take the presidency. I think you will see a job. I think that you'll force the civil war to be inside of those guys and they'll say, these radicals are saying violence. And we have to seize the institutions. Seize them and then purge them. We seize the institution, purge them, and that's what you've got, guys. It's not the Doge crap. This is serious people like Russ Vought and others that have spent years thinking this whole plan through. We must strike, and we must strike now. I know all the haters hate it, but this is the age of Trump. He's totally redefined politics and power in America. And how did he do that? With no political training. Because he was a populist and he was a nationalist at the very moment that if you didn't have populist nationalism, stopped the managed decline of the country by the elites of the nation. And does he need a third term in order to see that job through? Well, he's going to get a third term. So Trump 28. Trump is going to be president in 28. And people just ought to get accommodated with that. So what about the 22nd Amendment? There's many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is. But there's a plan. And President Trump will be the president in 28. We had longer odds in 16 and longer odds in 24 than we got in 28. And President Trump will be the president of the United States. And the country needs him to be president of the United States. We have to finish what we started. And the way we finish it, do Trump. Trump is a vehicle. I know this will drive you guys crazy, but he's a vehicle of divine providence. He's an instrument. He's very imperfect. He's not churchy, not particularly religious. But he's an instrument of divine will. And you can tell this of how he's pulled this off. We need him for at least one more term, right? And he'll get that in 28. You're not driving me crazy. I'm really trying to understand the coherence of the things you've just told me in the last few minutes. On the one hand, you've said the Constitution is fit for purpose. Secondly, you've said that President Trump needs another term, even though the 22nd Amendment makes pretty clear that he cannot have another term. Why does it make that clear? Because he's on his second term already. At some point in time, we will make sure we go through Zannie and define all those terms. But even if you find a way to undermine the spirit of that amendment, even if you find some way around it, and to those people who can... Can the American people, if the American people, with the mechanisms that we have, put Trump back in office, are the American people tearing up the Constitution? Would that be tearing up the Constitution? Would the American people be going against the spirit of the Constitution, ma'am? I think yes, actually, because I think what you will end up with is a populist justification for a quasi-dictatorship. That's not true at all. That's what it sounds like. A dictatorship? Did you just see the compromises he had to make on the big, beautiful bill? You see the compromises he has to do on everything, on accommodating Zelensky, on what President Trump... President Trump is nothing but a series of negotiations to kind of keep this thing rolling forward, where he's having trade-offs all the time. How can you... Please give me... You've just spent the last 20 minutes telling me we have to smash the other side. There's no room for debate. There's no room for compromise. We must smash them. And now you're telling me this is a negotiation. I mean, that's... No, no, no. I think that's why... It seems to me some kind of tension there. First off, the only way President Trump wins in 2028 and continues to stay in office is by the will of the American people, OK? And the will of the American people is what the Constitution embodies. And so I think we're going to be in good hands there. We need to finish what we started. And President Trump is the instrument, a providential instrument, to finish that, to finish this job. A few minutes ago, you talked about populist nationalists and populist internationalists. Globalists. Globalists. Forgive me. Internationalist, too refined a term. You were something of a populist globalist when you spent a lot of time in Europe building... I'm not a populist globalist at all. It was all national. No. I didn't say... It's not about... It's not about us having engagement. Look, we're a nation in the world. We're not isolationist. I've never said that. I'm a non-interventionist. I don't want to be in the bloodlines in Ukraine. I don't think the country's sure or in the Middle East. It's a sideshow. I'm all for direct engagement with the Chinese Communist Party because we see what they're trying to do. Now, I'd like not to send troops there because there's other ways we can do that without putting people. But no, the European project, because remember, in this very room is where Nigel Farage first talked about Brexit. Before it even became a thing, we had a gathering of the beginning of the Magomov. This is in like in 12, 13, 14. Nigel would come over and we'd host these huge dinners for him. And Nigel would stand up and give these talks about getting Britain's sovereignty back. And we had all the populist little, you know, the Alternative for Deutschland and the Salvini Group, the Northern Alliance and people in Vox. All these different people would come. But because we saw they were all fighting a common fight. So give me a kind of scorecard just going around Italy, France, Germany, Britain of where these parties lie. Will Farage be prime minister? Of course he'll be prime minister. I mean, look, you have you have two parties that are the Tory party's 250 years old or older. If you take Labour and Tories right now, the Reform Party is bigger than both. I think it's 36 percent of those two are at 35 percent. Of course, he's going to be the next prime minister. And if you had a... France is going to be it's going to be front national or front, certainly will be. And I hope it will be Le Pen and not the younger guy. Alternative for Deutschland. If you think I'm enthusiastic about what we've accomplished here, I'm really enthusiastic about what those people have accomplished, because as hard as our fight was, they had state media suppress them. They had all the... because it's much more concentration of power and wealth over there. They had everybody fight them. And look at everywhere from Hungary to Poland to Germany, to Italy, to Vox in Spain, everywhere we're getting momentum. It's not perfect. I told people at the time, you're not going to win everything. It's a process. Just look at the critical path. Look at the event horizon. Keep your heads down. And remember, you're not alone. And you're you're anti-fragile. As long as you don't quit, they will surrender. As long as you just keep pounding. And look at Farage. Look what he's done over his career to do this. I mean, he's saved. He's brought British sovereignty back. And now he's going to be the prime minister one day. Now, Nigel's come our way. Nigel forever would never talk about mass deportations. He's now talking about that. I think we're actually helping drive some of those people to the to the part of the right that you actually need to be to fix the problems. This is the age of Trump and we have to get all the squeeze out of the lemon. This is why 28 is so important. We have to finish what we started because Trump knew in 21 that they were going to try to bankrupt him. They're going to try to destroy his family. They're going to try to put him in jail and they're going to try to assassinate him. I would talk to him about this. He understood that. He has more moral courage than any political person we've had, I believe, since Abraham Lincoln. If you look at Trump over the arc of history, what he's accomplished and what he's been able to to lead us to. I mean, he's equivalent of Moses. I mean, he has led our people back right now to the bank of the promised land to make sure that we're very close to actually re redoing this, re-changing, making the changes that have to be made to save our country and to return America to her greatness, make America great again. So I don't know about you, Ed, but I think I have a I don't agree with a lot of what you've said, but I have a much better understanding of what it is you're trying to do.