THE WAR ROOM WITH STEPHEN K. BANNON (EP. 4439)

THE WAR ROOM WITH STEPHEN K. BANNON, APRIL 25TH, 2025

GUESTS: 
DAVID MALPASS

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of the hour seven h two here in New York,
closing in on the first one hundred days of President
Trump's second tournament office, this morning, Time is out with
an exclusive interview with the commander in chief, where the
President discusses a range of topics, from his administration following
court orders to the future of Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
National political reporter for Time magazine, Ara Cordlessa, writes, asked
if he had requested Bukelly, that's the president of l Salvador,
to return of Brego Garcia over Trump said he hadn't.
I haven't been asked to ask him by my attorneys,
He says, nobody asked me to ask him that question
except you. As for the political outcry over his refusal

(00:38):
to return a man mistakenly sent to a foreign prison
without due process, Trump says he believed it will accrue
to his advantage. Quote, I think this is another men
in women's sports thing for the Democrats. Another part here
that was fascinating has to do with the situation surrounding
tariffs and the idea of the administration trying to work
out deals within this ninety day framework with basically all

(01:02):
the countries of the world. The President and his team
has said they've had one hundred offers to make deals.

Speaker 3 (01:07):
They say they have eighteen proposals.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
In front of them roughly, and then you have a
great line of question here.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Let me read this.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Not one has been announced yet. When are you going
to announce them? The President says, I've made two hundred deals.
Then you ask, you've made two hundred deals? And then
the President says one hundred percent? And then you ask,
I think shrewdly, can you share with whom? And then
the President says, because the deal is a deal that

(01:35):
I choose view it differently. We are a department store
and we set at the price.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
Do you know what's going on here this?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
With this two hundred dealstead have been made?

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I can't say that I do.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
I think there are negotiations underway. President Trump told me
in the conversation that he had spoken with and that
the Chinese were negotiating with the Trump administration. Commerce Secretary
Howard Lutnik and another senior administration official also confirmed that
to me, the Chinese deny it, But you know, I

(02:12):
think what I understood him to be saying was that
he has deals worked out in his mind with all
of these countries and that they he believes that they
will ultimately, you know, basically acquiesce to the terms that
he's laying out because he believes that the economic power
of the United States and access to our markets is

(02:33):
the leverage in order to get them to come to
some sort of deal. I don't know if they're solidified yet.
I don't know if they're already made, but you know,
he says that within the next three to four weeks
he will be announcing everything.

Speaker 6 (02:47):
Any sense of frustration on the part of the president.
He said he was going to end the war in
Ukraine in the day the Glory didn't do that. He said,
He's going to fix the economy just like that. Of course,
the economy hadn't been fixing, and in fact, we may
be in a recession that he seemed to have brought on.
Was there any frustration that he hasn't been able to

(03:09):
deliver on a lot of the things that he promised.

Speaker 5 (03:11):
You know, it's interesting because I asked about the Ukraine thing.
I said, you know, President Trump, you said you would
solve this issue.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
In to day.

Speaker 5 (03:16):
You know what's going on, And you know, he said, oh,
I said that in jest. Eric everybody knew that that
was you know, a symbolic you know, I wasn't really
saying it was I was going to get it done
in a day.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
This has been going on for three years.

Speaker 5 (03:27):
I've only been here in three months, so you know,
I sensed that there was some frustration on his part.
And I also think, you know, he pulled back on
that claim that he'd be able to solve the war
in twenty four hours. And of course he's not wrong
that it's very complicated.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
He's not wrong.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
Now that is a very complicated issue and it's hard
to solve, and he's gotten tractable players, you know, in
a Lotimir Putin. But you know, I do think, you know,
this is a different moment for him than the last time,
you know, I spoke with him, because you know, he
is right now facing all of these problems that you're talking.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Asked if he'd like to be remembered for having expanded
American territory as president himself, Trump says, I wouldn't mind. Again,
I think this might be obvious if you listen to
his territorial you know, aspirations with Greenland, the Panama Panama
Canal and whatnot.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
But still it's pretty remarkable to hear a.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
President's that he wants to expand territory.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's also you know, noteworthy.
We're in the Oval Office, and you know he has
installed many, many more paintings of former presidents and in
gold frames, and there's one of James Polk, who expanded
territory as well. And I think you know, President Trump
has said he wants to, you know, acquire Greenland, he
wants to annex Canada, he wants to seize control the

(04:44):
Panama Canal. And you know, he basically sees himself as
a president who can grow the American Empire, who can
expand territory.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
And he said he certainly wouldn't.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
Mind if that was part of his legacy.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
This is the ani will scream of a dining regime.

Speaker 7 (05:03):
Pray for our enemies because we're going to medieval on
these people.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
You've not got a free shot.

Speaker 7 (05:09):
All these networks lying about the people, the people have
had a belly full of it.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
I know you don't like hearing that.

Speaker 7 (05:16):
I know you tried to do everything in the world
to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
It's going to.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Happen and Where do people like that go to share
the big line mega media.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of
these people had a conscience.

Speaker 7 (05:30):
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
If that answer is to save my country, this country
will be saved.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
War Room, use your host, Stephen k.

Speaker 7 (05:43):
Bas It's Friday, twenty five April and the year of
Our Lord, twenty five.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
We're still here in Kansas City, a Missouri.

Speaker 7 (05:55):
And had a really an amazing time yesterday with the
folks at Hillsdale College, incredible group of public intellectuals, faculty,
other thinkers. Claremont all that, of course, we had Sean
Davis and Chris Colwell on last night UH to join

(06:16):
us before the before the dinner, and I gave a
speech last night to an audience that I think was listening.
We talked about the conversion converging crises. I want to
really promote something this morning. If Grace and Moe would
push it out the cover of Time magazine, if we
could get that up that Time Magazine cover with President Trump,

(06:36):
and it's a hundred it's this one hundred day interview
with Eric Corsella, the National political correspondent for time who
we know pretty well, and he's done an incredible interview.
Now been on A Morning Joe and and CNN. Understand
it's going to do Kitlyn Collins tonight really tough questioning,

(06:56):
a good good question, fair questions, tough questions, and President
Trump's responses are pretty amazing. I wanted to discuss about
President Polk. President Polk, you know, is an amazing uh
president and one of the most effective presidents we've ever had.
Really one of the key figures in our country about

(07:19):
manifest destiny and about the building of the country as
a continental power.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Very controversially ran one term.

Speaker 7 (07:29):
President Trump does have a portrait of him up there
along with Jackson and others and uh, you know, and
of course General Washington.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
It is extraordinary that Eric.

Speaker 7 (07:43):
Picked up on that and discussed with the President that
President's got a real, you know, well thought through strategy here.
People are not paying enough attention. I don't think, including
people at the Pentagon. I might give them their budget
about President Trump's concept of hemispheric defense. This is the
way that gets us away from tree and defense budgets

(08:05):
and being spread out over Hell's half acre, like having
two carrier battlegroups in the Red Sea to keep the
Suez Canal open and to bomb the Hooties back to
the Stone Age where they've been living for a long time,
beating the Egyptian Army, beating the Saudis, essentially beating UAE
that were kind of under contract with the Saudis for years.

(08:28):
Polk had a very different vision of America. President Trump's
got a very different vision for this country. That's where
this hemispheric defense is so big, and you talk about
the convergent crises one and let's go to that again.
Is this stopping the kinetic part of the Third World
War which has already started. President Trump is doing his

(08:50):
best there, his utmost. He's very blunt with this guy
about stopping Ukraine. I think you see the subtext in
there that President Trump is fully aware of the issue
of getting sucked in too much. If you read this
interview and look what President Trump's been saying, he's there
for a time. Look, they're trying to do a big

(09:11):
overall Russian a Russian around Projeman, and that will be
part of it. But you know, putin the other day
unloading on Kiev, Zelenski and others being slow walking the
economic deal, and that's supposed to be done. There's all
kind of talk of a joint press conference, Lensky's going
to do this, Lensky's going to do that. But you

(09:33):
can tell President Trump's patience on this is not unlimited.
And you look at the second part, the deportation of
the ten million illegal alien invaders that came in on
Biden's watch, already jammed up at the essentially at the
Supreme Court, as they said the speech last night, the
constitutional crisis part of this, and this is what they're

(09:55):
trying to do to stop the deportation of the ten million.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
The criminals.

Speaker 7 (09:59):
Obviously, the criminal element in President Trump doing his commander
in chief for our national security is self evident that's
the right thing to do. But that's I don't know,
one hundred thousand, maybe one hundred, a couple hundred dozand
and hey, all of them got to go, all of
them have to go. But they're doing this to jam
us up, to jam the president up, so we never

(10:20):
get to the ten man. We lose our will, Our
focus is just too tough.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
There's too many, you know, there's too many.

Speaker 7 (10:30):
Empathetic videos, sympathetic videos cut by CNN.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
As you try to deport the families.

Speaker 7 (10:37):
What you're going to have to do, right if they're
here illegally, they got to go back, or you're never
going to have the rule of law of this country.
You're never going to really secure the border. President Trump
secured right now. But if President Trump was not around.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
What would happen even if you built the wall.

Speaker 7 (10:52):
So, because it's all about intent and focus, President Trump
has secured the border. I don't know in sixty days,
sixty five, seventy days with Langford and these guys told
us was going to take decades, and they had to
pass all this new legislation, and he had to have
all this new money spent. So the interview is also
one of the things that's very important. In two parts
of the interview President Trump, they talk about the tax

(11:15):
increases and President Trump k new gingridg and Gervin Norcris
is a lot more amenable to it. In this interview,
he kind of says it's the right thing to do.
His only concern. His only concern says, hey, look we're
going to have to do something, and he's favorable to it.
He says, his concern still falls back to the Bush
thing because it hasn't been properly explained. Bush raised taxes

(11:38):
for everybody. This is a massive tax cut for people,
and you got to figure out to pay for it.
But the buried lead that people really haven't picked up on.
He says it in context of Bush losing the election
and how it would hurt President Trump politically on his
own side politically, I thought he was termed out.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Not in his mind.

Speaker 7 (12:01):
His answer on the taxes relates directly, and this is
easy to overcome, very easy to overcome. But it's in
response to his running again in twenty twenty eight. I
don't think it's a random occurrence, because President Trump doesn't
do things randomly. That you launch the merch yesterday of

(12:23):
Trump twenty twenty eight on his official you know, merchandising
store and teas and ball caps and other things other swag.
At the same time, knew that the time interview would
be out would be out, would be out.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
Today, and then that answer.

Speaker 7 (12:41):
Anybody that's been involved in politics at all, it says, Hey,
this guy's thinking through his reelect and seeing if this
would hurt him or help him, just saying Trump twenty eight,
twenty twenty eight is it's happening. It's happening, and you
can tell he's in it. He would never have answered

(13:02):
that question the way he answered about taxes, which makes
me feel good because on the tax side, the math
just doesn't work. If the Pentagon back to President Hemispheric Defense,
the Pentagon and Pete and you guys need to shift
your budget to the hemispheric defense because it's still a
budget that looks at the Eurasian land mass that something

(13:26):
in the United States has to defend.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
I'm not so sure about that. I think that's an
open question.

Speaker 7 (13:33):
Obviously, in the South China Sea and around Korean a
little different, but I'm talking about in the Middle East,
in NATO and in places like Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Complete total new rethink.

Speaker 7 (13:47):
This interview is amazing and we're going to talk more
about it today throughout the day and break it down.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
Want everybody to read it.

Speaker 7 (13:54):
Really in this interview, there's another Matt Gates and a
guy give hat tip to Matt and this is why,
you know, think about what Matt Gates could have been
if he'd stuck it out for a g The whole
Seacot deal the brainchild of Matt Gates.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
That's what a brilliant young man. He is incredible guy.

Speaker 7 (14:17):
You read the Seacot section of this, It's just absolutely
incredible how mad Gates is always a guy thinking down range,
thinking down range, and the Seacat things, Seacot things absolutely
brie him. That would be the prison down at El
Salvador with these terrorist murderers, rapist criminals that President Trump's
clan or chief sent down. Okay, short commercial break, Johnny

(14:38):
Cokinscer takes out. We're absolutely packed today all throughout the
day here in Kansas City at the Hillsdale Conference Leadership Conference.
Very proud of that. And we're going to have someone
who's speaking. David Malpass, who is head of the World
Bank under President Trump's going to join crenemo use your

(15:00):
host Stephen came back.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
Okay, welcome back.

Speaker 7 (15:08):
A little bit of an international ancient. By the way,
David Malpass joins me right here. David Malpass was Undersecretary
of a Treasury of International financed in President trump early
part of the term, and then later became Head of
the World Bank appointed by President Trump. Correct, David Malpas's
old friend, one of the best guys in national finance.
We're gonna get it up here in a minute in
the in the interview by Eric Corsella for Time Magazine

(15:31):
the cover of President Trump's First hundred Days. It's quite
controversial because they get into it about China, and President
Trump says, hey, look, I'm doing all these deals. We
got them stacked up, and we're having and we're engaged
with China. Andrew Ross Sorkin's just been on Squawk saying
the Chinese are saying, hey, there's no talks. We don't
know what this guy's talk about. And he's got to
stop sewing international confusion. When I talk about in the

(15:56):
talk last night about the Chinese, and you know they
they have gained the system on the World Trade Organization
and being the most favored nation. The cyber deal that
in twenty fifteen that Obama cut they never fulfilled in
twenty nineteen or in twenty seventeen, then the whole twenty nineteen,
the Hong Kong situation. Then you guys, you Navarro and

(16:22):
Lightheuser's the tip of the spear, spent two years working
on really a major deal that would solve everything, the
seven Deadly sins for two years and at the end
day in May of twenty nineteen, they just kind of
walked away from it, right, well, neither of fairly.

Speaker 8 (16:38):
Will that's right, And you know, in the campaign in
twenty sixteen this was a major issue. So it was
no surprise when it started in twenty seventeen. It kind
of launched from me at Treasury, working from an urchin
and for Trump, and then as it broadened, then Leithheiser
and Navarro were heavily involved in it became also Wilbur
Rossi commerce. The three to oh one was the section

(17:00):
three oh one trade was the clincher because China negotiated
moment by moment, So this idea of them saying Trump
is sowing confusion is part of their negotiations. They're really
hard negotiators, so it's got to be Trump up against them,
knowing this is exactly how people do it. They say,

(17:20):
you say we're talking because we're trying to get toward
a deal, and they say we're not even talking.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Well, that's a negotiation right there.

Speaker 7 (17:27):
Go back in that time, it wasn't a surprise, particularly
when a King of the campaign. It wasn't just a
southern border for those northern states. It is about the
manufacturing jobs. This has always been part of his not
just populism, but his economic nationalism. It resonated with people
in Pennsylvania and Ohio, in Michigan and Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
You could tell that.

Speaker 7 (17:45):
I tell people, we go these rallies and what would
take me an hour to explain to guys at Goldman
Sachs because they say, no, they were just investing there.
I said, it's a two liner in Akron, Ohio, how
they've shipped all the jobs, and these guys get it immediately.

Speaker 3 (18:01):
We had she come to mar Lago.

Speaker 7 (18:03):
We started those negotiations very very very soon after kind
of you know, a speed bump was hit in June
or twenty seventeen. Then you guys got fully engage in it.
But the Chinese spent two years with you guys, two
years in a very very detailed, comprehensive this would this
would couple the two economies and integrate China with all

(18:26):
kinds of environmental rules and labor rules, and about state
owned industries and the inflationary pricing they sent around because
of excess capacity. And Lihu was the lead negotiator, and
after two years they literally just walked away from it.

Speaker 8 (18:41):
I think that's part of the problem if you go
slow and you're talking about hundreds of pages and then
all of a sudden it's thousands of pages and no
one actually or you know, you question whether they actually
intend to do it. That was actually part of the
NAFTA problem that it started as the idea of benefits
and then all of a sudden became the lawyers and

(19:01):
it became huge. So by nineteen ninety two I had
gone to the White House to say, this has to stop.
We're not getting what we want out of this deal.
There are too many lawyers.

Speaker 9 (19:11):
It was a Tea.

Speaker 8 (19:15):
George Huffy, let's negotiations get really big. And so I
think we have to look at it in a different
way now that the system is broken, and there has
to be a way that people can understand what's being fixed.
You know, I was a Tea partier in twenty ten.
In twenty ten, people across the country knew that there

(19:37):
was a giant problem. Unfortunately, that didn't get the job done.
It wasn't until twenty sixteen, as Trump was coming in
that you could have some light at the end of
the tunnel of what was going to be done. But
even now we're facing people, you know, across the government.
People are trying to have a resistance to the change

(19:58):
that's needed.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
It's still the global.

Speaker 8 (20:00):
Order is dominant. The elites are dominant, and that's what
you're talking about in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, that it
just wasn't working, and China knows what it's doing. It's
delaying and delaying.

Speaker 9 (20:14):
Okay, hang on.

Speaker 7 (20:14):
You're one of the best experts in the world in
international finance, and certainly in the mega movement in the
Trump circles.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
You're in the top handful.

Speaker 7 (20:24):
When I gave this talk at the Summer four World
Economic Summit in DC. Now they're trying to make that
like the Davos of DC had all these international financiers
and we talked about Trump's reordering of the commercial aspects
of a getoff mercantilist systems and let's get back to
at least a fair trade system. And I said, when
people talk to me about this, says also it can happen.

(20:47):
I said, give me the plan we have now is
not sustainable.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Do you agree with that?

Speaker 7 (20:52):
I mean the plan we have of spending seven trillion dollars,
of raising taxes of four and a half or five
of having two trillion dollars a year in deficits. That's
God Besson has to finance that debt's running out of control.
Interest is over almost one point five train dollars. The
raw interest we pay one point four trallin dollars. This
system is not sustainable for US as a business model.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
I agree, absolutely right, and the world sees that.

Speaker 8 (21:16):
Our small businesses across the US know that it's absolutely
not working. The bigger companies get the capital and they
snarf up the innovation, and so there's a lack of
dynamism even in the US. But it's I got to
tell you, it's worse in other parts of the world.
The HOLMS is less dynamism, less dynamism. The IMF just

(21:37):
it is. I'm not an IMF fan, you know. I've
written all about removed the shackles of the IMF from
the poor countries where they run austerity programs. But they
put out their numbers this week. There's this big shind
again Washington. You know, the people from all over the
world coming in to see how much money they can
make from the system. And there's that one.

Speaker 7 (21:57):
Is because we picked up best in Speech Live when
was reading them right act.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Why is that.

Speaker 7 (22:02):
IMF, World Bank kind of joint meeting or whatever. Why
is it so big? It's because it's the annual meetings.
But the money is flowing constantly from it. So best
in trying to stand up in front of a hurricane
of spending and say, hey, we've got to try to
downsize and think about your mission. But what's going on
under the surface across Washington is how do we get

(22:24):
more money.

Speaker 8 (22:25):
Out of taxpayers and out of the system. They want
the appropriations from the US to continue, they want a
new capital increases and above all they're doing credit guarantees
across the board, and so it's in effect nationalizing the
losses of particularly of China. So you know China's len

(22:45):
All this money never takes a loss and it gets
in the end guaranteed by the international system.

Speaker 7 (22:52):
Walkers to that the one belt, one word, the predatory
capitalism kind of what we call the British East India
Company in reverse, all the predatory loans that they're making.
You're telling me that the IMF and World and other
institutions supported by American taxpayers support there basically give them
loan guarantees.

Speaker 8 (23:10):
Yeah, so look what happened in Argentina. Here's this bailout.
The first one paid off is all of China's loans
to Argentina. But that's going on as a system, meaning
in Zambia, China gets the mind plus it gets all
its loans repaid with interest, and so it's been very
profitable for.

Speaker 7 (23:30):
Again, the project itself or the Zambian government can't do it,
so the loan guarantees, essentially US taxpayers doing it correct.

Speaker 8 (23:37):
And now what they're doing is in order to get
China away, they pay them off with loan guarantees and
so that in effect internationalizes or multilateralizes the debt system.
So China looks at the whole world system and says,
this is a great global order. We've got to protect it.

(23:59):
They do that in the G twenty where they're a
dominant player. One thing I'm hoping is that the US
ends the G twenty after next year hosting it.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
You know, oh you want to end I think.

Speaker 9 (24:10):
We should end it.

Speaker 8 (24:11):
It doesn't work because it, like the WTO is the
World Trade Organization, is a consensus process where you're expecting
all you've diluted, fully diluted the US stature and status
by saying we're going to have one vote. Each country
has a vote, and in the G twenty that means

(24:31):
China and.

Speaker 9 (24:32):
Russia and Argentina and.

Speaker 8 (24:34):
South Africa have equal and Brazil have equal votes to
the US, which doesn't work at all as a global system.

Speaker 7 (24:41):
So where do you think we stand now in the
reordering of this so that works for not just the
country America, but America American American citizens. Where do you
think we stay this whole negotiation, the reordering to an
order that works for us.

Speaker 9 (24:56):
Here's the challenge, and you named it.

Speaker 8 (24:59):
The amount of debt and the unsustainability of the US
government spending is really hard to stop.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
So you've got I call it an upheaval.

Speaker 8 (25:07):
And that's what I wrote for Trump in September of
twenty sixteen. I walked that we need to recognize the
positive side of having a full upheaval. That means of
the federal reserve, of the trade system, of course, but
downsizing each part of the US government, whether it's the
education or the housing or the EPA, and its overreach

(25:29):
of regulations. So that's all ongoing bad. As you can see,
the resist movement is so strong.

Speaker 7 (25:38):
I mean the Washington consensus, institutional resist move because they
get the grade. They just the top nineteen families just
created or just got tree and dollars of wealth in
the last like since since the beginning of the year.
So the system works for them. They benefit and they
use litigation.

Speaker 8 (25:55):
And Washington right now today is getting rich on the
fight it's going on to try to downside. Some people say, well,
you can make a lot of money by upsizing, like
all the public money that's going to universities, you make
huge amounts. Washington is the lobbyists that get the appropriation,
but then you make just as much money trying to
resist it on the downside.

Speaker 7 (26:17):
And that's David Mountains from Ahead of the World Bank
and Undersecretary of International Finance in the.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
First Trump term.

Speaker 7 (26:27):
Take your phone out text Bannon b A N N
O N nine eight nine eight nine eight Birch Gold
The Ultimate Guide, totally free, Ultimate Guide to investing in
gold and Precious medals eraon Trump. Remember it's not the
price of gold, it's the process. How wise gold been
ahead for four thousand, five thousand years of main kindser
short commercial break back to Kansas City, Missouri.

Speaker 8 (26:49):
Just.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Embassy.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
They are not having any talks on tariffs and that
the US should stop creating confusion. Now, just a bit
of a reminder. This Time magazine piece came out literally
at six am this morning. It was an interview with
President Trump. That interview, though, took place apparently on Tuesday.
So here we are on Friday. It's been a roller
coaster of a week, and so many different things have

(27:21):
been said, both by the President and his Treasury Secretary
Scott Desson and others. But the one thing that has
been consistent thus far is the China, at least publicly
has said that there have been no talks whatsoever. And
of course there's also the IMF meetings.

Speaker 3 (27:38):
Okay, that's andrew 'sarkin. You know him very well.

Speaker 7 (27:41):
Squakbox. Here's the international incident that's come up. President Trump
gave the Time magazine interview Tuesday.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
It's all over. It came out today this morning, six am.

Speaker 7 (27:51):
He says in there they're having conversations, and I think
he says, she picked up the phone and calling, and
the Chinese are out and you've negotiated. Coming out of
saying there's no talks. We're not talking to Best and
we're not talking to Trump. We're not talking to anybody
in the foreign devils are trying to sow confusion your thoughts.

Speaker 8 (28:11):
Confusion and uncertainty is part of the system. And to
get to an answer, you have to kind of break
the system that we're in, which is that people talk
quietly to each other and get nothing done. And so
Trump's doing it publicly and saying we're going to get
this done with deadlines. And so the question to me is,
if you've got the trading system broken, what can you

(28:32):
get out of it country by country? And I think
that's what's going on on the table right now. They're
supposed to come forward with proposals to get out of
the out of to get back into the US market.

Speaker 9 (28:44):
You've done this before.

Speaker 7 (28:45):
This is tuesdays, the day President Trump gave the interview.
We've referred this a number of times. The Financial Times
from the other day, as you know, have held this up.
Beijing warns of retaliation against nations doing US deals. Part
of the deals are going to have embedded in there
that we're kind of your lead trading partner, and you
know you'll make special accommodations with US, and we'll make

(29:07):
special accommodations with you. Beijing is let know, particularly the
East Asian countries in India, you know, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines,
Vietnam and India. Uh, you know, no bueno, right, So
your thoughts.

Speaker 8 (29:22):
Beijing has lots of influence in countries, you know, ambassadors
that are fully inserted into the countries. The mainstream media
really likes that because they can play up the China
side of it.

Speaker 9 (29:34):
And it's very anti Trump and it's in its nature.

Speaker 8 (29:37):
But what's happening kind of in the in the bureaucracy
of the world is they're trying to Trump proof and
so that goes.

Speaker 3 (29:45):
What do you mean Trump? What do you mean?

Speaker 7 (29:46):
Trump Proof means we see, we see how the Democrats
try to do it.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
We see how they're trying to do it here, how
they try to do it us the world.

Speaker 8 (29:52):
You move the money from where it can be clawed
backed by the US to where it can't be clawed
back by.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
The walk US through that.

Speaker 7 (30:00):
So these guys are wroun when they see Trump coming
to power. It's let's make sure we're beyond Trump's reach
as far as sanctions go, as far as a swift system.

Speaker 8 (30:08):
That's right, And you know, the Biden people know exact
knew exactly how.

Speaker 9 (30:13):
To do that. They've done that in the Obama.

Speaker 8 (30:15):
And it was same people doing the same thing, which
is you set up trust funds, move the money into
the trust fund, and write the governance rules of the
trust fund so that the US can't get the money,
so that Trump can't get the money back. But that's
going on even now. You know who was out did
you see them saying they're downsizing and then you read
the fine print it says from seventy six departments to

(30:35):
thirty four departments. So here you've got this organization in Geneva,
a very high priced part of the week.

Speaker 7 (30:42):
That we've pulled out of and not for done a year,
and the CCP essentially runs.

Speaker 8 (30:47):
But they already took all the US money and so
they've got some in the bank and then they're saying, well,
we're going to downsize and eat buy and China will
step up and keep it going. And so that's going
on in the United Nations and huge problem the you know,
the organizations have spread across the whole world and they're
deeply embedded, and so in order to do the work

(31:10):
to right size, to downsize and make it in the
US national interest is going to going to be really hard.
That's the point I was making, or that we were
just doing, is on trade, the customs line items, and
China's going to play this game. They're going through the

(31:33):
types of products and they match it up with districts
in the US. They advertise that they're chopping off a
given congressman, and then they come back and tell them
exactly what happened to them. Your favorite donors just got screwed,
and so it will be you know, full out battles.

Speaker 3 (31:50):
Micro targeting, economic warfare.

Speaker 8 (31:52):
That's right, and their masters, they've got big data, they
know how to do it, and they went through it
in twenty seventeen. So one problem is they're going to
be even harsher. This is against the background of their
predatory industrial policy. So you know, this is not a
small problem for economics. How do you run a world
when the second biggest economy has a super predatory industrial

(32:16):
policy where their goal is to produce every product and
drive you out of the market through economy of scale.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Let's go through that for a second.

Speaker 7 (32:24):
When you meet predatory industrial policy, because the Germans, some
of the guys that were big talk understand now like
in the midtle was it the middle those middle companies
that were the pride and joy of precision tooling of Germany.
Now the Germans understand what the industrial policy of China
really is.

Speaker 9 (32:39):
That's right now that FT article.

Speaker 8 (32:41):
You know, one big problem is Europe is going to
be divided in terms of whether they want to well
the EU.

Speaker 7 (32:48):
Said last night when I walked in the stage right
for the stage, they put in a statement, they said, hey,
if you want us to be part of this, to
decouple from China, it's not going to happen.

Speaker 8 (32:57):
Remember the weak needs. So I remember one Macron it
was in the same spot in the same newspaper in
twenty nineteen when he'd gone to China thinking he was
going to get a deal, came back said I didn't
really get a deal, so I'm mad at China. It
was a big headline across Europe and then they backed
off completely because they can't. They're not in a position
to decouple. But to your German points, France is not

(33:20):
well and Germany is. You know what they've been doing
because their energy prices are so high, because I mean,
think how many huge mistakes they made. They became dependent
on Soviet on Russian oil, first Soviet oil and then
Russian gas. And they closed their nuclear power plants, so
their energy cost go.

Speaker 7 (33:39):
Sky high, decarbonized as industrial power. They essentially de industrialized
by by buying into the cult of decarbonization.

Speaker 8 (33:47):
And so exactly where did their factories go. They went
to China because they burned coal. They imported from Australia,
burn coal to make the electricity, and they make the
chemicals for the world. It's a market that Germany used
to have, so as German and he looks at it now.
What's happened on intellectual property is China systematically looked at
the smaller businesses that they needed from Germany, the ones

(34:10):
that make machine tools, for example, figured out how they
could copy that in China, take the IP and then
do it in China, and so then they undercut the market.
So Germany is now standing really harmed by this, and
it's going to take work. That's the I think we've
got years of battle to really flatten the to really.

Speaker 9 (34:35):
Make a level playing field.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
Go back to give. And this is what I was
trying to say last night.

Speaker 7 (34:40):
Given the decades that our decision makers have made horrible decisions.
It's narrowed the range of alternatives that we have, and
we don't have any easy alternative. That's what I was
trying to say last night, the converging crises. Here are
multiple crises, and on none of them do we have
easy alternatives. And that's going to lead to a special
group of If your hardened in your tough, you're going

(35:01):
to ability to make our decisions and live by them.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
You'll get through this. If you're not, you're going to
lose the country.

Speaker 8 (35:07):
That's right, But I think that means that we have
to focus on the things that we have to have first,
and so that means decisions by the president on which
industries can be brought back and then which ones can
stockpile and be prepared over the long run to really
get the job done.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
You're saying triage it now. I think it has to be.

Speaker 7 (35:28):
There's been a natural tendency to hate the concept of
industrial policy in the United States, although we do have
industrial policy by our tax structure, right, essentially, are you
saying we have more of an industrial policy that we
have to think strategically about this.

Speaker 9 (35:44):
I think we have to match the world.

Speaker 8 (35:45):
There's a little bit of reflexivity or of reciprocity in
that if they're doing it. But Reagan I worked hard
on this in the Reagan administration. He made the distinction
between industrial policy that would protect fat US corporations and
I'll name two. I'll name one because one still exists.

(36:06):
But Kodak, remember was the biggest lobbyist. Instead of inventing
new cameras, they were lobbying in d C. He said no,
but he took on the Japanese on autos and that
really changed the industry. So there was some decision making,
I mean very important decision making. Same thing in the
defense area.

Speaker 9 (36:24):
You know the name.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
It wasn't US Steelers, No, it was not.

Speaker 8 (36:30):
I don't want to say, what about the defactive lobbying
in DC today for more protection?

Speaker 7 (36:35):
What about what about the defense industry. It's one of
the things I've been all over is that we just can't.
It's it's obscene to me to have the EU come
out and make a statement that they're not they can't
consider decoupling, and their deal is going to reflect that.
At the same time, we have two carrier battle groups
at the mouth of the Red Sea.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
One is for the Hooties and the whole.

Speaker 7 (36:56):
Persian and Arabian and Israeli, but the others that keep
the canal open for trade to Europe.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
And they've got a role navy.

Speaker 7 (37:05):
Forget a French corvette and an Italian destroyan.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
That's all they've given to the effort.

Speaker 9 (37:10):
They you know, really depended on the US.

Speaker 8 (37:13):
Now that we should be very proud of being Americans,
and everybody listening, I hope will be proud of that.
Because the US has a strong economy, a strong military,
and can do the job for itself. We can protect ourselves.
But what we have to do is get changes in Europe.
Obviously they're they're really flabby, and so that's got to

(37:35):
be got to be turned around. On defense, though, we're
in Kansas City right now, I've met a lot of
current military and ex military people and they are so
proud of America, but they no one voices support for
a trillion dollar defense.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
But I'm a vecher to nobody, nobody who realized it.

Speaker 9 (37:55):
Yeah, we're out of control.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
So then that gets to the choices somebody, and these
are paid, These are people that are prey, the hardest
core patriot.

Speaker 8 (38:02):
They want the Defense Department to make choices of do
we need every kind of ship and do we have
to make them? Can't we use shipbuilding industry outside because
we need them fast, we need cheap, but we don't
need all these fanciest missiles. We need to have electronics there.

Speaker 7 (38:20):
What about But the basic point, Look, you were the
treasure International Finance, so this would come under your at
least strategic overview essentially what President Trump is saying in
this hemispheric defense. And the reason one of the reasons
we've got James Polk is the tiny magazine tell us
up on one of the portraits on the wall, is
that from Greenland to the Panama Canal, and obviously Brazil's

(38:41):
gotta be taking care of in Argentina, in Latin America
and South America, but from Panama Canal to Greenland, it's
a naval strategy. You take the vast potentral Pacific, you
do the three island chains, of which Pete went to Hawaii, Guam,
the Philippines in order that's the from the Artic.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
You're going to have to get involved in the Artic,
right because a great power struggle.

Speaker 7 (39:03):
But I think it's one of the reasons Canada could
end up being like Ukraine with China taking a bite
out of their territorial integrity up there. You do that,
you totally reset the military all of a sudden, you're
not worried that much about the Eurasian land mass, and
you have an expeditionary force of marines and army and
navy that could that could, that can go anywhere.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
If you if you have a hotspot. Isn't that the
way you have to have.

Speaker 7 (39:27):
To realign the NDAA has got to be realigned with
the basic new strategy.

Speaker 8 (39:32):
That's right, that's right geopolitically, and that's maybe a brilliant strategy,
and we can think Trump is thinking about it that way.

Speaker 9 (39:40):
But here's the problem.

Speaker 8 (39:41):
The Defense Department right now is I think, still Trump
proofing itself. So they figure out which contracts would be
non canceled.

Speaker 7 (39:50):
And then we're going to keep you around, David Malpaz
dropping truth bombs.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
You're on a Trump proofing.

Speaker 7 (39:57):
I love that thing about moving the money around, right,
Moving the money runs very very very important. I might
ask you about the bricks movement, and one of the
things they're saying is we've used the dollar too much.
Is a weapon, and that's why the Chinese are getting
a hearing by the bricks. Besides the drop in purchasing
power of the dollar, also it's been used as a weapon.

Speaker 3 (40:15):
Short commercial break.

Speaker 7 (40:16):
Birch Gol will go to the So for four years
have been doing this series, The End of the Dollar Empire.
Go to Birch Gold dot com slash bandon the six
free installment Modern monetary theory, the idea that broke the world.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
You got to get up to speed on this.

Speaker 7 (40:29):
Remember, if you understand how money works, if you understand
how capital markets work, you will therefore start to have
a whole new view of politics because.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
It's all about money and power.

Speaker 7 (40:39):
Short commercial break, David moultpass one more episode, one more
slot for him.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Let's be back in a moment.

Speaker 8 (40:49):
For the Lord.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
We will put it God, let's take down. Let's confuse
who Stephen came back. So let's talk. Let's have your
other thoughts.

Speaker 7 (41:09):
I want to get on the table of you know,
the Trump proofing, uh, what the Pentagon is doing to
Trump proof because we're very upset about the tree and dollars,
and you're saying they're already thinking ahead of how they
how they are resistant to the basillas of the Trump
movement omega that you know, it's.

Speaker 8 (41:28):
Hard to get inside each of these agencies been around
the government. What they what they know and they're skilled at,
is the contracts. So if you can lock in the
contract in a way that it can't be undone, then
your your money good. And so in the Defense Department,
one of the problems is the primary contractors are so dominant.

Speaker 9 (41:46):
Uh so they.

Speaker 7 (41:48):
Only five so you got it's like the five families
of the mafia, right, they run the deal.

Speaker 8 (41:53):
You said last night, oligarchs, and so in that way,
they can really crowd out anybody else and if they
can get the contracts to them, then they can protect them.
So it just makes it hard for the changes to
be made. And the amounts of money that we're talking
about are huge. You know, they're they're they're doing they're
doing ten billion dollars twenty billion dollars on individual contracts

(42:17):
and so that they're you know, they're moving as fast
as it can.

Speaker 9 (42:21):
It's you know, in the Senate, think what's going on.

Speaker 8 (42:23):
The resist movement is super strong, which means the time
on the floor in the Senate to get the appointees
in just takes.

Speaker 10 (42:32):
Senate confirmation guys, right, yeah, confirmation, the decision slow have
to come in at the top and make decisions, and
they slow walk them and and shit, Chuck Schumer, is
you know a master at how do you how do
you use up as much time time as possible?

Speaker 8 (42:48):
This is going to be an issue coming back to
the government spending of how do you get enough resizing
of the government. You need recisions, but those are hard
to do because they take floor time. You need executive
branch authority, which Trump is asserting, and I think that's
going to be a realment.

Speaker 9 (43:07):
Impoundment has to be looked at, you.

Speaker 8 (43:09):
Know, if you look at and I was on the
staff at the Center Budget Committee, so I know a
lot about this.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
In nineteen seventy four, Nixon was at his weak spot and.

Speaker 8 (43:19):
The Democrats put through the Budget Impoundment Act of seventy four,
which took away the president's power over spending because they
wanted themselves to be able to spend and get the
campaign contributions. How is it that members come to Washington
with no money and then they go out rich. Well
that it's because they're controlling the and generously providing full

(43:42):
funding for everybody, and so breaking through that is it
really takes executive branch authority.

Speaker 9 (43:47):
Can I say on that, I think we need more
than that.

Speaker 8 (43:50):
The checks and balances are not strong enough in the
Constitution against the size of government. They in their wisdom
in the Founding Fathers, they protected the free speech, they
protected religion, they protected against search, illegal search and seizure
of citizens.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
UH.

Speaker 8 (44:06):
And these were really powerful, but they didn't realize they
needed to protect uh and have a real check and
balance against government getting too big. So we're now in
a spot where Trump will really have to show new
procedures because when he'll be gone someday. Uh. And the

(44:27):
Democrats will come back someday. And their whole idea is
to have everybody work for the government. That's that would
be an ideal. They would say, well, that would give
us a lot of GDP growth because it would be
very stable. And you say, yeah, where's it going to
come from debt? Right, So we've got to get back
to a small business system. We could turn the bricks
if you want. I've said my peace on that. Oh,

(44:49):
and they want to do the FED.

Speaker 7 (44:50):
But hang on, let's do let's let's do a couple
of minutes on bricks. And then we'll do let's do
the FED first.

Speaker 8 (44:56):
What.

Speaker 3 (44:58):
Yeah, we we are big believer an ending the FED.

Speaker 9 (45:01):
What are your thoughts?

Speaker 8 (45:02):
We have a broken system like trade and how many
mistakes can the FED make on inflation deflation? And you
know I've written over and over in the Wall Street
Journal that they never look back and introspect. Why did
we make such a big mistake? Well, it's because they
have stupid models. The models are what's called neo Kinsey,
and that means they have a concept of how people

(45:24):
work and grow. That's playing wrong. That's the core Phillips
curve model. But it's the fascination with CPI, which we
can't even counter. You know, I really don't think you
get right numbers out of CPI, and yet they're using
it to set interest rates. They have this immense power
to buy bonds, any kind of bonds. Even in twenty
twenty three, people don't know. In the heat of the campaign,

(45:47):
as they were trying to Trump proof Washington against against Trump,
they set up thirteen They used. The FED used as
thirteen three authority in March of twenty twenty three to
allow the FED to lend to banks for as if
the collateral as if bonds were at one hundred cents

(46:07):
on the dollar when they were only worth ninety.

Speaker 7 (46:09):
Well, because they were blowing holes in these their own
bonds were blowing holes in the balance sheets. After the
Silicon Valley Bank and other things, the bailouts.

Speaker 8 (46:17):
And don't forget, the FED was the biggest it's the
world's biggest has fun with the world's biggest loss unrealized
on its book. So every year now we are stuck
American taxpayers with realizing two hundred and fifty billion dollars
of losses from the FED.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
But that understates, because underwater.

Speaker 8 (46:35):
Is all their entire their big They have seven trillion
dollars of a bond portfolio that's lost money. And what's worse,
as I say in twenty twenty three, they they allowed
this freebe lending to banks that they were trying to protect.
So now I do want to say the importance of

(46:57):
a central bank anywhere in the world is to protect
the currency of the people, because otherwise devaluations kill people
on the box, you know, really cause in the developing
world it actually causes starvation, poverty. One of the things
I thought at the World Bank was the imass tendency
to have everybody devalue because it protects them and the

(47:20):
elites in the country.

Speaker 9 (47:22):
We've got to stop that.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
We're going to get you back on later and another
time to do to do bricks and other things.

Speaker 7 (47:27):
Been fascinating. How do people get to your writings? And
do you have social media all that?

Speaker 9 (47:31):
Where people go?

Speaker 8 (47:33):
Understated on that David dot Malpass at gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
So you know, no no website to put your writings
up and no social media.

Speaker 9 (47:42):
You know, try to try their confidence.

Speaker 7 (47:45):
You're so old school, David, So one more time, where
do people go? Just Google media, Google and get get
all your and get all your rings. David Malpass, former
Under Secretary of Treasury for International Finance for President Trump
and then head of the World Bank.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Fascinating discussion. We'll get uh, We'll get you back here
for a lot more.

Speaker 7 (48:06):
We're gonna take you out with The Right Stuff, booked
by Tom WOLFA classic, a amazing film, a really amazing film,
but Phil Kaufman underappreciated at the time. Of course we
love it and Academy Award winning music by Bill Conti.

Speaker 3 (48:20):
The Right Stuff will take you out.

Speaker 7 (48:21):
We're gonna be back in two minutes with the second
hour of the morning edition of the war Room Scene
A moment