Gavin is joined by host of the WarRoom podcast, former Trump White House chief strategist and MAGA architect Steve Bannon. IG: @GavinNewsomTikTok: @GavinNewsomSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of this episode?
This is Gavin Newsom. And this is Steve Bannon.
Well, Steve, thanks so much for taking the time to be here. And I want to take this opportunity to sort of go back a little bit and talk about your history, a little bit about your motivations and where you see this country and, for that matter, the world going.
But it's impossible not to note the world that we're living in in relationship to everything happening with the markets, everything happening with tariffs, everything happening with CR and a potential government shift.
Chapter 2: What is Steve Bannon's perspective on tariffs and populism?
Don't be giving tariffs stink eye. I don't want to start off with you giving it stink eye already. I'm a tariff guy.
I appreciate that. And we'll see. We'll see. We'll stress test that.
The purpose I want to do this is I want to convert you to be a tariff guy also. This is part of the process to unwind you from being a globalist, to make you a populist nationalist. It's a long journey. It's a long journey, but I think you'll get there.
This is part of the deprogramming, is it? Appreciate it. And by the way, for the record, I'm going down your rabbit hole right here. I'm not an absolutist as it relates to being against tariffs by any stretch of the imagination.
And I thought it interesting where we what I think Biden tripled tariffs on aluminum and steel, which is getting a lot of attention in this country today as it relates to Canada. And Democrats weren't screaming and yelling about that.
So I mean, Fetterman, look, you've got you. By the way, thanks, Governor, for doing this. I really appreciate it. I wanted to have this conversation for a long time.
Two of the three best economic populists in the Democratic Party, who I think are kind of on an island, one of the best is Ro Khanna, Ro's economic patriotism, which we always kid him as just ripping off Navarre and my economic nationalism. He's an economic populist. So is Fetterman. Fetterman just announced, you know, we're here today during the CR.
Fetterman just announced he would support the CR if it came in. Fetterman's a populist. And then Sherrod Brown. Sherrod Brown, I think, has been an economic populist for a long time. So there are very strong voices in the Democratic Party, I think.
Unfortunately, as a populist, I think they're kind of on an island because it really hasn't been the center of the conversation with the Democratic Party. But I think those three are pretty good as far as populism goes.
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Chapter 3: How does Steve Bannon define populism in today's political climate?
And Steve, I mean, in terms of populism, then it's a good segue. How do you define that then? What's, I mean, is it a principle? Obviously, terror may be a component part, but how do you define populism, particularly in relationship to their reflective lens in terms of them being Democrats?
Well, populism, obviously, Obviously, we believe in subsidiarity. We believe in bringing power back to the grassroots level. Right. We're very anti elitist.
And one of the reasons is we think the elites in this country, you know, the highly educated elites, the political class, the Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, all of it have really forgotten the underlying kind of principles of the country and kind of left working class people regardless of. of their race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference. You pick it, they've kind of forgotten.
And that's why it's such a big push for kind of these populist economic policies to look to put the lens is not just America first, but American citizens first. And it goes with tax policy. It goes with tariffs. It goes with bringing manufacturing jobs back. It's nationalistic in the fact that
Not isolationist, but understanding that we've got to make it right for American citizens and particularly for the greatest resource we've had or ever had, which is the American working man and woman. So it's to push every decision as down low as possible and to get everything back to a grassroots level.
And one of the keys to populism and kind of about the sovereign will is that the use of human agency. that just don't sit there and say, you know, somebody else has got a congressman who's got to do something or a senator's got to do something or a governor's got to do something. You have to use your agency only. And I see this in the Democratic Party now, the people saying, do something.
Do something. I think that's a lesson that we learned after President Trump. And look, you know, we disagree on this, but President Trump won the 2020 election and we were kind of shattered as a movement when he left Washington, D.C. And we had to go back to basics to say, you know, it can't be somebody else do something. You know, we had to do something.
And that's where we went back to really a pure populist movement to go at the grassroots, the precinct strategy and kind of rebuild ourselves from there.
Well, and I appreciate the notion of agency, that we're not bystanders in the world. It's decisions, not conditions, that determine our fate and future. And that fundamental notion of agency, I think, is important more broadly. And I think that goes to some of the issues around victimization.
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Chapter 4: What are Steve Bannon's views on Trump's economic policies?
I was telling some people last night, I said, we didn't know any Republicans. There were just we were Irish, Catholic, working class phone company firemen. You know, a Navy enlisted people. You didn't know any Republicans. They just weren't in your you know, we were in the South also, which is all, you know, machine democratic politics. So you didn't know anybody. You didn't know anybody then.
And so to see what President Trump had to go through and to see how we've actively changed the Republican Party to actually the working class party. in this country.
There was a poll done last spring that showed that we as a Republican Party are the working class party and viewed as such, and that President Trump's the leader of that working class party, and the Democrats have become both not just the Wall Street elitists, but also kind of the credential class with the poor underneath, of which we're now trying to obviously recruit not just the working poor, but actually the poor itself to join our broadening coalition.
I appreciate it. And I want to talk more about that because I think it's interesting, just as one of the points of contrast with you and, frankly, Trump himself right now is on some of the issues of tax policy in relationship to this notion of who are you for.
And you've been pretty critical about the proposed tax, the extension of the existing tax cuts that disproportionately favor the wealthiest. And you are making the point that it should disproportionately focus on the middle class and working class.
You know, Governor, I'm not so sure. Let me get there. So in 17, I was a big advocate of that in the first Trump tax plan of actually raising the rates on the upper bracket and doing actually more to the lower bracket of corporations. And it was not just what I thought was right, but also politically expedient. At that time in the spring of 2017, it was really Bernie Sanders and –
Pocahontas that was going to be the... Senator Warren. Elizabeth Warren is going to be Pocahontas, we call it, going to be the challengers coming from the populist left. And I thought it was very important to nip that in the bud at the time and raise the brackets. Now, I think history shows that they can show you the math that doing all of that actually worked in unison and got us that great
you know, 2019 today and president Trump, I think invest in a pretty upfront that this is the last chance we're going to get at a supply side cut of that $4 trillion. I think the $2.6 trillion of, of joint, you know, 400,000 and below of couples. And I think you add another couple of hundred billion dollars for maybe the pass-throughs to the LLC.
So the entrepreneurs get caught up, but that additional trillion dollars is, Unless it can be shown mathematically, and I think people work on this, that they consume, you know, right now, I think the top three percent consume almost 50 percent of what's going in the country. Unless that you're concerned that that will kick you into a major recession if that went away.
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Chapter 5: How does Steve Bannon critique current tax policies?
It's interesting. I think the Democrats have to make a decision of whether they think it's better to keep it going and keep the resistance they've got in the legislative part, but also in the courts or let Elon Musk, you know, potentially unchain him. With the Doge groups on on who's you know, who's who's a necessary employee versus who's an unnecessary employee.
I think it's the first time because traditionally the Democrats have always been for keeping the government open. I think they put them in a real conjuring. I think this is Johnson's. It's going to be high stakes poker, I think, this afternoon. But people should understand this is a this is a bitter pill to swallow.
for us, because we have argued, this is the whole reason Kevin McCarthy, a guy you know very well from California, we got turfed out his speaker. It was all over. It was the deal he cut with Biden that gave President Biden two years and unlimited, no debt ceiling to spend and run up. And McCarthy then didn't deliver on the single subject appropriations bills and he got turfed out.
So your audience understand, these are huge fights on our side of the football all the time about spending.
So locking in the Biden-era budget, or at least extending it and kicking it out, it's the last thing I expected to see coming from your side of the aisle, or at least the MAGA movement. But also just even you saying something complimentary about Speaker Johnson, you've been pretty critical.
I've been very critical. I think we're I think we're I've been very up until today. I've been very critical about we're in this job because of over promising and underperforming. And I think you got to in leadership. I think now and I think it's a long way from him being out of the woods is that now because you got you got only he's got six months now.
He's got to deliver like a real budget with real cuts because just back for your audience. The Doge effort is waste, fraud, and abuse, okay? They're kind of like shock troops or special forces, and people can either say they're great or whatever. I would like to see a little more definition of what they've actually found, okay? All of us would. A little bit of accountability, transparency.
I agree with you. More transparency. But I think – but that doesn't, to me, get to the meat of it because I think you're going to have to have programmatic cuts. And I've been a big proponent that those programmatic cuts have to start in the Defense Department. I was a naval officer for eight years. My daughter went to West Point. I'm not a dove.
But I think I've been a big critic of the – we're at a trillion dollars now. And that's one of the reasons of this post-war international rules-based order issue. We just can't continue on with NATO. We got to have allies that really pitch in here. But you got to start in the defense department program.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential impacts of tariffs according to Steve Bannon?
No, but what I liked about what I liked about him, he's voting and going home. He's going to put it right on the Democrats about shutting down the government or not. And I think you're going to have a real firestorm in the Senate. And I think a fascinating debate about the direction of the country. And I think we're going to see that. I think we're going to see that coming.
I think you'll see voices like Fetterman and others start to step up and take a much more prominent role in Democratic Party. Because one thing I keep saying all the time, if you'd watch MSNBC and CNN, you never really see the populace on the economic side. You don't see the Roquehannas getting the time. You don't see Fetterman really getting the time.
Sherrod Brown and Sherrod didn't want to do national TV, but you never see really the economic populist ever really get. They kind of roll out Bernie Sanders, who I'm not a fan of, but they don't really ever get to the other guys. I think that's all going to become quite different in the in the days and weeks ahead.
Well, I think, Steve, just listening to those of you that may have some familiarity to you, but never have taken the time to actually listen to you or tune into the War Room.
I mean, the idea that you're even talking about the corporate tax rate and the tax rate for the wealthiest among us and having, I mean, the fact that you're having this, we're having this dialogue about your different approach. I mean, in some ways it's the California tax policy as it relates to more progressive tax policy that favors the working class.
that favors the middle class. We would never take anything from California. I understand.
I'm challenging you on the point.
First off, you're grossly overtaxed in California. We want to cut taxes.
We have moderate income taxes for middle class working folks. It's the top tax rate, which you're arguing for a little higher tax rate, which I appreciate in the corporate tax side. I don't know if it's completely dissimilar. I don't want to get you in trouble. But on the issue of tariffs, I want to go back to that because you're a big... You're a big supporter of tariffs.
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