Steve Bannon Claims “Huge Victory” After Pleading Guilty In Border Wall Case
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We have special guests with us. Steve Bannon, political strategist, media executive who served as senior counsel and chief White House strategist in Donald Trump's during Donald Trump's first term. He was previously was the executive chairman of Breitbart.

and has been involved in various political campaigns and initiatives, including the controversial We Build the Wall fundraising effort. And in 2022, he was sentenced to four months in prison for defying a subpoena from the House Committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Please welcome to the show, Steve Bannon. Steve, how are you?

Hey, Jimmy, thanks for having me. Good to see you. Thanks so much for coming on. First off, if I was going to ask to borrow a pen, could I borrow a pen from you? Oh, no. It's the special code. I got a code flashing. It's a three-pen show. Well, listen, there's a big news happened yesterday. I wanted to get this out of the way before we get to the rest of it.

uh so you pled guilty yesterday in your in this border wall fraud case to avoid jail time let me just give people a rundown what this was uh there was this thing called we build the wall an online fundraiser for trump's signature this is from abc news by the way let's remember that's the same abc news that just agreed to pay trump 15 million dollars for lying about him okay just so you know uh

The judge imposed the agreed upon sentence of a three year conditional discharge during which time Bannon cannot serve as director of a charity or fundraise for a nonprofit. He is also barred from using data gathered from We Build the Wall donors. Yeah.

We Build the Wall promised 100% of donations would fund a wall along the U.S. southern border, but Bannon redirected money elsewhere. This is what they say. Bannon defrauded donors to the nonprofit by falsely promising that none of the money they donated would be used to pay the salary of We the Build Wall president, Brian Colfidge,

while secretly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to him by laundering it through third-party entities. That's what the prosecutor said. Prosecutor was Elvin Bragg. You know, he does great work. Bannon said after the hearing that he would... Well, let me just ask you about that. So now, they were doing this case in Manhattan, just like they do all the January 6th cases in D.C., so it makes it very hard to get a fair trial. No, no, no, but that's not the story. So here's the story. In...

2018, Nancy Pelosi, remember Nancy Pelosi, they took the House. I was defending President Trump on the campaign trail and said, hey, one of the first things they're going to do is to impeach him if they take the House in 2018. This is in the early days of President Trump's first term. They had the huge blow up in 2018 about shutting down the government. Remember that Christmas President Trump spent at Washington, didn't even go to Mar-a-Lago.

the government shut down and this guy that had no arms and no legs or had one one arm a veteran that's the most wounded i think the most wounded veteran air force veteran in the history of the air force because the old days they couldn't keep guys alive that were just shattered and he's just a tremendous guy he went on fox and said hey let's put together a fund that can uh that can build a wall and to give the money to the government and so he raised about 25 million dollars

And then he came to me later when they had to give it back because they didn't have a – the government just – if the government takes your money, they don't designate you to go build a wall. They just put it into – General funds? Yeah, general funds. So –

He did that. We went back to whatever the platform was. I forget who it was. GoFundMe, I think. And people opted back in. I think they opted in like $22 or $23 million. And then we went about building the wall. And this is one of the things, because I've never really talked about the case. We spent the money building the wall. They spent the money building the wall. The wall, if you ever saw the movie Sicario, that part between Juarez and El Paso, the most dangerous part.

of the border, right up that mountain where the crucifix is, is where the army engineers said a wall could not be built.

Well, we built the wall, built a mile right from the Rio Grande River, the last part where it turns and heads to San Diego, right up there. It's magnificent. And it stopped all the human and sex trafficking. And then later, the guys went down to the Rio Grande River, and they built it right on the Rio Grande, not a mile inland, where illegal aliens can come and touch the earth and claim citizenship or claim asylum, I should say. They built it right there. So, and in fact, they complained against me.

This is why yesterday in court, there's no restitution. The reason it was a huge victory, a huge victory. With Alvin Bragg, in seven years of this, and millions of dollars paid to persecute me, they had one donor for 43 bucks, one donor for 43 bucks. Call the prosecutor's office and ask it. And the witnesses, they had one donor,

For 43 bucks. I had no restitution, no fee, no penalty, no community service, no jail time.

My lawyer has been doing this. The guy I brought in at the end to negotiate the deal has been doing this for 30 years. He says he's never seen a pro high profile case like this, where you did a plate and nothing happened. And here's the reason the system's so rigged in Manhattan. And this is what I warned the president about is you have the source back prosecutor, Alvin Bragg that can impanel grand jury at any time. You have, uh, you have Tish James, the attorney general of, of New York and every transaction goes through there. The reason they said they had, um,

they had jurisdiction over me, is that they said 200 investors or people had put money up. They couldn't get one to testify, one guy for 43 bucks. And they said I'd stayed in hotels in New York. Now remember, they originally tried to indict me in a federal case, or they did indict me. And the reason was, to be brutally frank, and this is how corrupt the Southern District is,

They did it 90 days before the 2020 campaign. I was going to come back in or had been approached by Bernie Marcus and others to step back in at the exact same time I took over the 2016 campaign to come back into the 2020 campaign because Bernie Marcus and some of the biggest donors were very concerned that the 2020 campaign was off track. And I was going around at the time talking about the Mark Elias, how he was going to steal the election with the transition integrity project. They wanted me in there. The Southern District,

With Chris Christie's guy in Burman, these guys totally corrupt, indicted me then. Trump pardoned me because he knew it was bogus.

Then they changed I think the Constitution in the state of New York to make sure they could go after Trump and other Trump people that Trump had pardoned that wouldn't double jeopardy So I've been fighting this now for seven years. It's cost me millions of dollars, but I couldn't be happier and But it shows you I'm actually gonna go down to the wall I think three or four weeks or do the show right from the wall because I Couldn't be proud of everything I've accomplished in my life the naval officer Trump and

Building my businesses my family building this wall is one of the most is one of the proudest things I've ever been associated with it's absolutely an engineering masterpiece The tubes that we did one up the mountain and the other on the Rio Grande I couldn't be prouder of it and it was a time When the government and President Trump was shut down from building any wall at all So I'd love to I'll probably do a big event down there and have everybody come down and see it and so

So what did they get you to if they said that you funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from this 25? No, no. What what what had happened is that I had a arrangement. So I had to deal with them because they didn't have a D.C. office. You know, when you sit there and you get this money, it says, go build a wall.

First off, there's 2,000 miles of border. It's not just simply you just can't go down and build a wall. One, it's finding land and property that is not subject to eminent domain because you're not a government entity. It's not subject to cartels. It's very difficult, time-consuming, inexpensive to go find this. So I was – although I wasn't part of the company, I set up an advisory board. It had people like Eric Prince.

you know, our famous mercenary. I had people like Chris Kobach, who's the attorney general of the state of Kansas. And Chris is one of the immigration experts. I had construction experts. I had all these as an advisory board to the actual thing itself. And we had a contract. My C4 will do these kinds of special projects under a contract. And plus we had other money in the till.

So, and Brian Kolfage was a guy and I paid him, I paid him to do social media for me. He had no arms and legs. And they said, hey, you took some of that money and funnel it. I said, well, hold it, it's my money anyway. The bottom line is I had a choice. And here's the reality. I got these lawyers and they're great. And I said, Steve, look, we don't think, and they don't, I think they don't think they could ever get a conviction to you the first time. It'll be a hung jury.

But they'll refile right away and you'll go back, you'll have another hung jury. And this will be $2 million a roll. Then they'll come back to you again and they'll file again to hit another hung jury. And they said on an acquittal in Manhattan-

You're never, you Steve Bannon, just like Donald Trump are never going to get a jury that's ever going to acquit you because you're always going to have three to six people that just hate your guts. And I looked at Trump's and remember Trump's team went through and they had all the jury selection guys and they went, you know, they picked the jury, took like two or three days and they were sitting there. And I remember talking to some of the teams that had a guy that was like looking at him and he might be MAGA and he was a guy who was going to be the hung juror. And I think it took three and a half hours and he was, he was found guilty on 32 felonies.

And this is the point I made when I walked out of the courtroom yesterday to the Trump team.

to say that, hey, these federal cases that are coming in now to slow down Doge and Elon Musk and Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt and the president, they say it's a constitutional crisis. You're gonna win those. And he won one today in federal court, a big one about the buyouts of the federal employees. You'll win those. And if you don't, you expedite appellate court hearings. And if you lose there, you go on the emergency docket to the Supreme Court. And if you don't piss off Roberts,

And Amy Coney Barrett, you'll win there too. But I said, the politics of the Democratic Party are shattered. The national left wing media is shattered. They're not gonna be able to use the courts and law firm like they did to try to put you in prison. But the beating heart of the problem is New York City. It's the financial capital of the world. If you look at the ship of state or the United States as an economic model, the bridge of that ship is in Washington.

like the home office, the bridge of the ships in Washington, but the engine room where actually transactions take place and where everything crosses is New York city. So it gives Tish James full authority. It gives Alvin Bragg and Alvin Bragg as the DA in Manhattan can impanel a grand jury at any time, indict you for anything, and then tie you up for years and years and years. And Hey, they they're going to claim jurisdiction. And I said, Pam Bondi better be on top of this and ought to be on top of Bragg and Tish James on offense. And, um,

Maybe it's just coincidence. Pam Bondi went into the briefing room today and said they're going after Tish James and Alvin Bragg. Now, they're going after them on sanctuary cities, and they're already suing, I think, civilly. They're going after them on sanctuary cities and put them on notice and said, hey, if you get in the way of law enforcement officers, you're going to be breaking the law. And so she's already put them on notice. But the only apparatus out there right now that can stop President Trump and Elon Musk and what they're doing

It's Tish James, Alvin Bragg, and the source-backed apparatus with these Upper West Side juries and this kind of compliant New York City liberal media. And it's a danger, big danger. So in this article, it says that after the hearing that you called on Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute

uh, New York attorney general Letitia James and investigate Manhattan district attorney, Elvin Bragg, both of whom brought successful cases against Trump. Now, Letitia James, she lied and said she didn't campaign on prosecuting Trump. And of course I showed the video on the show of where she did repeatedly said she was going to prosecute Trump. And so that made it a political prosecution, which a hundred percent was Elvin Bragg. Uh,

Cuomo was on Bill Maher and said that nobody would. This would not have been brought. This is the case that should not have been brought against Donald Trump. He would have never brought it. It should have never been brought. Even Cuomo said that. Right. And so you said Letitia James is an existential threat to the Trump administration. So.

So right now, so you're saying, so you, you, you did ask Pam Bondi to do this and she's already doing it. Well, well, let me say, I didn't ask. And by the way, I, I signed yesterday that the lowest level felony for, for, uh, I think for, um, for, um,

you know, intent to do it, not actually do it, but the intent conspiracy to do it, that conspiracy charge. Okay. And I signed what I signed and I stand by that. But when I had the deal offered of absolutely nothing, no restitution, the reason there's no restitution, they used to have up when she came, Letitia James, because she's never quite great about the facts. She and Bragg accused me of stealing $22 million from hundreds of people in Manhattan.

Right. And that they didn't even the charging document didn't say it didn't say it actually stole a penny was no dollar amount in there because I didn't. But this is how they come at you and how they use the media against you. So I did sign it. But like my lawyer said, he's been doing this a long time. He's never seen a situation where they essentially say it's going to be there. There's going to be impossible to convict you, but they'll grind you. And this is what they do. The feds or the locals, if you're working with Trump.

They come after you. People got to understand, you know, they will bankrupt you. They will put you in bankruptcy. Hey, this thing right here on these trials, and I've already spent millions of dollars, get this point, to do a trial is a million to $2 million a roll. And if you get a hung jury, right, which is the best you're going to get, you're just not going to get acquitted because they pick these juries in the Upper West Side. Look at the Trump. Trump got 32 of these bizarre cases.

You know, the bizarre felonies on top of whatever the misdemeanors were, you know, bizarre, you know, and it took them a couple hours. You just never you're never going to get a fair trial in New York. They've got a perfect system up there. And so I'm warning people, don't think that you're big threats to these federal courts. I think today when the judge ruled on one of the more controversial, which is about the buyouts, he said, hey, look, buyouts look like they're OK, going to proceed. I think all of these federal court cases,

things that they're doing right now, I think that they will all either be overturned at appellate court or even have to go to the Supreme Court, maybe on the impoundment. But I think the threat to Trump is the source-backed apparatus in New York City. And what they're going to claim is, remember, the trading desks of the Treasury Department, the trading desk of the Fed, are the two biggest trading desks

in New York City, bigger than the Salomon Brothers or Goldman Sachs. Every piece of commercial data goes there. Every piece of trade data goes through there, all financing transactions. So they can claim a broad, you know, hey, the stuff's coming through here, particularly some of the stuff Doge is doing, right, on some of the information Doge is getting. So I'm just warning the guys, don't

Don't think that Letitia James and Bragg and this team they've got around them, particularly source-backed, is not thinking about this. They are thinking about this. And they called on Pam Bondi, one, to do the criminal investigation that goes back to Trump's trial case.

and when they had Matthew Colangelo and all these guys from main justice go up there and help them, that should be done. But I also think they got to look into the situation of the current deconstruction of the administrative state and the destruction of the deep state, because I believe that Tish James is going to stick her nose right in the middle of this, and then you're going to have a fight. And remember, when it's in a state court, she controls, not you, she controls. So it's something I think is very concerning.

So Trump picked up the phone. He talked to Putin and the Ukraine war is over. So prepare for it. So the headline is Trump says he spoke with Putin and he will start peace talks on Ukraine immediately. So Kit Klarenberg says prepare for Ukraine to hand over considerably more territory than Russia currently holds and any and all continuing military support to be outsourced to Europe, which is to say none.

It's over. Finally effing over. Wow. So history is being made after a lengthy and highly productive call. President Putin, Trump is taking the lead in brokering a peace of war he says should never have happened if he were president. Both Trump and Putin have agreed to immediate negotiations and Trump is already reaching out to President Zelensky to get it done.

This could mark the beginning of the end for the war. Trump's peace team includes Rocco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.

Here's what Trump actually said. I just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, energy, artificial intelligence, the power of the dollar, and various other subjects. We both reflected on the great history of our nations and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we likewise lost so many. We each talked about the strength of our respective nations and

and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the war with Russia and Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong campaign motto of common sense. We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together very closely, including visiting each other's nations.

We have also agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately, and we will begin by calling President Zelensky of Ukraine to inform him of the conversation, something which I will be doing right now. I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe,

Michael and so all those people to lead the negotiations, which I feel strongly I will be successful. Millions of people have died in the war. That would not have happened if I were president. But it did happen. So it must end. No more lives should be lost. I want to thank President Putin for his time and effort and respect this call and for this release yesterday of Mark Fogel, a wonderful man that I personally greeted last night at the White House. I believe this effort will lead to a successful conclusion, hopefully soon.

So, as a show of good faith, Russia released that teacher that they've been holding since 2021. And here's from Zero Head, Zelensky offers a land swap with Putin to end the war. What? Hey, well, it's up to Ukraine, right, how it ends. That's what all the neocons said. Yeah. Ukraine wants to swap that land.

So Zelensky said in comments published Tuesday that he's ready to swap territory with Russia as part of a deal to end the war. He described that if President Trump gets the warring sides to the negotiating table, we will swap one territory for another.

When asked in the Guardian interview precisely which territories Kiev would demand back, Zelensky responded, I don't know. We will see. But all of our territories are important. There's no... And September 2022, Russia declared the annexation of four eastern Ukrainian territories, Donetsk, Kyrgyzstan, Luhansk, and Zaporozhye. I don't know how to say that. What?

Wow. So they're going to end up with less than they started with. Yep. They could have had a population ground up in it. They could have had a much better deal in, I think, March or April of 2022 when the war resounding loss for NATO. And obviously it's worthless.

In some of these areas, frontline war zones are still being fought, but the consensus that Russia forces will soon conquer them fully as the Ukrainian army has been in slow but steady retreat. Moscow considers to fork territories to now be part of the Russian Federation, and they have been key to Putin's war aims, giving also that they are largely Russian-speaking from the start. Putin has stressed he will never give them up. Ukraine's cross-border offensive into Kursk, which sounds like when Popeye

It's like when he, oh boy, I wish I would curse. I'd curse, but there's a lady. I'd curse, but there's a lady here. To force the Kremlin to divide its forces in order to defend its land, but by and large, that didn't happen. Or in other words, Putin has not taken the bait. Instead, there have been long... So it's all over. It's all over. It's all over.

Zelensky makes similar statements in order to hide the true scale of disaster for the armed forces in this direction. While somewhat of an embarrassing blow for Moscow in the beginning, even in curse, events in curse have not caused the Kremlin leadership to panic. Instead, officials have constantly downplayed a strategic importance in a bigger context of the war. For this reason, Moscow is shrugging off Zelensky's offer of a territory swap, which means Kiev, the

doesn't have the leverage it thought it had in taking dozens of cursed towns and villages, which has been long evacuated of the Russian population at this point anyway. So we're going to take all their minerals. So Lindsey Graham will be sated.

And Russia is not giving them any land. So they're going to end up in the worst. Is Zelensky at least going to rehab? Is that at least going to happen? So this is the monumental shift. The U.S. finally renounces NATO membership for Ukraine after 17 years of trying. There is no, this is no cause for celebration. It's a tragic reality. Had this position been taken in 2021, instead of doubling down on NATO expansion, the war and its hundreds of thousands of casualties, over a million, would have undoubtedly been avoided.

And we know the U.S. could have taken this position then because they're doing it now. This intolerable cost of hubris by the Biden administration and by Antony Blinken and all the neocons in Biden's administration, which, of course, no one will pay a price for except all the people dead in Ukraine. Here's what he said. The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.

Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission, and they should not be covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee,

There will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine. So that's it. And you know what? As Aaron Maté says, hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive had Biden been willing to say this three years ago. Instead, Biden refused, fueled a proxy war, presided over Ukraine's decimation, and then turned around and said the Ukraine isn't ready to join NATO anyway.

We covered that before. We had the tape of Zelensky saying we want to join in on this. No, you can't. No, you can't. Act like you're going to, but you're not going to be allowed to. It was all a bait and switch with one goal only to use Ukraine to bleed Russia. Whoever went along with this epic disaster, and that sadly includes progressive lawmakers and media, should ask themselves, was it worth it? No, it wasn't. And so here's Trump. So it's over.

So it's all over. Donald Trump is going to is seems to be fulfilling the promises made, promises kept. He's going to end the Ukraine war. He's ending it. Could have happened three years ago or should have never would have never happened if he was president.

Yeah, don't settle for just this because this is just how it should have been. Yeah. Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show is you become a premium member. We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week and it's a great way to help support the show. You can do it by going to JimmyDoreComedy.com, clicking on Join Premium.

It's the most affordable premium program in the business, and it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards. Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member, and if you haven't, you're missing out. We give you lots of bonus content. Thanks for your support. We have a special guest. Shama Sawant is with us back on the show. She's a socialist politician, economist. She served at the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024.

She was the first and only member of the Socialist Alternative Party to date to be elected to public office on Saturday, February 22nd. This is why I'm having her on so she can talk about this. She and her organization on February 22nd, her organization called Workers Strike Back.

Workers Stripe Back, they're going to have a organizing conference in Seattle that will also feature Chris Hedges and Jill Stein. So that's on February 22nd. Welcome back to the show, Shama Sawant. Thank you for having me. Hey, so can you give us an update? I know your mother's ill in India and they wouldn't give you a visa. Could you tell us what's going on with that?

Yes, as some of your viewers might know, India's government is headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP. They are a right-wing reactionary Hindu fundamentalist regime. And there's been wide-scale repression of

protest movements of people who are critical of the regime. And one of the mechanisms that they're using to attack their critics in terms of political retaliation is to either deny visas to visit India or to revoke longstanding visas or revoke residency status. And that's what they're doing against me.

And it's obvious why they're doing this because my office, when I was on the city council, my office passed a resolution that was the first ever resolution condemning some really horrendous so-called citizenship laws that Modi had passed at the time. This was in 2020. These were anti-Muslim, anti-poor citizenship laws. And then in 2023, my office, alongside a movement here,

passed a historic ban on caste-based discrimination, which is widespread in the United States among, you know, in the Indian community, in the tech sector especially. And so all of this has angered the Modi regime and they're engaging in political retaliation. I mean, a consulate official actually told me that they have a reject list. In other words, he admitted that there is a blacklist that the Modi administration maintains and that I'm on that blacklist.

So and that's it. So you don't have any avenues to try to get this fixed. But if you look at what's happening to others as well, for example, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented at least 100 people that they know of. I think it's many more than that who have been either denied visas or have had their residency or other visa longstanding visa status removed.

And so I think when you have a situation as you do in India right now, where much of the state institutions, the media, all the powerful people, I mean, you know, the Modi administration represents the billionaire class, just like Trump and Biden represent the billionaire class. And so when you have all these powerful entities in lockstep with this reactionary regime, that regime gets emboldened to,

continue attacking in this draconian manner. So our only hope, it's not just about me, it's others as well who are being retaliated against. I think we should, our only option is to get organized in a working class movement and ultimately it has to be an international working class movement. And you know, we should

A small example, small but important example of it, I don't know how many of your viewers have seen. When we went to the consulate last, my husband and I, we engaged in civil disobedience alongside other of our fellow workers, strike back activists, peaceful civil disobedience. We're going to need that type of mass civil disobedience. We're going to need that on a mass scale. We need mass protest movements and mass strike actions. I like that flyer there, fight the rich and their two parties.

And the wars, that's important. Medicare for all. I'm a big backer of Medicare for all. Stop mass deportations. Tax Amazon. And is Amazon not taxed?

Amazon is taxed thanks to our fighting strategy. Actually, last year alone, the Amazon tax that we won in 2020, last year alone, it raised $450 million by taxing Amazon and other big corporations. But the reason we say tax Amazon there is, first of all, in Seattle, that's not enough. We are going to need far more because the crisis is so acute. But also, this is a call to action for a

nationally for working class people. So the organizing conference that we are hosting is going to be in Seattle, but the organizing conference is for working people nationwide to get organized. And I should say, you know, the reason we're doing this and the reason it is left to workers strike back, it's a small organization, but it's a very...

important organization. And I would say it's historic work because it is happening in the absence of any fighting strategy or any strategy whatsoever being presented by the labor leadership, by any of these mass NGO organizations, let alone by the Democratic Party. And, you know, in fact, that's why we say fight the rich and their two parties, because I think it is really, really important

important for working people to understand you could not have illusions in Biden and you cannot have illusions in Trump. In reality, both these parties, including Trump, despite his idiosyncrasies, represent the billionaire class. And we

have to unite. And that's part of the call to action that we're doing in this organizing conference as part of our message is that we don't care whether you voted for Harris or you voted for Jill Stein or you voted for Trump or you didn't vote at all. I mean, tens of millions of people didn't vote at all, which is completely understandable. But what we want is principled

unity on the basis of understanding that regardless of whom you voted for, if you understand that neither of these parties represents us and that we need an independent fighting alternative, then this conference is for you. One of the calls to action we're making is that, you know, we need to build mass movements, mass strike actions, mass civil disobedience, all of that. Also, you know, part of that has to be a

a call to build a new party for working people because both these existing parties are parties of capitalism and we cannot put our faith in either of them. So, you know, I did a story a couple of weeks ago where the head of the dock work is doing the port deal that was just...

Reached between the owners and the union, and it's a great deal for the port. They credit Trump. They say that he sided with the workers and he.

Threatened the port owners and they put a big their front page of their Web site was thanking Donald Trump, saying that he was the best friend that their union had ever had. Are you aware of that story? And is that just like a one off or what do you think happened there?

Yes, I have heard about that, of course. And you know, what happened there is that it's very important. I mean, there's all kinds of lessons there. The first point, of course, is that dock workers have enormous

enormous leverage because they are workers who work in what I would call strategic choke points of the economy. So in other words, if dock workers, just like Amazon workers or UPS workers, if they went on a massive strike action, that would help shut down the entire economy, it would shut down the profit machine of the capitalist class. And they had that kind of leverage. And I think the port...

the longshore union leaders, they used that leverage in a limited fashion. And in that sense, that pressure was primarily just in terms of timing was on the Biden administration and that they had already won some leverage on that basis.

And the writing was on the wall that they were going to win some crucial gains on that basis. And in reality, I would say that it wasn't so much Trump doing it. It's more that the workers had built in leverage and they exercised that leverage. Although in my view, they should have gone much farther. They should have actually gone on a strike action.

And then fundamentally, I will say I don't agree with any of the labor leaders who now are paying respect to Trump, saying that Trump is different than Biden. In reality, he is not. I don't agree with Sean O'Brien, the president of the Teamsters, who is going even, you know, going closer and closer to Donald Trump. I think that would be a historic and

an absolutely disastrous mistake for the labor movement to put any faith in Trump and the Republican Party anymore than it would be sensible to put our faith in the Democratic Party, because ultimately they are going to stab us in the back. We saw what happened in the Reagan era as well. The air traffic controllers, you know, Patco, the union at that time, they were justifiably angry at Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter always

also sold out union workers. And, you know, we saw the famous sellout of the truck workers at that time. And so they were justifiably angry at Carter and the Democrats, and they decided to put their eggs in the Reagan basket. Reagan made all kinds of empty promises. And what happened? One of the first actions that Reagan did was this brutal

brutal, absolutely brutal attack on the air traffic controllers. He broke the back of that union and there was not an attack on just that union. That was Reagan and the whole capitalist, you know, neoliberalism at the time giving, sending a message to the international labor movement. And Thatcher was doing the same thing across the Atlantic that

we are going to go under massive attack on you. And it was like a declaration of war. And so I think it is important for us to take these historic lessons and understand that neither of these parties stand on our side. Trump does not. Trump is happy to take

easy rhetorical gains by taking shots at Biden, which, you know, oftentimes that will be based on the truth because Biden is no friend of working people either. He broke the railroad workers strike. Unfortunately, Bernie Sanders, AOC, all of these people have sold us out. So my point is not that Democrats are better. My point is that neither of these parties is going to represent us ever. And so it is it is a fool's errand to put our faith in any of them. So

You know, you talk about that the port workers had all this leverage, but didn't the railroad workers also had this, if not more, certainly equal leverage? Because, you know, the railroad system is the glue that helps, that makes capitalism run in this country. And so why do you think they couldn't?

Is it just because the Biden administration was so against them? And of course, you know, the whole Democratic Party voted to just try to break that union, break that strike. Is that what happened? So why was it so favorable for the port workers and the railroad workers just got crushed?

I think it was a difference in strategy and even though I might have disagreements with the port workers leadership, there was a significant difference in strategy and it was really ultimately the strategy that the Railroad Workers Union leaders used was completely disastrous. I mean it sold the workers down the river and what they did was

allow basically the union leaders by refusing to go on strike, by using legalistic arguments that, oh, we are, you know, under law, we are prohibited and so on and so forth. They refused to go on strike. And because of that, they gave a serious opening to Biden and the Democrats to sell them out. And also what happened at that time, and this is something that

Unfortunately, I was one of the few public figures who called this out that AOC and

And Pramila Jayapal and all these so-called progressive Democrats, including the squad members, they gave the Biden administration cover to break the railroad workers strike by doing this. I mean, it's too long of a story to go into it, but, you know, the sort of the slight of hand mechanism that they used in Congress in order to sell out the railroad workers. So, yes, Biden broke

and is violently anti-labor. The Democratic Party is anti-labor, but unfortunately, so is Trump. Trump didn't do anything for the longshore workers, the longshore workers themselves. I mean, the leadership had a slightly better strategy, so we should credit them, not Trump. I mean, look at Trump's record. In his first term, Trump's tax cuts, they hurt working people dramatically. I mean, 98% of those tax benefits were for

for big business and the rich and the vast majority of working people were hurt. They did not gain

And so corporate tax cuts, whether they're from Republicans or Democrats, will always hurt working people. Trump does not support Medicare for all. He does not support a $15 minimum wage, much less the $25 an hour minimum wage that workers strike back is fighting for. But neither do the Democrats. I mean, Biden betrayed his promises on $15 an hour, canceling student debt.

and a public health care option. I mean, one of the things, just to explain, you know, the relationship of all of this analysis with the conference we are organizing is that one of the proposals that I want to bring forward to this conference, obviously there'll be discussion and debate there, but I think that

the moment is ripe for us to carry out ballot initiative battles on Medicare for all. So in fact, concretely, we are looking into, Workers Strike Back and I and my organization, Revolutionary Workers, we are looking into the possibility of carrying out a ballot initiative option in a city level or a state level on Medicare for all. The point being that we cannot hold our breath for either the Democrats or the Republicans to pass

anything like this. In fact, we can, it is guaranteed, it is absolutely guaranteed that both of them will be completely opposed to anything close to Medicare for all. I mean, who have been the gatekeepers against any kind of serious public option, let alone single-payer health care? It's been the Democrats and the Republicans both. So I think we have to be very clear about that. Oh, no doubt. You're completely correct about that. I mean,

I mean, we were both on the same side of forced to vote, and that was a big eye-opener for a lot of people. A lot of people turned on me over that, and people like the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA, which is a completely co-opted organization by the deep state, and they're there just to serve as an arm of the Democratic Party. So what would you say if a worker who voted for Trump...

You know, was interested in the organization. And then they see because this was this was from Reuters. They say that the the ILA leaders, which is the Port Workers Union, Harold and Dennis Daggett, they called Trump a hero to the union and gave him full credit for the resolution of their talks. So.

I'll say this. Yeah, I mean, I'll say this. I'm glad you're asking this question because it helps clarify, you know, Jimmy. The thing is, I don't trust a labor leader praising Trump any more than I trust a labor leader praising Biden or Harris or the Democrats. You know, so it is an equal opportunity liar kind of situation. They are both lying. They are both misleading the working class. And we have to condemn both those things. So in other words, my opinion,

My criticism, and I don't hold back, as you know, my criticism of Sean O'Brien for cozying up to Trump is transgressive.

trenchant, but just as trenchant is my critique of Sean Fain cheerleading Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention, shamefully, and then now turning around and publishing an op-ed in the Washington Post saying, I am ready to work for Trump, work with Trump. These are both, these ideas that are peddled by these labor leaders, they are both snake oil salesmen. They

and we have to reject both because both of them are going to sell us down the river. I mean, union leaders declaring Democrats to be heroes and union leaders declaring Trump to be heroes, they are both being dishonest. When working people do win victories, it is because the rank and file

end up fighting back because they are angry. And so, you know, in terms of Trump voters, I know a lot of people watching this might have voted for Trump or might have been tempted to vote for Trump or maybe didn't vote at all. That's why we're saying that it doesn't matter to us whom you voted for, because that was a very limited option kind of scenario. And a lot of people were unfortunately tempted by a

looking at Trump as a real alternative. I mean, he, in my view, is a con man. You know, he presented himself as a friend of working people. But in reality, if you look at what his policies are, they are all anti-worker. So I would urge everybody who wants to fight for Medicare for all, who

wants to fight for a $25 an hour minimum wage, who wants to see an end to the genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, and wants to end U.S. military funding for all these wars, including in Ukraine, then you should join us. Even if you're not in Seattle, you can watch the organizing conference on Livestream, and I would urge people to join Workers' Strike Back. So

Trump proposed. So I'm just trying to think of how your organization, which is a much needed organization for workers to come together.

How it could reach out to because the parties have flipped. Right. So the Democratic Party got more big money, got more dark money. And the more wealthier people as a percentage voted for Democrats then vote. So more workers and blue collar people actually voted for Trump. And I think a lot of that is because they don't have anywhere else to go. And so.

But Trump did like his proposal to take the tax off of tipped wages, which I thought was politically a brilliant stroke. You would support that, correct? Absolutely. Any any relief for tipped workers or workers as a whole is to be welcomed. But here's what I would want.

I don't see Trump delivering on anything like that. As you said, it was a ploy. It was an election ploy, just like Biden promised he's going to pass $15 an hour. So I think we have to be able to see these election year ploys by both Republicans and Democrats. We should not...

I'm serious. We should not fall for this idea that Trump is somehow fundamentally different than the Democrats. He is not. He is different than them in the sense that he is not a predictable and sort of, you know, going in line always kind of stooge of the capitalist class. He does his own thing sometimes. But ultimately, he's a billionaire himself. Look at whom he is surrounded by, Jimmy. He's surrounded by the richest man in the world and other billionaires. You've

seen all these supposedly democratic-leaning billionaires like Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg and others all go over to Trump. So he's surrounded by billionaires as much as Biden was surrounded by billionaires. And if four years from now a Democrat is elected, they will still be surrounded by billionaires. You just saw Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of

the Democrats in the House go to Silicon Valley saying he wants to quote unquote mend fences with the billionaire class. When was the last time the Democrats or the Republicans ever came to working people and poor people saying we want to mend fences with you? At the end of the day, we have to rely on independent organizing, meaning independent of both these parties. We have to base ourselves on what we can organize.

And I want to be clear, we have to have illusions in neither party. I mean, just to give you a clear idea, those of your viewers who may not know about our work on the city council between 2014 and 2023,

We won the $15 an hour minimum wage. We were the first major city to win that. And that wage is now $20.70, 76 cents starting January. So it's the highest minimum wage in the nation. We won the Amazon tax, as we talked about. We won a whole host of renters' rights. What did the Democrats do? I don't talk about Republicans in Seattle because they're not really a big force. It's the Democratic Party that...

that runs the political show here, so they represent big business. So at every step of the way, I would not have won any of these victories alongside working people had I not used my office as a vehicle to build those movements.

And you have seen Bernie Sanders, AOC, none of these people willing to use. They are much more prominent office. I mean, they have congressional and senatorial offices. They could do what I did a hundred times over, but they are not going to because ultimately they are part of a party that represents the interests of the capitalist class. And right now, you know what the Democrats did last year in Seattle?

They tried to undermine by legislation. They didn't succeed because we defeated them. Workers Strike Back defeated them. But they tried to undermine our $15 an hour minimum wage. And had they succeeded, they would have ensured that tens of thousands of workers would have lost, you know, the $20.76, the full minimum wage increase. We defeated them. We said any Democrat voting for this, we're going to, you know, they deserve to be brought down. So that's the kind

of fighting strategy we need. But my point is that you need that fighting strategy against both the Democrats and Republicans. We cannot afford to have illusions in either. And, you know, we should ask questions. Those of you who voted for Trump, you should ask questions to yourself. If Trump is pro-worker, why is he preparing to attack Medicare and Medicaid? If he is pro-working class families, why is he going after in a draconian way

funding for education by going after the Department of Public Education, why is he going after the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau by saying that this is the deep state, this is government? So, I mean, I am a socialist. I want to overthrow capitalism. I am not peddling any kind of faith in any kind of federal institution in any way whatsoever. But if you look at what he's attacking, he's attacking the media.

meager protections that working people have. I mean, working people should understand what did the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau do in

2022, they went after Wells Fargo. In 2023, they went after Bank of America. In 2024, they went after Apple and Goldman Sachs. And these were just fines. I mean, they were fines to the tune of hundreds of millions or in some cases, billions of dollars. So it was hardly what we need. But the

point is that these are meager protections for working people against these big banks. These are Wall Street billionaires. These are rapacious, plundering entities that target ordinary people, poor people, working class people, elderly people on junk fees and denying them the rewards they have earned on credit cards. I mean, they go after

really the little people in such shameful ways and they make hundreds of billions of dollars for themselves. So we have to be very clear who they are. So yes, I've talked about that a little. I'm going to talk about it more. I think everybody...

Most people I know, anyway, support the defunding of USAID because that's just the CIA and that's about overthrowing governments and things. But then they shoehorn in the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and that's actually a good thing. Like what you've just been describing, that they actually fight back against the big banks and they fight for the little guy. And so Elon and Trump are conflating those two things.

And so I think that's a, you know, I'm going to do my best to try to make people realize that those aren't the same thing as they're trying to conflate that. But the weird thing was for me was that. Sure. Go ahead. To clarify. You may not agree with me, but yes, I mean, we should clarify those things. But even in the case of U.S. aid.

in my view, the reality of what they are doing, I mean, these are nefarious people, Donald Trump, Elon Musk. I mean, these are arch enemies of any decent idea of what society should be for working people. So as far as USAID is concerned, yes, of course, USAID has been peddling sort of what they call regime change, basically CIA operations against workers

working class or other left revolutions. We know what they did supporting the Saudi regime, Saudi Arabia regime against people in Yemen. That is all true. And I should mention the hateful Samantha Power. You know, she has been under Obama. Of course, you've talked about her on your show. So again, we don't have and we should not have illusions. Any of these Samantha Power is

is a peddler of war and bloodshed. We should be very clear. However, my point is this, that in my view, what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing with USAID is not that they are going to stop the CIA type of operations against working people's movements in other countries.

do it my claim is that they will do it in another fashion it will be under you know we it won't be visible probably to us it'll be some sort of covert operation many of cia's operations have been covered but what what they are going after in my view what they're actually going after is

the billions of dollars in actual aid to very, very desperately poor people in many desperate regions around the world. Now, again, as a socialist, I don't think that we can solve the problems of poverty and misery in the world by USAID being propped up. My point is that you can't have illusions in what Trump's actual agenda is. Right.

Were you just as disappointed in me because, you know, you talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which is Elizabeth Warren was the champion of. Right. And and then to see her do such a underhanded to oppose RFK Junior's HHS policy.

It was just despicable the way she was trying to make him, you know, he's sued corporations his whole career. Right. He got the Hudson River cleaned up. He's been suing chemical companies and huge polluters and General Electric and and Big Pharma. And he's won over and over. He's won against Big Pharma.

And she tried to make that sound like a bad thing. And she tried to get him to admit to stop suing big pharma. And so that's so I couldn't square that circle with she's supposed to be supporting the consumer protection finance. And then she's doing that. It was real. And, you know, Bernie Sanders did the same thing. It just I mean, that was just them doing the bidding of power on parade. I was just I don't know. You could comment on that if you'd like.

Elizabeth Warren is a fraud. I mean, she's a longtime fraud. I mean, we saw, I mean, you're talking about RFK and I think we might have some differences, you and I, on what RFK is doing. And, you know, we can talk about that at some point. But your essential point about Warren is,

is I think the more relevant one here, which is that she has always been a fraud. I mean, look at how she went after Bernie Sanders in 2016. Remember her whole campaign, her whole campaign,

the whole objective of her candidacy was to help bring down Bernie Sanders. So in other words, she is one of the countless people who carry water for the capitalist class and we should not have illusions in her either. And AOC is now an arch water carrier for them as well. And so when we look at

Okay, what is it that working people need to do in order to get organized? One of the main questions, in fact,

you can't build successful movements if you're not able to answer this question correctly. And this is why, part of why we have succeeded so historically in our efforts as socialists in Seattle, which is, and the question is, do you understand who working class people's enemies are? If you don't understand, if you can't answer that question accurately, then it will end, you know, you will end up, uh,

being defeated. And so not only should we understand that Democrats and Republicans, you know, the top Democrats, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and top Republicans like Donald Trump and, um,

Mitch McConnell.

Then you can't stop there. Then it is all these people. And these are some of the most nefarious entities, you know, because they look progressive. They sound progressive. They act like they're on your side. But their real purpose is to deflect away from, you know, to to

Take working class anger towards, you know, just vote blue Democratic Party. Don't build working class movements. And so that's the role of the squad members. Elizabeth Warren, of course, I mean, she's just rotten. And then you have

the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I mean, there's 100 members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The chair is Pramila Jayapal. Her role is to deflect working people's movements away from actually what could succeed, which is building independent movements. And then we also have to keep in mind who else is not on our side? Most of the NGO leaders, most of the labor leadership, they are all carrying water for the Democratic Party. DSA, you mentioned the DSA leadership. So it's all like a

It's a pipeline of people who peddle snake oil and working people cannot have illusions in any of them. Well, so February 22nd is the workers' strike back. I was holding a big rally. So in Seattle, everybody, what's your website that I can point people to?

So if people can go to workersstrikeback.org, you'll find the registration form for the organizing conference on the homepage itself. And like I said, if you're anywhere in driving distance of Seattle, please come in person. We want you there in person.

But if you can't, then join us on the live stream and join Worker Strike Back itself. And I just would just say, as Christian Smalls did when he organized the first Amazon Workers Union, I've been involved with several organizing efforts, and he did it the right way. He got all types of people together. I mean, there's lots of MAGA voters on Staten Island, and he's a black guy who got them to organize around class issues.

and that we share a common enemy and he didn't muck it up with identity politics which is what a lot of people do like code pink when we're doing an antiwar rally they wouldn't speak because they didn't like some of the speakers views on lgbtq and i'm like you know that's the equivalent of saying yeah i'd like to stop a nuclear war but not with those people

And that's the opposite of what organizing is. Organizing is when you find common ground with people you disagree with vehemently on other topics, but you can work together on one. And the big thing is an economic issue. So if your organization is built around economic issues and class struggle, that's going to be a winning message. And I just hope that you can resist the infiltrate, because the deep state, as Christian Parenti has said,

taught us on our show that the deep state likes to insert and identity politics to try to split up working coalitions. And so my best to you. Can I just quickly say a few words about that? You know what? I have another guest. I'm already six minutes over, but I'd love to have you back on and we can talk more about it.

Okay. Is that good? Okay. Shama Sawant, thank you so much. And I'm really a big supporter of your work and I wish I could be there. I'm going to be on tour or else I would be at that rally in Seattle. But good luck and we'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much. Okay. Hey, become a premium member. Go to JimmyDoreComedy.com. Sign up. It's the most affordable premium program in the business.

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