Name: ‘War Room’ Host Steve Bannon on Trump’s Executive Orders, Musk’s DOGE and RFK Jr.
Uploaded: 2025-02-06T05:01:00Z
Duration: 11 min 1 s
Description: Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, sits down with WSJ reporter Maggie Severns to discuss the president’s rash of executive orders, Elon Musk’s growing influence and RFK Jr.’s role in aligning MAGA and MAHA.

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Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, sits down with WSJ reporter Maggie Severns to discuss the president’s rash of executive orders, Elon Musk’s growing influence and RFK Jr.’s role in aligning MAGA and MAHA. Photo: Umit Gulsen

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Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser, sits down with WSJ reporter Maggie Severns to discuss the president’s rash of executive orders, Elon Musk’s growing influence and RFK Jr.’s role in aligning MAGA and MAHA.

‘War Room’ Host Steve Bannon on Trump’s Executive Orders, Musk’s DOGE and RFK Jr.

Steve Bannon, thank you so much for sitting down with "Wall Street Journal" today.

Thank you, and thank you for the "Wall Street Journal" to come to the "War Room."

This week we learned that Musk has access to Treasury's payment systems. Should he be able to see or change those payments?

Elon's an engineer. He thinks of things in an engineering framework. So the work Elon's doing is very important. He's already identified something we've tried to get rid for years, the House Freedom Caucus tried to get rid of for years, and the USAID statutorily hasn't been removed. It's gonna be rolled up under, it looks like Marco Rubio, but it looks like you're gonna have the backing of President Trump to actually zero out USAID, which has been something that people are focused on forever. So in that regard, he's doing good work. I don't think, and I don't think he can do it regulatorily, have an outside consulting firm actually take over the control of the payments from the government. But Scott Bessent, and I think the lawyers over at Treasury, have been pretty adamant. It's a read-only access now. And if any other access is granted, it may be something to do with decoding or some way to do that's easier for them to manage but not to actually control the payments, which I think is a Treasury function.

Well, let's talk about USAID for a minute, 'cause there's been a lot of outcry from legal experts saying they can't roll it up into state, they can't do what they're doing. I mean, why not go through Congress on that to get rid of the legal issues?

In the merger world, you say, "Hey, let's get the deal and then we'll paper it. The lawyers will paper it later." These guys come with a Silicon Valley attitude of break things and do it fast. Obviously, there's a different regulatory structure within the government. I think it'll get worked out. I think, number one, what he's done is identified a festering sore. And I do believe the White House Counsel, working with the Justice Department and President Trump and the legislature, will get to do all the refinement that has to be done on USAID. So I think this is one of the good things about Elon. I think they're gonna bring to the surface many fights have been going on that haven't really got public attention. I would just tell you, like in film, you'll fix it in post, that this will be exposed, right? He's already locked the people out of the office, so they can't be like, you know, the internal whistleblowers 'cause that's what you're gonna see, what I call embeds. And you're gonna see a lot of that in this government.

So this moment we're in, I think that you had talked about how the start of Trump's second term was going to be intense. I think that-

Days of thunder.

days of thunder. At a certain point-

Has it lived up to that? Has it lived up to that?

At a certain point, there's only so much from the executive that he can do, right? When are we going-

No, no.

to get that point?

Untrue, untrue, untrue. I think you see, right now, I'd say it's both scale, depth, and urgency. That's why you're seeing, and look, I strongly believe in the flood the zone theory, which is just overwhelm the opposition. They've already starting to file impeachment documentation on President Trump in the House. Now some of the wilder members in the Democratic House, but you see their mentality, lawsuits are coming from everywhere. The resistance is there to overcome it. And I think President Trump has done an amazing thing, is you pick all the different verticals you're going to and you just drop the hammer. It's executive orders, executive action, all of this. One big idea that's playing out, and will be quite contentious and eventually part of it will have to be resolved at the Supreme Court, this unitary theory of the executive. And it's a little different than Cheney's version early on. This is where President Trump's the chief executive officer of the government by the Constitution, obviously the commander-in-chief of the uniform military, and the chief magistrate, right, and chief law enforcement officer of the government. On the executive, this is where it gets to impoundment. Now let's take the Green New Deal. I think President Trump signing these executive orders and taking executive actions over the last week would read the next day on the pages of "The Wall Street Journal" and the "Financial Times" of London, "Well, he's done this and getting rid of the Green New Deal. But the money's already been allocated. It's already being spent." And this is why I think he asked OMB, and what Elon asked OMB, "Exactly where does the money stand?" This theory of impoundment, he takes very seriously. And this is the theory that the appropriations, which is statutory, 'cause it comes in that bill, is a ceiling. And he as executive and chief executive officer has a wide range to actually make a determination, if it's not fulfilling the program or if the program is off-kilter, that he has the ability in the impoundment to impound the money and go take it. You saw this, I think, in the Green New Deal, and you're gonna see it in others. That's gonna be highly contested.

We're at this moment where President Trump's nominees are all getting approved out of committee. Looks like we will have several cabinet leaders soon. You spent a lot of time focused on RFK Jr. and getting him out of committee in recent days. Why was it important to you to get him into that seat?

Number one, I think he'd be the best guy for HHS, but more importantly, politically. You're seeing the beginning of a fusion of two movements, the MAGA movement, which is President Trump's Make America Great Again, a populist nationalist of working-class people, middle-class people that have come to his side in his, you know, his rallying cry now for almost 10 years. On the other side, you've had, and this came from the pandemic, the kind of what I call red-pilled bombs. Many of them that voted for Obama, looking for change there. The MAHA movement, Make America Healthy Again. Bobby Kennedy is the leader of that movement, and that's why I thought it was absolutely urgent to get Bobby Kennedy across the finish line.

So on taxes, is it possible to fix the debt without raising revenue? And if we need to raise revenue, where should it come from?

Let me quote Scott Bessent. Scott Bessent thinks, said it perfectly, "We don't have a a revenue problem, we have a spending problem." First off, we gotta get away from the 10-year thing. I know it's statutory that they went in and you gotta do budgeting at 10 years. But let's be realistic. This is a financial and economic turnaround. We can't think in 10 year. We gotta think like this year and next year, where are the cuts coming? There's no political will to make any cuts. This is why I was Elon's biggest supporter. I said, Elon Musk can come in here with the mentality of Silicon Valley, and they can actually, the time he promised 2 trillion to cut, but even a trillion. You get a trillion of cuts off the six and a half in real time, right? Not just from waste, fraud, and abuse. Let's be honest. It's some of that's there but not all, but programmatically. If you can do this programmatically with programs and billets, I'm your biggest supporter. Because the only way we're gonna get away ourself out of here to get from Scott Bessent's 6 1/2% of GDP from the budget deficit down to 3% is you're gonna have to make some pretty strong spending cuts.

I don't know-

So what's your perception for that? Where did the spending cut come from?

I think number one, look, I'm a hawk. I spent eight years, seven and a half, eight years a naval officer, three and a half, four years at sea on the Destroyer. My daughter went to West Point, deployed with the 101st to Iraq. So we get skin in the game, we're hawks. My strongest recommendation to Elon as an act of good faith is to start with the defense budget. We have to. You're not gonna have cuts anywhere else unless you start with defense. You have to start with the defense budget. I think we spend like 3 1/2% of GDP now on defense. You have to start with the defense budget to really rethink of everything we're doing, particularly vis-a-vis the Chinese Communist Party. Start with defense, maybe even start with SpaceX. Not cut it, but push the program out a couple of years, see what that leaves us with. Then you go after these social programs, you're gonna have to dial 'em back. It's gonna be pain, 'cause we don't have any easy choices where we are now. And then I think, and maybe some Medicaid. Then as you prove yourself that you have the political will to do that and you manage it as a fiduciary, then you can approach the American people about entitlements.

If we're looking at cutting entitlement spending, social spending, doesn't that sell out Trump's supporters?

Number one, I don't think you're gonna get to what I call entitlements, Medicare and Social Security. I just don't think you're gonna have that conversation right now. Medicaid's another issue. The facts, and people better start looking at these facts. In these districts that are heavy MAGA districts, Medicaid, you know, people are under the impression, "I think that Medicaid's all at urban, it goes to urban areas and people in big cities." That's not the case. Medicaid goes all over. Working class people, by and large, are starting to depend more and more Medicaid. It's an issue. None of these cuts are gonna be easy.

Let's talk about a few of those things in turn. I'm curious if you talk to Republicans on the Hill about cutting Pentagon spending and what they say.

They're not wildly, okay. They're not wildly enthusiastic about that, and they're less wildly enthusiastic about not giving the wealthy the whole tax cut of 2017, as President Trump is. Nobody's gonna sit there and say, "We want to do any of these things." We're in a crisis. Our alternatives every day lessen and less and less, so we're cramming ourselves into a situation.

We've talked over the course of this conversation about reeling in defense spending.

Yes.

President Trump is talking about occupying Gaza. What do you think of that? And wouldn't that be a expensive entanglement that is the type that you talk often about getting out of?

Yeah, I think what he's saying is that we've tried everything. You've tried over and over again incrementally. It's not working. My point about focus and getting things done right, the economic situation and the financial situation has to be addressed. And in the addressing of that, you're gonna have a firestorm in this country. That's gonna suck up a lot of the oxygen in the room. And I think things like Gaza will just take their place over time, and President Trump will be able to think about it over time. But I do admire the fact that is not so outside the box, it's outside the universe. I think conventional thinking needs to be broken like that. So on one hand, I just sat there and go, "This is a different guy, and he's really thought through things in his own mind." Now can he sell it? Can he get people enthusiastic about it? Can he get all of that? I would recommend to the President, let's make sure we're not in Ukraine and we don't have a standing military force in a security agreement, and then deal with the situation in Gaza. But I think for people, they ought to take that what he said was most important. The buried lead was that we've done this over and over and over again. It's Groundhog Day, and I'm looking for something that'll break the mold. I believe you're gonna see more of that in the future. His four years, I think every day is gonna be day of thunder. I don't think he's gonna be tied to 100 days. I don't think he's gonna be tied to six months. I don't think he's gonna be tied that in the midterm election year, he can't do anything. I think you see this guy, he understands how close he came to political oblivion, and I think he also understands that this will be remembered as the age of Trump. And he'll be at the level of General Washington and Lincoln and then Trump, of turning around the saving the country. I think he's stepping into the moment. And I would just tell people, I think you're gonna get a couple more three Gazas that you're not expecting of what he's gonna put on the table. My point is, power right now is focus. If we focus, we can get done what needs to be done to turn the country around. And then as President Trump said, he's gonna lead us to a new golden age.