Steve Bannon: “The enemy inside our gate is a hundred times a bigger problem for this country than what is happening in Tehran”
Bannon says he does not buy “the underpinnings” of his guest's argument about the Iranian regime, “which I hear on Fox and from the boomers every night. I don't buy any of it.”
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From the April 7, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): The shifting of the moral courage of Lincoln, because remember he didn't free a slave in an area that he controlled, that he could free the slaves.
PATRICK K O'DONNELL (GUEST): That is very true, that's why there's a lot of nuance.
BANNON: He basically freed the slaves because — but hang on, this is a guy who's losing. This is a guy who's losing and trying to get moral authority to take the high ground to get more people to rally to his side, correct? And to cut off any potential allies coming in for the Confederacy, correct?
O'DONNELL: But, it changes the entire course of history because it changes race relations in the United States. It changes the dynamic of the war completely and it's a major shift. Now, I get into it in The Unvanquished, I mean, there's a lot of nuance in this —
BANNON: But hang on —
O'DONNELL: There's a lot of what's old is new too.
...
BANNON: Hang on, I know. I love it too, but this is my point about you're trying — you and the other supporters of this are trying to make a moral case, right, to take the moral high ground in this —
O'DONNELL: Oh I think there's an unquestionable moral case. Unquestionable.
BANNON: And make that for me again. Let me have it.
O'DONNELL: The fact that they get a nuclear weapon and they threaten us. I mean, they're threatening the world economy right now with the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea. This can't go on. This is irreconcilable, Steve.
They have to go, and it's one way or another, and the key to it is the Iranian — the center of gravity is the Iranian people. I mean, the whole reason, one of the reasons why we are here is because they rose up two months ago. And that problem for that regime has not gone away.
It's going to get way worse. They killed 45,000, and it's going to get way worse for those people, and they're going to — it's going to foment more — an even greater uprising. The question is, we need to support that in various ways, I mean, this is something — we have 250 years of irregular warfare experience. We pioneered it.
You fight irregular wars with irregulars, and the number one thing, I mean, we go back to the Civil War. I wrote an article for Breitbart a month ago called the Iranian Anaconda Plan. You know, it wasn't popular at the first Battle of the Manassas. Everybody thought they were going to run to Richmond and the war would be over.
No you got to strangle, in that case, the South, you have to strangle the Iranian oil in their revenues and go after it in every way possible, and it will collapse.
BANNON: Yeah, hang on, hang on one second. I want you to stick around. I want to get Jim Rickards up here.
I will say that the enemy inside our gate is a hundred times a bigger problem for this country than what is happening in Tehran, a hundred times. I don't buy the underpinnings of your argument, which I hear on Fox and from the boomers every night. I don't buy any of it.
The problem is here in this country and with the Chinese Communist Party that is very far down the road on unconditioned, on unrestricted warfare of taking us down.
But hang on, cause I love the fact that look, a not insignificant part of the War Room posse is 100% back of you, Patrick K. O'Donnell. They're loving it, so just stick right there.