(cont.)

Bannon: Yes. And I don’t think Andreessen is like that either. Andreessen came over early.

Douthat: These are people who were already deeply alienated from —

Bannon: Hang on, Andreessen and Musk are smart enough to be able to get below the surface on the numbers and see the direction of the country and climb on board as the technofeudalists early on.

They are hard-core technofeudalists. They’re not populist. I tease Elon all the time. If I could turn him from a technofeudalist globalist to a populist nationalist, we could make some progress here. He’s definitely a technofeudalist. One of the hardest-core technofeudalists. And so is Andreessen.

With these guys you’re talking about genius level intelligence. These are not dumb people. But they’re not with us when it comes to the little guy.

Douthat: But their view is connected to the argument you just made — which is that there’s a technological frontier. We are competing with China on a technological frontier.

Andreessen did not make a populist argument, but he made a nationalist argument. He said: Look, we want — and what the Trump administration has promised us — is for America to win, for our companies to win, for us to outcompete the Chinese and have what it takes to keep America ahead of the curve. Which we are at the moment.

I agree that DeepSeek, the Chinese A.I., raises a lot of questions about A.I. strategy —

Bannon: I don’t believe one [expletive] sentence of that. They don’t believe that. They don’t believe in this country. They believe in this country right now because it protects them and provides some benefits to them.

Remember, we bailed out these [expletive] on Silicon Valley Bank. Biden bailed them out when they couldn’t make payroll. They could make payroll if they put more of their own money in, but they wouldn’t. They had the little guy bail them out in the Silicon Valley Bank.

Now, in the last couple of days, what are they talking about? Oh, my gosh, we need a Marshall Plan. We need a space plan. We need a Mercury Plan. We need hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayers.

They want essentially a bailout. If it’s a Sputnik moment, somebody’s got to ask the question: Yo, Andreessen! We made a deal with you guys. Elon, we made a deal with you guys. We made you oligarchs. We made you the richest people in the [expletive] history of the Earth. We stopped any antitrust.

This is what pisses me off the most. No antitrust, not breaking these companies up and allowing entrepreneurs to get in there. Marc Andreessen doesn’t believe in the entrepreneurial system in the country. No way!

Douthat: I don’t know. Just to defend prior guests on this program as a matter of policy, I think there is a big difference between how the big social media companies regarded themselves and how the venture capital world regarded itself.

I’m not going to look into anybody’s soul and think about whether they believe in America —

Bannon: Ross. Ross.

Douthat: But they do believe they believe in a different form of competition than does Google, Facebook and so on. And I think that’s why they’ve always been more sympathetic to the right.

Bannon: Hang on. I’m not saying Andreessen’s a bad guy at the heart of it. But their America is an idea.

America’s not an idea! It’s not. It’s a country with a border and a group of citizens that’s the greatest resource we’ve ever had.

And the apartheid state of Silicon Valley thinks we don’t need our greatest resource, which is the American citizen. They’d rather import basically indentured servants to work for a third less and have an apartheid state. And then as soon as they can replace them with digital serfs, they will do it.

Douthat: All right. Let’s bring it back to policy and then to Trump himself.

On policy — and again, I don’t think any of this is happening — but what is the specific populist answer to the oligarchs that you’re talking about? Is it that Trump should keep Lina Khan around and do antitrust stuff? Is it taxation on these companies? Is it just not spending money and not investing in A.I.? Is it regulations on A.I.?

If you could wave a magic wand and have the Trump White House do what you want around this stuff, what would you do?

Bannon: No. 1, I would be a huge supporter of Lina Khan remaining, and I would love to see her given more power. I think we ought to go and break up Silicon Valley, because obviously in their scale they haven’t performed very well.

Let’s be brutally frank. If we’re to believe the power of TikTok, which is self-evident, and if you believe the nascent power of DeepSeek and other things that are being released right now — we can’t be in a situation where the state underwrites and it gives the accumulation of power. If the revolutionary generation came back, they would spit on the floor.

And look, it’s complicated. There are no easy solutions. I would like to have a quick investigation into exactly how the intelligence community missed DeepSeek.

There’s so many questions. I realize that people who are humanists are people who are religious and put their religion at the center of their being, and they are going to be really on their back foot now with all the forces of world power against you.

And you won’t be able to be a Luddite. To be a Luddite and to want this to slow down or to be like the people in “Fahrenheit 451,” who are out in the woods memorizing —

Douthat: They’re memorizing the great books.

Bannon: Right.

Douthat: Well, we’ll have podcasts, though.

Bannon: You don’t have that moment, because right now we have to strike because you have to compete on a national security basis because this is like Sputnik. It’s an arms race. We’re in a nuclear arms race.

And I would just tell people — and particularly your readers, who do not agree with me politically on anything — if I can beseech you for one thing, it’s that you must start to understand the moment we’re in. This is an inflection point not just for this country, this is an inflection point for the world.

And President Trump will always listen to the entrepreneurs who have been very successful. It’s just his default position. And I realize that this is going to be a complicated argument to make. But we’re going to have to think this thing through collectively. This is, this is a whole of society decision.

What I want is a public discussion and debate over the biggest issues of the day, particularly the size and scope of the federal government and how we spend money and where we spend it and who’s taxed and who’s not taxed.

Also a discussion about what comes after the postwar international rules-based order. I think President Trump thinking through hemispheric defense from the Panama Canal to Greenland is genius. It’s genius. And having been a naval officer, I will tell you, it has so much logic to it.

There’s so much going on, but give this guy a chance on the basic plan that he’s got for the safety and security of this country, and with asking hard questions, etc., and let’s get into these deep issues.

We’re in a real fix.

Douthat: So Trump himself — let’s try and wrap up there. Early in our conversation, you said something about how populism is just like a cult of personality around Trump — or that Trump has all the power. And obviously, that’s not true in the sense that there really are big divides within the Republican coalition, there are big divides within this administration.

What is true, though, is that President Trump has a lot of power, a lot of personal power over what many conservatives tend to think. He’s got a lot of trust built up, where people are like: Well, you know, I don’t know exactly where to look, but I stand with Trump.

He’s got that. And then he also is, I think it’s fair to say, not an ideological guy. He’s a flexible guy who listens to the last person in the room. And he’s a guy who has his own incentives.

And you talked about TikTok, right? Donald Trump had one position on TikTok before —

Bannon: Oh you’re so cynical.

Douthat: I hate to be cynical about our president. He had that position on TikTok and now he has a different position on an issue that you say is an example of effectively a Chinese Communist PSYOP infecting American life.

So to what extent is populism, in all the forms you’ve described, just completely lashed to the personality and character of Donald Trump? And to what extent is there a world beyond it? Is there going to be a moment where populism needs a new leader and you’re back to that cattle call in New Hampshire looking at different opportunities?

Bannon: Look, he’s a guy from Queens.

Douthat: I’ve heard that about him. Yep.

Bannon: President Trump, for people that don’t know him, and I know for your audience that this is where they may opt out of the podcast —

Douthat: They’ve seen a lot of him. I think.

Bannon: But he’s actually an incredible, kindhearted, empathetic individual. I kind of say he’s a moderate.

I’m a crazy right-wing populist nationalist. President Trump balances everything. He’s a common-sense conservative and a common-sense populist nationalist. In our movement, the core base of MAGA is hard-welded to Donald Trump because they admire his moral clarity.

I put him at the level of President Washington and President Lincoln in this regard. This is the age of Trump. No person in American history — and go read Jack Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage.” You can add up the whole book, and it doesn’t come close to Trump —

Douthat: I’m not a big fan of Jack Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” but I take your point.

Bannon: I should say Ted Sorensen’s “Profiles in Courage.”

Douthat: Yeah, Ted Sorenson’s “Profiles in Courage.” [Laughs.] But go on.

Bannon: He came back knowing all that was going to happen. I call him the American Cincinnatus to return.

They wanted him to die in federal prison. I can tell you as a guy that went to prison — and not a camp — the federal prisons are very tough places, particularly if you’re in your 70s. They’re tough places. They’re just tough and dangerous. And then the physical courage to come back and stand up and say: Fight, fight, fight! On the assassination attempt made him both gladiator and leader.

And so our movement will go where President Trump leads us. And I can disagree on policies and on the margin. Like on taxes. And I really disagree on transhumanism. But at the end of the day, if he says we’re going in this direction, I’m going to say: OK, I don’t agree with this, and I don’t think it’s the right direction, but I’m all in. Let’s roll.

Douthat: Wait, wait, wait — you’re all in for transhumanism if he says that? If he’s like: Steve, get the chip in your brain. Let’s do it!

Bannon: Well, President Trump is a germaphobe. He’s not going to get a chip in the brain. He’s a germaphobe. Shaking hands was a big deal. I don’t think you’re going to get a chip in the brain.

Douthat: But so then what you’re saying —

Bannon: OK — he’s definitely not a transhumanist. It’s going to be tough. I didn’t say these weren’t tough conversations. And we’re going to have tough moments.

Like, for instance, the deportation of all 12 million illegal aliens. I see already in the Republican Party, some people suggesting that maybe we just get the criminals, maybe we just get the bad ones —

Douthat: That’s basically my position. But —

Bannon: Did I tell you, Ross, at the beginning of this what [expletive] the conservatives are? You [expletive].

Douthat: Yes, especially the ones who write columns for The New York Times, Steve.

Bannon: You’re too much of a humanist. That’s your problem. You’re too empathetic. [Laughs.]

Douthat: But so you’re — the vision that you have then in the next four years — I guess we can talk about a future JD Vance presidency on another show — but your vision of the next four years is, in effect, a battle for Donald Trump, right?

Bannon: Yes.

Douthat: That’s what it comes down to? I wrote a column over the weekend about the idea that this is court politics.

And in a way, I’m just trying to end us on a pretty strong note here. You’re basically saying that the future of Homo sapiens, the future of the human race itself, as we’ve known it for six thousand or six million years, depending on your interpretation of creationism, depends on people arguing and contending for the views and positions of Donald Trump? Is that what you think right now?

Bannon: I think that’s correct. I think that the globalist elite thought he was dead, and he’s been resurrected. He resurrected himself. And he has a movement that has his back.

The fundamental questions about this republic and the sovereignty of it and about the direction of humankind are all going to play out in the next four or five years. It’s going to be the most intense part, I think, of modern political and social history.

Convincing President Trump — and he’s a guy that listens to the arguments and he’s got tremendous common sense — it’s incumbent upon us to be able to make those arguments to him. But he’s got his own decision-making process.

President Trump is a very imperfect instrument. He’d be the first to tell you. As I am and you are and Tucker and Elon and everybody. And in his imperfections is his true greatness. He overcomes that to be one of the most unique leaders in world history.

And we’ll just have to see how it plays out. But the populists and the far right war room — we’re going to be fighting hard every day to make sure the voice of our element on the far right of this movement is heard.

Douthat: Steve, thank you so much.

Bannon: Thank you so much. Appreciate you.