Bannon`s War Room
Episode 5085: 26 Billion In DEI Payments Still Being Distributed By SBA; How Republicans Need To Approach Jack Smith
22 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What are the latest updates on DEI payments distributed by the SBA?
and in the B block. Let's go and bring the show in and then we're going to get our first guest. This is the primal scream of a dying regime. Pray for our enemies because we're going medieval on these people. I got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people. The people have had a belly full of it. I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. It's going to happen.
And where do people like that go to share the big lie? Mega media. I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Bann. It's Wednesday, 21 January, in the year of our Lord, 2026, is the first day of the second year of President Trump's second term. Third time he won the presidency, but second term. Chris Ruffo, the great Chris Ruffo is joining us.
And Chris, look, naturally, I would want you on here during Davos because Larry Fink, You've so broken Fink on DEI. Larry Fink, who was kind of the financial guy of it, forcing all the companies to do it because of his immense power on Wall Street. And he's over at Davos kind of denying, you know, no ESG, no DEI. We don't need to do that.
We don't need Green New Deal because intermittent power won't work for the data center's AI. He's thrown over all of his beliefs. And you were the leader in the effort to break DEI. But you came up with something, I think, two days ago. that I think may be the biggest story in the country and people need to focus on it. It was this, is it 26?
We talk about Somalians in Minneapolis and the ripoff of the learning centers and all this is getting deeper and everybody's telling me this, but you're identifying in the Trump administration, there's still, Congress is approving, I guess there's $26 billion in, being spent on this type of scams by the Small Business Administration.
And we kind of know it's out there, but we're not stopping it or not putting our hands on it. Can you walk people through this, quite frankly, blockbuster story?
Yeah, so this is at the Small Business Administration. It's a $26 billion slush fund that is dedicated to providing government contracts, including many no-bid government contracts, exclusively to firms that are owned by racial minorities and women. In many cases, these are shell companies where they have a token minority and then a private firm behind them.
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Chapter 2: How has the Trump administration impacted DEI initiatives?
It's called the Section 8A program that is supposed to be for disadvantaged groups. And, you know, to be fair, Kelly Loeffler, who's the administrator at the SBA, has done some great work in the first year. She's... mandated the first ever audit. She's reduced the percentage of race-based contracting from 15% to 5%. But I think what's happened is that she feels hemmed in by legal considerations.
It may not be technically a DEI program. It's more like an affirmative action contracting program. The native tribes have sovereignty issues that make them somewhat of an exception to race-based rules. But the bottom line is that it hasn't got done. It needs to get done. And I was fielding calls yesterday from the White House after this story came out.
And look, the White House assures me we're working on it. It's been stalled. We're trying to get it done. We think there's gonna be imminent action. But what I think needs to happen and what could happen is simply to say this program is unconstitutional. We're going to refuse to administer it.
We'll fight it in the courts where we think we have a pretty good shot because look, the courts have been pretty clear about this stuff. Race based contracting, especially a race based contracting that says, you know, any group in the country can apply except for one white man is totally unfair. It's totally illegal. It's totally unconstitutional.
I'd like to see the administration use the nuclear option here and just say, we're blowing up this program, we're gonna give contracts to the best firms, doesn't matter what the skin color is, doesn't matter where they're from. And look, the other thing that is kind of crazy, we look through a lot of these contracts. These are supposed to be for socially disadvantaged or oppressed people.
But you have a firm, for example, that's run almost exclusively by Indian Americans with PhDs that have millions of dollars in assets, to give you one small example. And you say, wait a minute, this is a group that has the highest education level, the highest income level, run by people who by any measure are part of the American elite now.
Why are we giving them a contract advantage over other groups? It's indefensible. And I hope that we see action, maybe not today or tomorrow, but I hope we see something by next week at the latest.
Chris, the other bomb in here, I don't want to bury this lead, you said, hey, because it's $26 billion a day, but this thing's been going on for 40 years. And it's not that, hey, maybe you do have some set-asides for minorities, like I said, oppressed minorities, not Indian guys with PhDs that are building tech companies or whatever. But you said there hasn't been an audit.
What I've always heard about this program is that it's actually a company, but they put a woman or they put a minority on top of it and they get the contracts. But it's a complete scam that it's really not a minority company. They're just doing that. So they qualify for the for the contract itself.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the $26 billion slush fund for minority-owned businesses?
But there's been no comprehensive audit of all of these approved minority contracting firms ever. And we know it's rife with fraud. We know this is part of it. The other dirty detail or wrinkle that I heard from administration officials and others with knowledge, inside knowledge of the program, is that
You know, a lot of this money goes to the state of Alaska where there are native Alaskan tribes. And there are these shell companies where private companies run by people from all different backgrounds use kind of token Alaska native firms to keep this flow of billions of dollars over time, tens of billions of dollars going.
And there are senators in Alaska who are very intent on keeping this spigot open. These are Republican, at least one Republican senator in Alaska. And so everyone is in on this scam. I think everyone knows that it's a dirty business. It's totally corrupt, totally unjust. But I think it needed the attention because what's really happened is that it fell under people's radar.
It's not a headline story for many people. There's a lot of exciting things happening in the news. But the reason I wanted to draw attention to it is because this should be an easy layup for the administration. We don't do DEI. We don't do race-based decision-making. It's gone. That's what I'd like to see, and I'm optimistic that we'll get there.
Yeah, and particularly we talked about the $2 trillion deficit today, what Besson has to do about this. Every bit helps. You talk about the Senate. The House appropriations, we see them in the middle. In fact, we cover it here. We stream it. We get big audiences. You see these debates, and the moderates always kind of win. How did this for 40 yearsā
How is this going on when every guy running for Congress, every man and woman, I'm going to cut it. Nothing's going to get through. I'm against the I'm against waste, fraud and abuse. This hits this. This hits every touch point. How did Congress and the appropriations guys, the appropriators keep doing this without getting outed?
I mean, part of it is just it's an automatic, renewable expense. It takes a lot of political capital to say we're going to take this existing program that is benefiting Native Americans and the children of sharecroppers and all of these kind of this mythology around it. They don't want to be the big, bad Republican who's cutting minority contracts. But I think the deeper reason is psychological.
And the psychological reason is this. A lot of these guys, Republican congressmen, Republican senators, for many years were deathly afraid of being called racist, of being called bigoted, of being called cruel, of facing the scrutiny of the national news media. And at the end of the day, it really took a figure like President Trump to come in there and say, hey, wait a minute.
I don't care what you call me. I've been through the media ringer. I'm willing to take the heat. We're not going to do this. Get rid of it. And that's the kind of decisive action that was required. And my suspicion is that the president, if this were put on his desk, he would be shocked and he would ask his people, why haven't we gotten rid of this already?
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Chapter 4: Why is there a lack of audits on DEI funding programs?
Guys like Larry Fink will do whatever is popular, whatever is expedient in the moment. And so the big lesson here for conservatives is, don't necessarily worry about people's convictions because those are malleable. Worry about who sets the status incentives. And so if DEI is perceived as high status, corporate executives will adopt DEI.
If DEI is perceived as low status, corporate executives will abandon DEI. That's the best way to have an influence. That's the best way to change perception. And Larry Fink's kind of new face, new mask, is a sign that conservatives have won on ESG and won on DEI.
Rufo, you're the best. How do people follow you? How do they get to your site? How do they get to your books? And how do they get to your social media?
It's easy. Add Christopher Rufo on Twitter, ChristopherRufo.com on the web. And you can buy my book, America's Cultural Revolution, anywhere books are sold.
Chris Rufo, great job. Keep at it, sir. Fantastic.
Appreciate it.
Appreciate you. Chris Ruffo. Lord have mercy. Trump will take the nuclear option. He put it in front of me. He's going to say, what are we doing here? Zero this thing out.
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Chapter 5: How is Jack Smith's testimony relevant to current political dynamics?
They're going to take us to court anyway. Trump's won, what, 22 or 24 times? Was he magnificent in Davos today? Just dropping hammer blows. You saw the markets in turmoil. They go from the Trump trade to the anti-Trump trade. That's going to continue. There's so much more to do here. President Trump knows that tomorrow's peace board is going to meet for the first time.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings?
I think we may try to, I can talk my crew into covering that live. Oh, dark 30 a.m. Birch Gold. One thing that's evident, Carney's a former head of the Bank of England, governor of the Bank of England. That's where they're all rallying around him and rubbing up on him and loving him for his little speech. President Trump put him on note and said, hey, yo, dude, we basically protect Canada.
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I mean, I haven't, I don't even think, I think Elizabeth and Grace and Moe haven't even put it all on my Getter account. Maybe they have, but, you know, we had a conference 10 days ago. Dr. Thayer's working with me. There's a bunch of us that are of Irish descent.
We are working with folks in Ireland to help them get stood up, a Irish populist nationalist party, because, as you know, probably the worst country been sold out by their political elite is our beloved Ireland. to the Davos crowd. Well, there's been a lot of, you know, O'Bannon saying they're going to create a Trump and he's going to bring a nationalist, he's going to bring MAGA to Ireland.
And the elite media over there is going crazy. I mean, they're losing it. So Larry Fink today, Dr. Thayer's here. Dr. Thayer, I got a cold open for you to get into the heart of what happened at Davos today. But Larry Fink is the new mayor.
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Chapter 7: How does the Small Business Administration's contracting process work?
And so given the history of Irish nationalism, the history of Ireland, what Larry Fink is doing is really jumping from maybe the frying pan into the fire with respect to nationalism. But it really shows his desperation, right? He wants to shed the dead hand of Davos, the dead hand of globalism. That's the old paradigm. That's the old regime.
And they don't and they don't want to. Yeah. And they don't want to. They don't want another. They don't want another Nigel Farage. We had Nigel today in our street. They don't want another Nigel Farage or AFD. They Ireland. They own lock, stock and barrel. They want the Irish just to act like indentured servants. We've got a cold over for you.
I want to get into your thoughts today about Carney and Trump and then all of Trump's President Trump's efforts. Let's go and play it.
He talked at Davos for 90 minutes. That is only about 15 minutes less than he took at the White House podium yesterday. But the content was just as meandering. He exaggerated and lied about the economy. He said everyone in America is doing better than ever before, that everyone is happier and richer.
He said federal employees who he fired love him now because they're making more in the private sector. He said windmills are ugly and anyone who buys them is stupid. He said the people who stole the 2020 election are about to be prosecuted. He said next time Canada's Mark Carney speaks, he should remember Canada lives because of the United States.
He said the prime minister, who is actually the president of Switzerland, was difficult and that she rubbed him the wrong way. He made fun of Emmanuel Macron.
He said Europe and NATO aren't thankful enough that they'd be speaking German if it weren't for the U.S., that most of their countries don't even work without the U.S., that immigration has destroyed Europe, that it's threatening to destroy America as well, complaining specifically about Somalis.
We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But I won't do that, okay? Now everyone's saying, oh, good. What I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection.
We've never asked for anything else, and we could have kept that piece of land, and we didn't.
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Chapter 8: What legal challenges are being faced by the current administration regarding DEI?
Our careful, and I mean careful, attention to building and sustaining the liberal international world order with the United States and Europe at its core was the bedrock of the success the world enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century. It's a deal that everybody's very happy with. Does it still include the United States having ownership of Greenland like you've said you wanted?
It's a long-term deal. It's the ultimate long-term deal.
And I think it puts everybody in a really good position, especially as it pertains to security and minerals and everything else. And I wonder if you think this is a moment in which you didn't have to serve in a national security capacity to be scared for United States national security. Well, I think we're all ashamed of what we saw on the stage in Davos.
I think all of us were quite jealous of seeing the integrity, professionalism, intellect of Prime Minister Carney of Canada, who acquitted himself brilliantly in many respects in terms of honoring the transatlantic alliance.
And when we hear Donald Trump talk about history in such a, as you point out, an ignorant way, it really is a period of time where I think all Americans, whether or not they served in the military, diplomatic service, national security, intelligence,
really feel that we really have reached this real inflection point where America's leadership on the world stage is not just in question, but also is now being seen as being absent, which has worried our European partners. And so, again, I think what we saw was a very, very terrible depiction of what Donald Trump 2.0 is going to do one year into a four year term.
And again, I think many of us are just really not just appalled and ashamed, but also just so puzzled as to how so many individuals
within the Republican Party, within Congress, continue to allow Donald Trump to do this? Because I think people on the world stage, and Europeans in particular, are not just seeing this as Donald Trump's aberrant behavior, which I think they've gotten used to, but he is a reflection of a sentiment in the United States within the Republican Party, as well as maybe 30% of the electorate,
that really does agree with him and believe these things as allowing him to do this again, not just to the detriment of international peace and stability, but to the detriment of U.S. national security. Yo, dude, it's the first day. Brennan, before you go to prison, it's the first day of the second year of his second term and third victory. He won the popular vote every swing state.
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