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This speech aired on December 19, 2025. Transcript begins below and may contain minor errors.

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STEVE BANNON: We are at war. You know how we know this? You just heard Hawkins up here a few minutes ago, right? What did she say at the very moment Charlie Kirk was assassinated? What, at the University of Montana? They laughed in her face, right? Laughed in her face. And some guy goes, oh, we’re at war.

Charlie Kirk knew we’re at war. Every time I’ve spoken at any event of Turning Point, I always start with that. Because Charlie Kirk knew one thing. He knew we’re at war, and he knew we were going to be victorious if we didn’t quit.

So what do I mean by that? Let’s go back. Do you understand, for the last 10 years, there have been eight national elections, either primaries, off year elections where Congress is voted on for the whole nation, or presidential elections. We have won seven of those eight. This is why they hated Charlie Kirk.

It wasn’t Charlie Kirk’s philosophy or even his debates. Charlie Kirk was a tough, tough person that built a machine that you guys are dedicated to, that delivered victories.

Let’s be specific. Go back to 2015. President Trump, 15 and 16, wins the primary against all odds. Then in 16, he wins a come from behind, once in a lifetime victory against Hillary Clinton.

We lost the 18 midterms because people were leaning on their rakes, leaning on their rakes. And we lost, I don’t know, 35 or 40 House seats. And Nancy Pelosi told us exactly what she was going to do. She impeached Trump and almost brought it all down.

President Trump came back, won the primary, right, very easily. Nobody really ran against him. I don’t think anybody ran against him. 2020, we won the 2020 election. Is there any dispute on that? If you don’t believe that, you don’t believe a foundational element of the MAGA movement. We won 2020.

And to show you how we won it, we picked up 14 House seats that night. Fourteen House seats.

Then President Trump went into the wilderness. This is when Charlie Kirk really, I think, stepped up the most. President Trump was sent to Mar a Lago. They never thought he was coming back. The Republican Party never thought he was coming back.

And what happened? President Trump grinded it out. In fact, he told us on this stage last year, right here, the first time he told anybody, when Charlie had him come out here and speak. What did he say? He said, I had to run again because I could not let them steal an election, because they’re stealing the country. And we see what Biden did.

Then we win the midterms in 22. We picked up about 11 seats, eight net, and took the House of Representatives. There were supposed to be more, but we got control of the House.

And then, and really the greatest come from behind ever, President Trump, Turning Point put him on their shoulders. We won the greatest election in the history of the country.

In 10 years, in 10 years, a decade, you’ve been beaten once, when we leaned on our shovels. Charlie Kirk understood one thing. We are at war.

It’s a political war. It’s a cold civil war. We don’t want it to turn hot. We don’t need it to turn hot if we accomplish what we’re supposed to accomplish.

And we have won seven of eight national elections. The American people are with us. As long as we get things done, as long as we accomplish the punch list that Rob Schneider talked about when he walked down this stage.

That’s what’s incumbent upon us. And that’s what the Republican establishment to date, because you can already see what they’re doing in trying to block President Trump. You see this in Indianapolis. You see this in the redistricting.

The Republican establishment thinks President Trump is just a passing storm and that he’s just going to fade away. What it’s going to try to do is co opt. Co opt, period. Because Charlie has built this into a massive political operation that cannot be beat by the left. It’s one of the reasons.

Yes, I realize we haven’t gone to trial yet. We don’t know the information. It looks like, at least from the information we have out, it may be this guy, maybe not, maybe not an organization behind it. We don’t know that yet because the evidence has not been put out.

But Charlie Kirk is dead. Think about that. The individual that’s probably, I think at his age, the greatest individual this country has produced politically and culturally since the Revolution. Remember, all of that revolution, with Charlie at 31 years old. He’s been doing this since he was 17 or 18. Charlie was a man of action.

I want to make sure that we get something straight tonight. We have a partners discussion, and I want to say up front, if I hurt some feelings here, you can come and talk to me afterwards. This whole thing that’s been going on the last couple of days, on the comments tonight, this is not about this specific incident. It’s not about freedom of speech or platforming. They’re all talking about that. People were saying hurtful things to each other.

Tucker said the quiet part out loud. This is a proxy on ’28, and I think it’s way too early to be thinking about ’28. But he’s right about one thing. This is a proxy on an issue that is not freedom of speech and not about whether you’re going to platform or not.

This is about a situation where Charlie Kirk was probably one of the most, if not the most, important people in what I would call the concept of Greater Israel. You can’t get a better defender of Israel. You can’t get a better defender of Israel than Steve Bannon.

At Breitbart, adamant, couldn’t have a two state solution. In the White House, I’m the one that pushed initially hard to move the embassy to Jerusalem. At WarRoom, ask all the WarRoom people that are here. Ask all the Posse. We always talk about it, and we’re in one state, not a two state. But that’s about Israel. It’s not about Greater Israel. It’s not about Israel first.

Those foundational beliefs are number one, he’s a populist nationalist. America makes its own decisions for America. And as a populist, the American people are the people that make those decisions.

Now Benji Shapiro sat here last night, and he was all, you know, “I’m, you know, it’s all about the truth.” Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth.

Let’s face it, Ben. Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA. Let’s be blunt. He is a hardcore never Trumper. He’s a hardcore never Trumper.

In the spring of 16, he tried to upend Breitbart. He walked off the job, made a big deal about some incident in Mar a Lago with Corey Lewandowski. He tried to turn it to Ted Cruz from Donald Trump because he hated Donald Trump.

In the general election, he barely supported Donald Trump. The first sign of when President Trump gets sent back to Mar a Lago, the very first individual that jumped on the Ron DeSantis train, the Israel first train, was Ben Shapiro. And those are the darkest days we had.

In 21 and 22, you guys were there. He’s consistently been against Trump.

And now, President Trump doesn’t back the Greater Israel Project. What is Greater Israel? It’s not about Israel itself. It’s about an expansionist Israel, an imperial Israel, that Netanyahu and that crowd have thought up.

And the Israel first crowd is Ben Shapiro, Tel Aviv Mark Levin, and many others that want to put that ahead of America’s interests.

Charlie Kirk fought that. You know where Charlie Kirk fought it? In the White House. I know because I was there. When I went back to the White House, Charlie was working with Sergio Gor, and certain people around the Vice President, to make sure we did not get sucked into a land war, or a decapitation of the Iranian elite that would lead to a massive civil war that American troops would get dragged into.

The Times of Israel has published that there was no urgency to go after the nuclear weapons. We know the fact they couldn’t finish what they started. We know for a fact, we know for a fact, that they needed American Aegis, Thad missiles, Patriots, to defend themselves on day 10 of the war. They were losing, and they didn’t have the offensive capability.

And I don’t mean the B 2s coming in and taking out the caves. They relied upon our 1970s technology of cruise missiles fired from submarines in the North Arabian Sea to take out the above ground. We had to bring that war to inclusion.

And President Trump, in his brilliance, said, we’ll do that, and we’ll call it the 12 day war, and it’s over.

Now, for the Israel first crowd, they are the ones that are destroying Israel.

Today in Miami, who’s negotiating with Witkoff? It’s the Turks. It’s Qatar. And it’s the Egyptians. Because Qatar is going to underwrite Gaza, and two million Palestinians are going to stay there.

And the Turks are providing, on Egyptian soil called Gaza, or on Israel soil called Gaza, they are going to provide the military control mechanism over UAE troops, Saudi troops, and Egyptian troops. That’s a two state solution that has been provided because of the efforts of the Israel first crowd.

And Charlie Kirk had one simple thing that he thought about. Who controls America, and who makes decisions for the United States of America?

And Charlie Kirk worked overtime, because behind the scenes he was a player. Not just helping Sergio get all types of great people in there and vet those people, but actually talking about policy. And part of that policy was no more foreign wars.

Charlie absolutely believed what I believe. The Middle East is a side show, and Israel is a side show to a side show.

Now, voices out there that support Israel, like Laura Loomer and Rabbi Wolicki and others, are coming forward and saying, look, maybe Bannon and these guys are right. We don’t want to take any more American money. We don’t want any more American control. We want to go out and do what we want to do when we, the Israelis, feel they have to do it.

I support that 100%. Israel needs its sovereignty. Israel needs to be independent. If Israel wants to take on Syria, go for it. If Israel wants to go into Lebanon, go for it. But not drag the United States of America into another endless war.

Ask Megyn Kelly when she comes up here.

Look, at Breitbart, Shapiro called Breitbart Trump Pravda. When he left, he called it Trump Pravda. And he was kind of right. We had to be. There was no other news site that was supporting President Trump.

When poor Megyn Kelly came out in that first debate and made what looks like now some innocuous questions, right, about Trump’s Facebook page or his Twitter feed, about Rosie O’Donnell and others, have Jack Posobiec ask her how it turned out. We unleashed the dogs. We were maniacs.

Why? President Trump had no backing. He had no backing at Fox. He had no backing at National Review. And in 16, they were driving him out of the race. So we had to be there.

But Ben Shapiro is like a cancer. And that cancer spreads. It’s a cancer, and it metastasizes.

He tried to take over Breitbart and I ran him out of there. He tried to take over David Horowitz’s and he was his mentor. Don’t ask me, ask the guys with David Horowitz what he did over there. He tried to take that over, and mark my word, he will make a move on Turning Point, because he’s always been envious of Charlie Kirk.

This is not about speech. It’s not about deplatforming. This is about power politics and what Charlie Kirk believed in to the core of his being. America makes decisions for America, and Americans make decisions for America. That was Charlie Kirk.

Why the hell do you think they assassinated him? Why did they put the poison all over this place? Why are they mock and ridicule him? People said yesterday, Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk brought victories, victory after victory after victory. That’s when we can re-Christianize this country.

What was Charlie Kirk’s lesson? That we were a Christian nation that got off the rails, and we have to re-Christianize this country.

You’re in the shadows of a giant. Not just an American patriot and an American hero.

Charlie Kirk is a Christian martyr, and Charlie Kirk is a Christian saint. That is your legacy that you take up.

The day I went to prison, the day I went to prison, we passed the show to Charlie Kirk, as we did oftentimes in the three and a half years that Charlie, Posobiec and I had that block at Real America’s Voice.

And what Charlie said, I said to Charlie, next man up. Charlie said, I got it. Next man up.

Are you next man up? Are you going to fill the shoes of Charlie Kirk? Do you have the stones to do it? Do you have the guts to do it?

Ask yourself that. Because I tell you what, you in this room right here are going to decide whether we win in 26. And if we don’t win in 26, they’re going to bring holy hell down on us.

We have to win. Charlie Kirk knew that, and you know that.

Thank you very much. Next man up.

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