“The Federalist” founder Sean Davis says President Trump knows not to be swept up in a repeat of the Iraq War propaganda playbook, on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “This right now feels like they’re speed-running the entire Iraq war propaganda campaign and trying to compress it into like a week and a half,” he said. “This type of increased tempo and pace in the propaganda suggests that they know they’re in real trouble. They know they have a problem. And you could see that in how angry they got yesterday when that two-week pause was announced, because they had built up this hyper-frenzy campaign-and it clearly didn’t work, thankfully.” “They’ve run out of tricks really at this point. Like, they went from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds. And once you get to that point, the only thing you can do past that is just make completely emotional, extortive threats. And I think we’re going to see them go into overdrive with that over the next two weeks if they likely try to upend any deal that we might be able to get with the Iranians.”

SEAN DAVIS: Everything’s still super fluid. It feels to me as though the fever has broken a little bit. I’d say midweek, the war drums were being banged so loudly and people were getting so hysterical that it felt like the whole thing might fall apart any second. Thankfully, we have a president who’s been through this stuff before. He’s seen all the nonsense that was done with foreign policy in the early 2000s. I think he’s patient. I think he would much rather talk than bomb or go to war. And so I think right now we’re in a critical period where the president, to me, seems as though he wants to get a deal done. He wants something that doesn’t require yet another war in the Middle East. And yet, on the other side, I think we’re gonna have people and entities who are going to spend the next two weeks doing nothing but trying to blow up the possibility of any deal. STEVE BANNON: Let me ask you about-because this is what’s most disturbing. President Trump is very even-handed, thinks things through. As Jack Posobiec said yesterday so brilliantly, “Measure twice, cut once.” But this whole drive, the war fever-the whole, and it’s so-it’s the playbook. It’s the exact Iraq playbook. We go from-this is why I want you on. You had this tweet where you said we segued from having to stop the nuclear program to regime change. And you have all this loose talk on some of these networks and these pundits about regime change when you’re talking about an ancient civilization, 90 million people-you know, something the Romans fought the Persians for 2,000 years, right, to a draw. Just give me your thoughts there before you go to a break-your thoughts about this drive for regime change by the propagandist warmongers that are amongst us. SEAN DAVIS: Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, before the Iraq war we probably had a good year plus-maybe 15 months-where they were beating the drums. They were building their case. It was new stuff every day, but it was a fairly deliberate, long, drawn-out process. You know, I think it was a terrible idea in hindsight, but you had congressional approval for it. This right now feels like they’re speed-running the entire Iraq war propaganda campaign and trying to compress it into like a week and a half-and are using social media to create a hysterical hype cycle. So much of these mobs are obviously false. They’re run by bots, and they’re meant to create this sense of chaos and panic to force you into an emotional decision right now because they don’t want to give you time to think about the ramifications of any decision you might make. And to me, this type of increased tempo and pace in the propaganda suggests that they know they’re in real trouble. They know they have a problem. And you could see that in how angry they got yesterday when that two-week pause was announced, because they had built up this hyper-frenzy campaign-and it clearly didn’t work, thankfully. STEVE BANNON: Sean, this thing of sense of urgency and then the upsell to regime change-this has clearly been rejected by President Trump. He couldn’t be more adamant about it. What are your thoughts on how this plays out going forward? Because obviously the Fox News propaganda crew wants regime change here, and they may feel that they took a licking yesterday, but they are far from finished. This is not the way Murdoch and these guys roll. They never give up. Your thoughts, sir? SEAN DAVIS: When you look at people like Bill Kristol, you look at what neocons have been pushing for a long time-it wasn’t ever just about Iraq, or just getting regime change in Libya, or just getting regime change in Russia (which they were talking about like crazy people for years and using the Ukraine war as a proxy to take down the Russian regime as if somehow it would be replaced by anything better). Iran regime change is really the crown jewel. That’s the thing they’ve been going after for a very, very long time. And you know, I’m not that old-I’m in my 40s-but basically my entire life we’ve been told they’re about to get a nuclear weapon. They’re about to get a nuclear weapon. It’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s going to happen tomorrow. It’s been going on since, you know, the ’80s or ’90s. And so I think what we’re going to see is a massive ramp-up that: “Iran’s about to attack us. It’s about to attack our allies. If we don’t do this now, we might get nuked.” Even though Iran doesn’t have ballistic missile capability coming at us. I think we are going to see so much emotionally extortive threats about what could happen or what might happen if we don’t do this thing right now. And we know this because of just how quickly they went from, “Hey, Israel’s gonna take out this capability,” to “Hey, actually we need to get rid of the regime there,” and “Oh, by the way, we’re gonna need the U.S. to help with it.” They’ve run out of tricks really at this point. Like, they went from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds. And once you get to that point, the only thing you can do past that is just make completely emotional, extortive threats. And I think we’re going to see them go into overdrive with that over the next two weeks if they likely try to upend any deal that we might be able to get with the Iranians.

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