Steve Bannon, a longtime Donald Trump ally who orchestrated his successful 2016 presidential campaign, was just hours out of federal prison when he returned to peddling unfounded conspiracy theories, urging supporters to make sure Democrats “cannot steal the election”.
Bannon, who early on Tuesday morning completed a four-month sentence in Danbury, Connecticut, for flouting a congressional subpoena in an investigation of the January 6 US Capitol attack, fanned the flames of electoral unease on his first War Room podcast post-release.
War Room has become an influential podcast on the right in the US and in Republican circles. Bannon, 70, urged Trump devotees to hit the polls next week, telling listeners: “We’re going to deliver a knockout blow to your progressive insanity on 5 November and then we’re going to secure the deal after that.”
Bannon invoked his and Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen and that former House speaker Nancy Pelosi was behind his imprisonment. Promotion of this widely debunked claim that Biden stole the election helped fuel the deadly insurrection during which Trump supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
“She sent me to a federal prison as a political prisoner, to do two things, to make sure that she tried to tamp down the power of this show, right, tamp down the power of the show, and also to break me,” Bannon said. “Nancy Pelosi, take out your number two pencil and write this down: this show has never been more powerful.
“And number two, the four months in federal prison, not only didn’t break me, it empowered me. I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I can see clearly, just like in 2016 and in 2020, exactly what went on here and what we have to do to defeat it,” Bannon also said.
He went on the attack against Marc Elias, a veteran election lawyer on Harris’s legal team. “He’s literally laid out a blueprint of how they’re going to steal the election,” he said.
Bannon’s release took place just one week before Trump and Kamala Harris face off on election day. The far-right provocateur could not have emerged at a better time for Trump.
Indeed, Trump’s third White House run is hardly a slam-dunk for the ex-president, given neck-and-neck polls in key swing states. As Democrats ramp up their campaign, repeatedly hammering Trump on gutting reproductive rights, he has also suffered political blows of his own making.
A rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden arena on Saturday prompted numerous comparisons to a 1939 Nazi event at this same venue. Tony Hinchcliffe, a speaker at the rally, voiced racist commentary about Puerto Ricans, which many noted comprise a growing population in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
He went on the attack about comparisons between this rally and Nazis. Bannon, who often deliberately uses inflammatory language, claimed that he had “never heard” this kind of rhetoric against American citizens and described the event as “fantastic” and “amazing”.
Bannon repeatedly warned listeners and Trump supporters to go to the polls and claimed that Democrats had several avenues for challenging results such as, he claimed, by pushing for extended counting of ballots.
“If they can’t nullify right there, they want at least to delegitimize his victory,” he said.
Despite warnings that the vote would be stolen, Bannon and several of his guests also seemed to recognize that Trump would not necessarily win. They urged supporters not to be cocky and assume there would be a second presidency in doubling down on their get-out-the-vote message.
“It would be great to win the popular vote. It would be great to win some of these states, be great to do all this. It’s great for President Trump’s second term,” Bannon said, but now wasn’t the time to think in terms of future success. “The blue wall must fall.”
