Steve Bannon says ‘Maga army’ is ready as he reports to prison

Former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon has told the BBC he has no fear of going to prison or watching the former president’s 2024 campaign from behind bars.

After being found guilty of contempt of Congress, the man who was considered the power behind the scenes at the White House at the start of Trump’s 2017 presidential term showed up at a federal prison in Connecticut just before noon Monday .

He is still appealing his conviction for refusing to appear before the committee of lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Bannon claimed that conversations he had with the president that day should be protected by executive privilege.

But last week the Supreme Court ruled that he could not delay his sentence until the appeal was heard, and Bannon will now face his four-month sentence.

“I’m proud to have gone to prison today,” Bannon said outside the low-security prison just before turning himself in. “Not only do I have no regrets, but I’m proud of what I did.”

Asked what he expected in the coming months, Bannon replied: “a Trump victory.”

In an interview with the BBC, he said he did not care about missing a crucial part of Trump’s campaign because there is a “Maga army” ready to ensure the former president defeats Joe Biden and returns to the White House.

“I’ve been serving my country for about a decade focusing on this issue,” he said, referring to Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) policy and slogan. “If I have to do it in a prison, I do it in a prison, it makes no difference.”

A former Goldman Sachs banker turned alt-right media figure, Bannon was seen by Democrats as the mastermind behind not only Trump’s extraordinary political rise but also some of his most controversial policies.

He gained national prominence as chief executive of Donald Trump’s victorious 2016 presidential campaign, then became one of the most powerful figures in Washington as chief White House strategist early in the Trump administration.

However, seven months after arriving at the White House, he was fired and spent some time away from Trump’s inner circle.

The difficult aspect of Bannon’s personality is that “most commentators alternate between calling him a mastermind and saying he’s irrelevant,” said Benjamin Teitelbaum, the author of War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers.

“He’s both extremes at once.”

In the meantime, Bannon appears to have managed to return to Trump’s inner circle, and for the past five years he has hosted the War Room, where he has continued to support the former president and his movement.

Bannon’s real “war room” is in the basement of an elegant Capitol Hill townhouse, just steps from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Every surface is crammed with hardback books on politics, finance, and conspiracy theories. On the mantelpiece, among an assortment of religious iconography, is a printed quote that Bannon – who considers himself a shepherd of the populist Maga program – said: “There are NO conspiracies, but there are NO coincidences. »

The immense “Project 2025” manual takes pride of place in the room. The 900-page work written by the Heritage Foundation – a conservative think tank – contains detailed plans for how a second Trump administration will transform the US government and the power of the executive branch.

We were surrounded by the lights, cameras and microphones that Bannon uses to broadcast for four hours every weekday when he told me that he and his show had played a major role in empowering and mobilizing thousands of Trump-supporting activists, whom he called “street fighters.”

Although he will not be able to lead them from prison, he said that this “Maga army” that “cannot and will not stop until the final victory” will easily continue its mission.

After all, he says, the populist Maga movement is bigger than him – and even Donald Trump. According to Bannon, it doesn’t matter who delivers his message.

Bannon continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. In reality, courts have dismissed dozens of lawsuits challenging the results and no evidence of widespread fraud has emerged.

On Election Day, November 5, Bannon declared that the “Maga army” would be ready to deploy across the country, at polling stations and in vote counting, to ensure the former president’s victory.

Those supporters — including election observers and lawyers — would challenge ballots they believe should not go to Joe Biden, he said.

Mr. Teitelbaum doubts, however, that Bannon’s audience is “organized enough to be deployed in the manner he describes.”

Confident of Trump’s victory in November, Bannon was eager to discuss what the former president’s agenda would be once he returned to government — and the War Room host left prison.

He believes the next Trump White House will be influenced by the ideas he promoted on his show.

Immigration remains a top priority, Bannon said. He said he was sure that on “day one,” Trump would close the border to “stop the invasion,” then launch “the mass expulsion of 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants.”

The former president would then turn to the economy, he said, and maintain the tax cuts of his first term that largely benefited wealthy individuals and corporations. He said the Republican would then end the “forever wars” in Ukraine and Gaza, though it was unclear how Trump would do that.

Bannon hasn’t shied away from discussing how a second Trump administration would target his political enemies.

Trump himself has said that if he is re-elected, he could have people he believes have wronged him investigated, particularly those who have been involved in the various criminal proceedings against him.

Law enforcement and the military would all be “held accountable” under a future Trump administration, Bannon said, and President Joe Biden would also be prosecuted.

Despite accusing the president of “selling out the country,” the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee investigating the allegations has produced no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the president, nor has it called for his impeachment.

But for now, it’s Bannon who’s going to jail. And just before he left, he left an ominous warning about any election result that doesn’t see Trump as the winner.

It’s “impossible,” he told me, that Joe Biden will win the November election. And, therefore, there is no chance that he or his “Maga army” will accept the result if the president is re-elected.

As he said recently at a conservative political conference, he views the election as a zero-sum game — and, he told the cheering crowd of Trump supporters, it will result in “victory or the death “.

With additional reporting by Rebecca Hartmann and Ana Faguy