Steve Bannon takes impeachment battle to the radio waves
Steve Bannon says Donald Trump is hurtling toward impeachment but he can turn it to his advantage.
Steve Bannon is back on the front line of US politics, spearheading the conservative resistance to the looming impeachment of Donald Trump. From the basement of his Washington townhouse, Trump’s former chief strategist now conducts a daily radio show bluntly titled War Room: Impeachment.
“As sure as the turning of the Earth (Democrat house leader) Nancy Pelosi is going to impeach the President,” Bannon tells The Australian in his lounge room after recording the 13th episode of his new one-hour daily show.
“The Democrats are running a master class in political warfare and disinformation and bringing the grassroots together.
“So every day we are just going to get the information out there so the American people know the opportunity cost of this, from trade to China, because impeachment is all anyone here is going to talk about for the next 14 weeks.”
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Bannon thought of the idea of his own gig two weeks ago, when during an appearance on another conservative radio show, he was stunned that the host and the Trump supporters who called in did not seem to believe Trump was hurtling towards impeachment.
“The host goes ‘you’re wrong, it’s deep state, fake news, witch hunt’ and I said ‘yeah maybe all that but impeachment is going to happen’,” he says.
He wants to end the complacency of Republicans who have not digested the reality of the impeachment of their president, and ensure the impeachment saga ultimately helps, rather than hurts, Trump’s chances of re-election. So he created his show to focus America’s conservatives on the fact that impeachment is looming and needs to be fought.
The show is being run by Bannon with the help of key conservative allies and is separate to the White House’s official efforts to fight the impeachment inquiry. The War Room, which airs live on at least six stations in the US, is also a podcast and streams on the website WarRoom.org.
“It’s already had a big impact,” says Bannon. “We’ve become the centrepiece of this pushback.”
On the day The Australian visits, Bannon has former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus as his guest with regular co-hosts Jason Miller, the former communication director of the Trump campaign in 2016, and Raheem Kassam, former chief adviser to Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
Bannon, dressed in his usual crumpled style, sits at the head of a table in a makeshift radio studio in his former dining room sipping alternately between coffee and a can of Red Bull as he debates the impeachment inquiry with former Trump chief of staff Priebus.
“Remember that her (Pelosi’s) strategy from the beginning was Napoleonic,” Bannon tells his listeners. “March divided, fight united, they are going to bring it all together at the very end … but they don’t have their feet underneath them … facts are our friends.’’
Priebus replies: “I think it’s time for the Republicans to start arguing on the merits of the issue rather than just the process of the impeachment inquiry” — even though he believes the process established by the Democrats is a sham. Priebus believes that even if Trump did everything he is being accused of, it still doesn’t rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanours” which would justify impeachment.
“This impeachment is going to engulf the media, it’s going to engulf Washington, it’s going to suck all the oxygen out of the air,” says Priebus who was White House chief of staff from January to July 2017. “The President could just play the victim here and say ‘look I’m putting policies in place that have record low unemployment numbers … wages are starting to increase, I’m doing these things despite this fiasco over here’. Play that out in the Midwest and it will run,” he says.
Priebus says the Republicans only need to win the hearts and minds of a small number of voters to secure a second term for Trump.
“We are going to enter into an election (but) this is not a national election,’ he said. ‘This is an election in eight states among 300,000 people that live somewhere in the middle (politically).’’
Priebus says the biggest gift to Trump was if Democrats presidential frontrunner Elizabeth Warren, who has a far left agenda on healthcare, taxation and the economy, became his opponent in next year’s election.
Bannon believes it’s a good thing that America is so divided over impeachment and politics. “I don’t think it’s bad that we’re divided, this is how things get worked through in a democracy,” he says.
He says his radio show will be on the frontline of the conservative cause against impeachment until the process is over. “This is going to be a great TV series, it will be quite dramatic,” he says. “People don’t listen to reason, they just fight. But I like fights, so if there’s going to be a fight, let’s fight.”
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia