MAGA luminary Steve Bannon backs AUKUS and slams US support for Ukraine ‘slaughterhouse’

Steve Bannon has downplayed concerns a future Trump administration might not honour the Biden administration’s promise to sell Australia Virginia class nuclear submarines.

Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. Picture: AFP

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is likely to back the sale of nuclear sub­marines to Australia and sees the nation as a vital ally of the US, one of his more influential supporters has declared.

Steve Bannon, the man who led Mr Trump’s 2016 campaign and remains a close adviser, has dismissed speculation that Mr Trump could hinder the AUKUS pact if he retakes the White House from Democrat incumbent Joe Biden this November.

The former White House chief strategist has also promised to push for Julian Assange’s release should Mr Trump win a second term as president, as many polls predict.

Mr Bannon, for years among the top intellectual leaders of Mr Trump’s MAGA movement, praised Australia and suggested “circumstances would have to be very different” before a second Trump administration undermined the AUKUS security pact, which anticipates Australia’s purchase of US submarines starting from the 2030s.

“My belief is President Trump looks at Australia as a vital ally … he thinks a lot of Australia, which has been such a great friend, including in Vietnam,” he told The Australian. “Australia is a committed partner. I think the subs sale is important and it shows we’re working together,” he said of the AUKUS pact.

“I don’t know anyone on the National Security Committee, anyone in MAGA land, that thinks the Australians either haven’t pulled their weight or when the balloon goes up they wouldn’t pull their weight.”

It came as Mr Trump’s last remaining rival for the Republican nomination, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, also said she would back the AUKUS pact and the sale of submarines if her long-shot bid for the presidency were to succeed.

Bannon, 70, a former naval officer, investment banker and media executive, served as Mr Trump’s top political adviser in the White House in 2017 after spearheading his victorious campaign over Hillary Clinton.

His six-days-a-week live War Room podcast has become among the most popular news sites for Trump supporters, reportedly downloaded more than 100 million times since its 2019 launch.

“If you’ve watched the president’s truth social tweets, there’s a lot of similarity: we are the strongest and biggest magnet for Trump supporters, and now we’re getting more powerful and I think President Trump really appreciates our content,” he said, adding that it had “a Big Australian audience since Covid”.

Mr Bannon predicted Mr Trump would pick a female as his vice-presidential running mate, downplaying any chance of a match up with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, for which he had advocated. “That ship has sailed; MAGA in our country is principally a women’s driven movement … So I think President Trump will end up selecting one of the females.”

Mr Bannon’s comments should reassure the government after top Republican-aligned defence advisers Elbridge Colby and Alex Velez-Green in January told The Australian a second Trump administration might thwart the promised sale of Virginia-class subs if US submarine production remained below target.

Mr Bannon, who is fighting contempt of congress charges over his refusal to appear before the January 6th inquiry, said he and other MAGA commentators would try to prevail on a future president Trump to end the US pursuit of WikiLeaks founder Mr Assange, who is facing potentially life imprisonment in the US for publishing embarrassing war secrets in 2010.

“I know where (Mr Trump’s) inclinations I think would be, but I think Tucker and Alex Jones and myself and General (Michael) Flynn and others would be strong advocates for [his release],” he said, stressing he hadn’t raised the issue directly with Mr Trump.

“He definitely wants to take down the ‘deep state’,” he added.

Mr Bannon also hosed down fears Mr Trump would withdraw the US from NATO, pointing to how congress has already tried to tie the hands of a second Trump administration, passing a law in December that prevented the president from leaving NATO without a two-thirds vote in the Senate.

“They did this to make sure Trump does not have leverage over NATO nations to spend more; I happen to believe it’s not constitutional,” he said, stressing that European nations would still have to shoulder greater defence spending.

“With our defence budget at a trillion dollars right now and our debt at $US35 trillion, we need real lines … Right now NATO’s not an alliance, it’s a protectorate,” he said, taking aim at UK support for US attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen. “The British combatants can’t even reach the Houthis; they have to fly from Cyprus, they don’t have any logistics down in that part of the world … They’re not really helping,” he said.

Mr Bannon said the proposal before congress to provide $US60bn to Ukraine had “no chance” of success.

“The United States is not going to put another nickel into Ukraine; MAGA and President Trump are going to shut this thing down, no more money to put more Ukrainian kids into the slaughterhouse”.