On Monday, former President Donald Trump talked to Yahoo Finance about his relationship with former adviser Steve Bannon, and what Bannon did to regain his favor after the two had a falling out.
“Steve didn’t get along with certain people in the administration. So I understand that. That happens. And it happens with all administrations, frankly. And for a period of time, he didn’t– just didn’t do it,” Trump said. “And I understand that. But if you look at Steve over the last three years, he sees what a great job we’ve done as an administration when you look at all of the things that I’ve enumerated plus many others.”
When asked if Bannon was advising him near the end of his presidency, Trump flatly denied it.
“No, not at all. No, I haven’t spoken to Steve almost at all. No, he wasn’t. But I know that he’s got a show that’s very successful,” Trump claimed.
It was brought to Trump’s attention that Bannon claims to have advised Trump during the time period in question.
“So is he lying when he says he was talking to you in the last months of your administration?” Yahoo finance asked.
“Very little. We would speak very little. Now, Steve and I spoke very little. But I will tell you, he was very supportive,” Trump replied.
Bannon recently claimed that he plotted with then-President Donald Trump to “kill the Biden presidency in the crib” before the Jan. 6 insurgency on the US Capitol.
During his War Room broadcast, Bannon showed a video of journalists Robert Costa and Bob Woodward discussing the events leading up to the melee on January 6.
“You look at January 5th, we discovered that Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, was there at the Willard Hotel blocks from the White House with Rudy Giuliani, having an almost war-room-type meeting with other Trump allies the eve before the January 6th insurrection,” Costa recently stated while appearing on MSNBC. “And Bannon had actually been in close touch with President Trump for days before January 6th. Based on our reporting, he privately told President Trump to have a reckoning on January 6th. And he said to the president, it’s time to kill the Biden presidency in the crib.”
Bannon was proud to admit that the conversation had occurred.
“Yeah, because his legitimacy,” Bannon said of Biden. “42% of the American people think that Biden did not win the presidency legitimately.”
“It killed itself,” he continued. “Just look at what this illegitimate regime is doing. It killed itself. OK? But we told you from the very beginning, just expose it, just expose it, never back down, never give up and this thing will implode.”
Bannon made headlines in late August after suggesting that Trump should become House Speaker and lead an impeachment drive against President Joe Biden before retiring and running for President in 2024.
Bannon also states he is assembling “shock troops” made up of other former Trump officials and like-minded conservatives in the event Republicans retake the White House in 2024 with the intention of immediately refashioning the U.S. government to their liking.
According to the article, Bannon, who resurfaced following Trump’s 2020 presidential loss to Joe Biden, met with “Scores of former Trump political appointees gathered at a GOP social club Wednesday night” to encourage them to start planning for their future.
In an interview with MSNBC by phone, Bannon admitted, “If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately,” before boasting, “I gave ’em fire and brimstone.”
According to NBC’s Jonathan Allen, “Bannon, who ran former President Donald Trump’s first campaign and later worked as a top adviser in the White House, said that Trump’s agenda was delayed by the challenges of quickly filling roughly 4,000 slots for presidential appointees at federal agencies and the steep learning curve for political officials who were new to Washington.”
With that in mind, the article states that the former Trump adviser appeared at the request of the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees, which serves as a central clearinghouse for GOP officials seeking re-election.
According to Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, one of the group’s organizers, “There are so many statutes and regulations as well as agency and departmental policies, it can be very overwhelming when you first come in. This is an organization that has a very narrow, clear and much-needed purpose, and, once it is operational, I think it could do a lot of good not just for the Republican Party but for the country.”
Trump has raged publicly about career federal employees and Obama administration political appointee holdovers, referring to them collectively as the “deep state.”
When the next Republican president enters office, Bannon wants to see pre-trained teams ready to parachute into federal agencies. That mostly refers to the levels of presidential appointees whose positions do not require Senate confirmation.
“We’re going to have a sweeping victory in 2022, and that’s just the preamble to a sweeping victory in 2024, and this time we’re going to be ready — and have a MAGA perspective, MAGA policies, not the standard Republican policies,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and describing a 2024 electoral victory as a “second term.”
According to a source who attended but is not one of the group’s organizers, the launch party on Wednesday drew around 200 former officials from several Republican administrations — primarily Trump appointees.
Shapiro stated that organizers are still determining who would run the group, but he stated that the necessity for institutional memory is obvious.
“What we’re hoping to do is build a base of people that can be available as a support system for political appointees who are coming in for the first time,” he said. “It’s easy, if you know the rules, to accomplish your objective.”
