Bannon, heading to prison, says Biden withdrawal would backfire for Trump
The longtime Trump advisor will begin serving his four-month prison sentence on Monday after he refused to comply with a congressional subpoena that investigated the attack of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
The former adviser to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican candidate and podcast host — who will be reporting on Monday for a four-month sentence in prison for contempt of Congress — predicted that President Biden’s performance during the debate would force him to withdraw from his race. This will deny Republicans their weakest rival.
Bannon, the man who led Trump’s campaign in the last months of 2016, said, “I think the campaign is starting to awaken after spiking a football, wrongly,” during an interview on Sunday.
“Trump’s victory on Thursday was a Pyrrhic one. Bannon said, “You’re going take out a man you know you can defeat and beat badly and we’re gonna have a Wild Card.”
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The Biden campaign acknowledged that the president had a poor debate performance, but was adamant it didn’t affect the race’s fundamentals. Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager, wrote in a memo sent on Saturday that a drop in polls that showed Biden behind Trump even before the debate would be attributed more to bad news coverage than to a shift in voter sentiment.
Bannon predicted, however, that the debate in which Biden’s answers were difficult to understand and he appeared to lose track of his thoughts repeatedly, would result in a decline in poll numbers, one that Trump would not be able to survive. Biden’s withdrawal would be a major blow to Trump’s campaign. The goal of the campaign has always been to unseat the incumbent.
Steven Cheung, spokesman for the Trump campaign, said O’Malley’s memo “threw every potential replacement under a bus” by highlighting their polling weakness. He said that the Republicans now have to deal with having a candidate who is inept as their nominee.
Bannon maintains occasional contact with Trump’s aides. He has ruled out a future role in the White House or the campaign for 2024. He praised current campaign leadership. Bannon suggested that if Biden withdraws from the race, Republicans should take on the messy task of replacing him, after Democratic primary voters have already cast their votes.
He said: “We must weaponize the process to show the nation just how callous, selfish and self-serving these people were. They didn’t place the country first but their own ambitions first.”
Bannon added, “They’re searching for a Messiah and then there’s the honeymoon.” By the time the Democratic Convention in late August comes around, the atmosphere must be toxic enough that Michelle Obama, Gavin Newsom, or whomever else is running the convention will start with a deficit of at least five to seven points.
He compared the fallout of the debate with earlier discussions on whether House Republicans should move forward with efforts to impeach Biden, for fear that they would weaken him to the point where he wouldn’t run for re-election.
He predicted that Republicans would win 340 Electoral College votes in the November presidential race. They also predicted they would gain 53 or 54 Senate Seats and half a dozen House Seats.
Bannon was convicted in July 2022 on two counts of contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In July 2022, he was found guilty of two counts of contempt for refusing to obey a subpoena issued by the House Committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Bannon, who had encouraged Trump supporters to visit Washington on that day, has remained mum about his activities since the mob became violent, including two phone calls with Trump on that day. Bannon claimed executive immunity, but no court has accepted it.
Bannon said that he would continue to guide his audience via emails and interviews during his sentence.
He said, “They cannot shut me up.” “I will be even bigger when I get out of prison.”
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