Steve Bannon Is Heading to Prison. He’ll Still Have Influence in Trump World.
WASHINGTON—Former Trump aide Steve Bannon had a message for his fan base Friday, just before his four-month contempt-of-Congress prison sentence, linked to the Jan. 6 investigation, was set to begin.
“Do not write a letter to me at all. It will not be read,” he said on his popular podcast “War Room.”
“You know why? I don’t want you taking time to write a letter. I want you to get to work. This is all about victory,” he said, referring to this year’s presidential election. “There is no substitute for victory.”
As Bannon prepares to report to a low-security prison in Danbury, Conn., on Monday, he remains a key ally to Donald Trump, who, according to people familiar with their relationship, values Bannon’s advocacy and influence in the movement. The former president also values the reach of Bannon’s various media endeavors, including the “War Room” podcast, these people said.
Since taking on a leading role in Trump’s first bid for the White House, Bannon has gone from a right-wing agitator relatively unknown outside the party’s ultraconservative base, to a household name and icon of the MAGA movement. Despite a sometimes rocky personal relationship with Trump, Bannon has cemented his role as a commander for the presumptive Republican nominee’s army of loyalists.
Those who know him say Bannon has masterfully tapped into the grievances of some Americans who have long felt their influence slipping away to corrupt or inept governments and liberal morals. Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly once said Bannon “fights dirty.” Democrats have called Bannon’s militant approach to politics and embrace of conspiracies dangerous.
“To the ruling class in this country, they’re right, I am dangerous,” Bannon told The Wall Street Journal in an interview the day before he was set to turn himself in. “And guess what? I’m gonna be a lot more dangerous. So they’re right.”
Bannon says he has “zero” intention of once again working at the White House if Trump wins a second term, instead saying he views his job now, as a mouthpiece for the MAGA movement through “the command field station of the ‘War Room,’” to be more important than ever.
He says his role as a messenger for the Trump cause won’t change behind bars. “There’s really no difference, other than the fact that I’ll be in a federal prison and have prison obligations,” Bannon said.
Trump’s affinity for Bannon was on display in mid-June when Bannon, in the middle of interviewing Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake live on “War Room,” interrupted her to take a call. “Hey, Mr. President, I’m live on TV, can I call you back?” he said, apparently speaking to Trump.
Several people familiar with their relationship said they call each other from time to time, and that Trump appreciates Bannon’s undeniable appeal to the base.
“Even when they weren’t speaking, Trump would often ask how Bannon is doing,” one person familiar with their relationship said.
Trump showed his soft spot for Bannon when he took the stage at a June 17 conference hosted by Turning Point Action, a conservative group with growing political clout.
“He’s a smart guy, and he’s actually got a big heart but I won’t tell people that, because I’ll ruin his reputation, Steve Bannon,” Trump said, noting that he tunes into “War Room” often. “He’s great. He’s a smart cookie.”
Bannon, like Trump, has shunned what they describe as politically correct commentary, instead focusing on a way to communicate their vision of America through often-inflammatory rhetoric and sometimes with conspiracies. That’s why the fan base of Bannon’s podcast continues to grow, Bannon said.
“We take geopolitics and capital markets to a working-class audience, and we make it urgent and give it a driving force of the impact on their lives and audience,” Bannon said. “We’re hard-core populists, and…as the economic conditions of working class and lower middle-class people deteriorate, we’re giving them something that is very sophisticated.”
A Trump campaign official, who is close to both men, said that Bannon is the “ultimate honey badger. He never backs down or gives in, even when many of the establishment types are quick to cave.”
Bannon “remains a dominant voice within the Make America Great Again movement,” the campaign official said.
A native of Norfolk, Va., Bannon served a few years in the Navy after graduating college. One of the formative events of his life came when he was deployed to the Gulf of Oman in 1980, in support of a secret mission that would send helicopters to retrieve American hostages in Iran. When the mission failed, Bannon equated it to the failed leadership of then-President Jimmy Carter, and would embrace politics going forward, as a Reaganite, when Ronald Reagan blocked Carter’s chance at a second term.
Bannon went on to become an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, after which he and several colleagues launched Bannon & Co., a boutique investment firm. He would later serve as a top executive of several companies, most notably, as executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, the far-right syndicated news and opinion website, which has, over the years, been widely condemned for featuring racist, sexist and antisemitic content.
Bannon and Trump found commonalities in their approach to politics and outlook on society, and their view on global competition and national security.
He also has some stark differences with Trump, particularly on their economic outlook. As do many of Bannon’s followers, he said.
“We think there has to be—not just changes to the tax structure—we think there has to be a real repatriation or reallocation of assets,” Bannon said, adding, Trump doesn’t agree with a lot of his economic ideas.
“Go back to June of 2017, when I gave my two cents to President Trump about the tax cuts and said ‘the top bracket, we should increase it, not cut, we should increase to over 50%’,” Bannon said, drawing one distinction.
As his 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton flailed in the final weeks before Election Day, Trump named Bannon chief executive of his campaign.
He says when he first got to know Trump, he thought he would be very popular. “He’s not a Republican,” Bannon said, reflecting on Trump’s earliest foray into politics. “He’s truly a populist, and it was very powerful.”
When Trump took office, Bannon was appointed as the president’s chief White House strategist.
“From my early days in the White House looking at Steve’s MAGA white board, he perfectly captured the policy agenda that must be followed,” Peter Navarro, another Trump associate sentenced for a contempt-of-Congress conviction, said in an email from prison.
But Bannon lost favor with the president within months of taking office. Trump lamented that Bannon, speaking to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward for a book on the Trump White House, suggested that Donald Trump Jr.’s controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign was potentially “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
Trump began referring to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve” and boasted that he “dumped” Bannon “like a dog.” The two barely talked for five years, Bannon said, save brief conversations after the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Bannon remained a disciple of Trump’s policy and political worldview.
Bannon launched the “War Room” in 2019. His fan base has rapidly grown, and the podcast often releases up to four episodes a day, five to six days a week.
Bannon, similar to Trump, has been accused of peddling conspiracies in recent years that have fueled the anger of MAGA and other far-right movements, from stolen elections to Covid-19 vaccines.
“Bannon’s show stands out among political podcasts both in terms of sheer volume of content created,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, the author of a 2023 Brookings study about podcasts that promote unsubstantiated and false claims. Wirtschafter said Bannon pushed ideas such as that “Sharpies were used to disenfranchise voters, and COVID was a plot to deny Trump a second term, among many others.”
All the while, his legal troubles have mounted.
His refusal to testify in front of a congressional committee investigating the Capitol riot resulted in a conviction on two charges of contempt of Congress in 2022—a sentence he tried, unsuccessfully, to delay. If he serves the full sentence, he’ll be released just five days before Election Day.
At that same Turning Point Action convention that Trump spoke at in June, Bannon described Nov. 5 as “judgment day,” and inauguration day will be “accountability day” for Trump supporters.
“This has nothing to do with retribution. This has nothing to do with revenge…this has to do with justice,” he said, ending his speech with the ominous warning that Republicans have two choices: “victory or death.”
Alex Leary contributed to this article.
Write to Vivian Salama at [email protected]