Thread: Steve Bannon Declares ‘Season of War’ Against GOP Establishment

Steve Bannon Declares ‘Season of War’ Against GOP Establishment

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Scott Olson/Getty Images

by ADAM SHAW14 Oct 20173


Breitbart News Executive Chairman and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon declared a “season of war” against the GOP establishment in an electrifying speech at the Values Voter Summit Saturday, warning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell: “these folks are coming for you.”

“There’s a time and season for everything, and now it’s a season of war against the GOP establishment,” Bannon told the gathering in Washington, DC. “It’s no longer acceptable to come and pat you on the head and tell you everything’s going to be fine [if you] just get these guys an office.”


Bannon is planning a full-scale assault in the 2018 midterms, reportedly planningchallenges on every GOP senator up for re-election (except for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz) and is believed to be eyeing a number of House and gubernatorial races as well.


“This is not my war. This is our war. And y’all didn’t start it. The establishment started it,” he said.
Some of the potential challenges are likely to be seen as long shots, but Bannon has the wind in his sails after Judge Roy Moore beat establishment-backed Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) in last month’s Alabama Senate primary runoff, despite being outspent 10-1 by forces allied to McConnell.


In his speech Saturday, Bannon basked in that victory and warned McConnell that his position was more precarious than ever.

“Up on Capitol Hill, because I’ve been getting calls, it’s like before the Ides of March. They’re just finding out who’s going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar,” Bannon said. “Yeah, Mitch, the donors aren’t happy, they’ve all left you.”


He told the crowd that Moore’s victory has spooked the establishment elites as it shows that money doesn’t matter, even going so far as to say that the more money they spend, “the fewer votes they get.”


Bannon warned Republicans who think they can hide from backing President Trump that their failure to support him will haunt them in the midterm primary seasons.


“No one can run and hide on this one, these folks are coming for you,” he warned. “The day of taking a few conservatives votes and hiding is over. These folks aren’t rubes, these folks aren’t idiots.”


Bannon also argued that the power of the Alabama vote can be shown in recent developments from the White House. He noted that since Moore’s Alabama victory, the Trump administration has issued an executive order on religious freedom, stopped the Obamacare insurance bailouts, pulled the U.S. out of UNESCO, decertified Iran’s compliance with the Iran nuclear deal, and pushed for a middle-class tax cut.

“Those are not random events folks, that is victory begets victory,” he said. “We owe that to Judge Roy Moore and the good men and women in Alabama because that all came from them.”


He urged Republican lawmakers who were on the fence on Trump to be more vocal in their support of his agenda as a way to avoid the populist storm brewing ahead of the 2018 midterms: “You can come to a stick and say ‘I am not going to vote for Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader’ and you can come to a stick and you can say ‘I’m going to do away with the filibuster so the president can implement his program.'”


“But until that time, they’re coming for you,” he warned.




http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...establishment/

War against Republican establishment.




https://youtu.be/phpT_yukNks

Bannon believes Trump only has 30% chance of completing full term

Bannon promises 'season of war' against McConnell, GOP establishment


By Andrew Restuccia


10/14/2017 01:02 PM EDT




Steve Bannon taunted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday and vowed to challenge any Senate Republican who doesn’t publicly condemn attacks on President Donald Trump.

“Yeah, Mitch, the donors are not happy. They’ve all left you. We’ve cut your oxygen off,” Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said during a speech to religious conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.

Referencing Shakespeare, Bannon compared McConnell to Julius Caesar, adding that lawmakers are wondering who will emerge as Brutus, the character who reluctantly joins in on the assassination of Caesar for the benefit of Rome.


Bannon, now the executive chairman of Breitbart News, bashed Senate Republicans by name for not publicly distancing themselves from Sen. Bob Corker’s criticism of Trump, reserving particular animus for Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Dean Heller (Nev.) and Deb Fischer (Neb.).
“Nobody can run and hide on this one,” he said. “These folks are coming for you. The days of taking a few nice conservative votes and hiding are over.”


Corker, who announced last month that he will not seek reelection, has infuriated Trump and his allies in recent weeks with a series of public rebukes of the president, including raising fears that the president is setting the United States "on the path to World War III." Trump, in turn, has trashed Corker on Twitter.


But Bannon offered his Senate targets an opportunity to redeem themselves, in his eyes. “There’s time for a mea culpa,” Bannon declared. “You can come to a stick and condemn Sen. Corker and you can come to a stick, a microphone, and say I’m not going to vote for Mitch McConnell as majority leader.”



Bannon said Trump's decision to not continue funding Obamacare subsidies, announced Thursday, was designed to "blow up" the health-care law and insurance marketplaces.


"Gonna blow those exchanges up, right?" Bannon said.


In a statement to reporters, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday night the administration concluded that Congress had not appropriated money for the subsidies and thus they were "unlawful payments" to "bailout insurance companies."



Bannon has said he is plotting challenges to every incumbent Senate Republican up for reelection next year except Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas). He has called on the candidates he backs to oppose McConnell as majority leader and to support ending the Senate filibuster process.


“There’s a time and season for everything and right now it’s a season of war against a GOP establishment,” Bannon said. “It’s no longer acceptable to come and pat you on the head and tell you everything is going to be fine just to get those people in office.”


Bannon also predicted Trump would win in a landslide in 2020, securing 400 electoral votes. Trump won 304 Electoral College votes in 2016.
He basked in Roy Moore’s victory in the Alabama Senate runoff last month. Bannon was one of Moore’s most vocal backers and he made the case that the win wasn’t the result of high-dollar fundraising, but of grassroots organizing.


"Money doesn’t matter anymore,” he told attendees at the summit, adding later, “You took Mitch McConnell’s money and you took it from his biggest asset to his biggest liability. The more money they spend, the fewer votes they get.”


The former top White House official also appeared to hint that the administration was planning to soon declare that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, perhaps as soon as next week.


But a senior administration official disputed that such an announcement was in the works for next week.




http://www.politico.com/story/2017/1...connell-243777

Great video...thanks for posting

It's great to see Bannon giving Trump's base supporters a voice!

Trump encouraged Bannon after interview declaring war on GOP: report

BY JOSH DELK - 10/14/17 09:48 AM EDT 345

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President Trump reportedly reached out to Stephen Bannon to offer encouragement after the former White House chief strategist called for Republicans who don't support Trump's agenda to be ousted.

Trump called to offer the encouragement after Bannon appeared on Fox News earlier this week saying he is seeking to line up challengers to GOP incumbents, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing two people familiar with the call.

White House adviser Jared Kushner also reportedly texted Bannon his praise after the interview. Bannon then celebrated the interview with friends across the street from the Fox studio.

"There's a coalition coming together that is going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz," Bannon said during the Monday night interview on "Hannity."

Bannon, an executive of the right-wing Breitbart News, secured an early victory after throwing his support behind former judge Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate GOP runoff last month.

Moore defeated the establishment-backed candidate Sen. Luther Strange, who was backed by Trump at the urging of Republican congressional leadership.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...at-republicans

Trump claims he and McConnell are 'closer than ever before'

Trump claims he and McConnell are 'closer than ever before,' despite Bannon's primary war

By Lauren Fox and Dan Merica, CNN
Updated 2:18 PM ET, Mon October 16, 2017

(CNN)President Donald Trump said Monday he feels "closer than ever before" to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a man he's publicly criticized for his handling of the GOP agenda and on whom the President is relying for getting a legislative accomplishment in the first year of his term.

"We have been friends for a long time," Trump said from the White House Rose Garden with the Kentucky Republican at his side. "We are probably now, despite what we read, we are probably now, I think, at least as far as I am concerned, we are closer than ever before and the relationship is very good. We are fighting for the same thing, we are fighting for lower taxes, big tax cuts, the biggest tax cuts in the history of our nation. We are fighting for tax reform as part of that."

Trump's comments followed a lunch meeting with McConnell, and come after the President's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has pledged to wage a war on the Republican establishment and cited the Senate majority leader by name.

Trump said that he would try to talk Bannon out of declaring war on "some" of his primary targets saying, "I'm going to see if we can talk him out of that, because I think they're great people."

McConnell responded to Bannon's criticism by citing past Republican primary challengers who failed to make it into the Senate and stressing his relationship to Trump.

"We are together totally on this agenda to move America forward," McConnell said.

Just before sitting down to lunch with McConnell earlier Monday, Trump said he understands the frustration behind Bannon's mission.


President Donald Trump (right) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speak Monday in the White House Rose Garden.


"We are not getting the job done," Trump said after a reporter asked him about comments Bannon made at the Value Voters Summit in Washington on Saturday. "And I am not going to blame myself, they are not getting the job done. We had health care approved, and then you had the surprise vote by John McCain. We have had other things happen and they are not getting the job done and I can understand where Steve Bannon is coming from."

The Trump-McConnell meeting comes as pressure on the Senate intensifies to pass tax cuts and give Trump at least one major legislative victory before the end of the year. The Senate will move this week to pass a budget, the first step in its effort to overhaul the tax code.

On Saturday, Bannon further grilled the GOP establishment and called out McConnell by name.

"It's not my war, this is our war and y'all didn't start it, the establishment started it," Bannon said.

He added, "Right now, it's a season of war against a GOP establishment."

RELATED: Washington is turning against the US Senate

McConnell and Trump's relationship has been fraught ever since the Senate failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in July. Over the August recess, Trump publicly bemoaned McConnell's leadership.

Trump successfully ran for president by demeaning his enemies and rallying his base to deride his opponents. Those habits have followed him to the White House, and McConnell has regularly been that punching bag.

"Can you believe that Mitch McConnell, who has screamed Repeal & Replace for 7 years, couldn't get it done," Trump tweeted in August. "Must Repeal & Replace ObamaCare!"

McConnell has declined to publicly respond directly to the President, instead telling reporters that he isn't a fan of the "daily tweets."

"I've been pretty candid with him and all of you that I'm not a fan of the daily tweets," he said earlier this year.



Trump allies worry that losing the House means impeachment


Trump's own aides, many of whom are tasked with working with Congress to turn Trump's campaign promises into legislation, have privately lamented that the President's attacks against members of his own party -- most importantly McConnell -- have made it more difficult to win over skeptical lawmakers.

Last week, some conservative outside groups, including the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks, called on McConnell and other leaders in the Senate to step aside.

RELATED: These are the GOP sticking points on tax reform

Even rank-and-file members say that McConnell's in a tough position if he cannot find a way to convince a majority of Senate Republicans to back a tax cut proposal. McConnell can only lose two Republican senators and still pass a bill.

"If we don't cut taxes and we don't eventually repeal and replace Obamacare, then we're going to lose across the board in the House in 2018. And all of my colleagues running in primaries in 2018 will probably get beat," South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CBS' "Face the Nation" over the weekend. "It will be the end of Mitch McConnell as we know it."

Trump claims he and McConnell are 'closer than ever before'