Steve Bannon Urges MAGA Audience to Rally Against Sens. Thune and Cornyn in GOP Leadership Fight: ‘Light These People Up!’
Former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon has been rallying the MAGA base in recent days to pressure Republican U.S. Senators to vote for Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to replace outgoing GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Bannon, who was recently released from prison, interviewed fellow podcast host and MAGA figure Benny Johnson on Monday’s War Room episode. Bannon praised Johnson for publishing a vote count of Senate Republicans over the weekend, which showed that Scott was losing to his rivals Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and John Cornyn (R-TX).
“To be blunt, you’ve changed the arc of history in this town by what you reported yesterday, because it was at that moment I said, okay, game on. Game on. Let’s roll. He’s got the goods. Tell us about it. Tell the audience what you found, what this list is. Why is this so explosive, sir?” Bannon asked Johnson – the onetime Buzzfeed staffer fired in 2012 for widespread plagiarism.
Johnson replied with a lengthy attack on Thune over his past statements on January 6th and tepid support for Trump during the GOP primary. He concluded by saying:
The way the Senate works is every one of these senators have been promised something and they get what they’ve been promised. If they simply vote to continue McConnell’s leadership and mark my words, Steve, that is exactly, precisely what is going on here. John Thune is a direct continuation of McConnell’s power. One senator told me this weekend that these senators, Thune and Cornyn, are pets. They’re the pets of McConnell. Call them a pet. So they’re on a leash and they’ll come once called and McConnell walks them like a dog.
Bannon later ripped into McConnell again and urged his audience to start calling senators to urge them to vote for Sen. Scott. “We removed Ronna McDaniel and the entire worthless RNC. But also McConnell broke his pick, why did he break his pick. Don’t you remember the weekend that this audience sat up and listened to all the speeches on the Ukraine funding and had Mike Lee, the heroes, Mike Lee and Rand Paul and a couple of others saying it shouldn’t happen and McConnell jammed it through. But it cost him it. He had to sacrifice his leadership,” Bannon added, noting that he and his MAGA audience oppose McConnell for wanting to continue funding the Ukrainian fight against Russia.
“He said he would step down afterwards because he lost because of this audience. They had to go to Plan B. You guys did it,” Bannon continued, again urging his viewers to make calls.
“You must light these people up. Look at the list. I want you to be burning, man. I want you to look at that list of the people that President Trump endorsed. They’re only in Washington, DC as United States senators because of Trump and their outright betrayal of him right out of the box,” Bannon concluded.
Other MAGA media figures like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk have also begun to push hard for Sen. Scott to replace McConnell. “Rick Scott of Florida is the only candidate who agrees with Donald Trump. Call your senator and demand a public endorsement of Rick Scott,” Carlson told his followers over the weekend. The Senate GOP will vote in a secret ballot to choose their next leader.
Watch the clip above via War Room.
