Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon discussed Judge Roy Moore’s Tuesday night victory in the Alabama Senate primary on Wednesday morning’s edition of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM.
Bannon described Moore’s winning campaign as “outgunned, no cash, all organization.”
“It was basically grassroots muscle versus corporate cash, and it was a blowout. It was a blowout from the very beginning, Raheem,” he told Breitbart News Daily host Raheem Kassam.
A caller described the defeat of Moore’s opponent Luther Strange as “a tremendous loss for Mitch McConnell,” since “he spent $30 million on smear campaigns to a measly $2 million and got trounced, destroyed.”
“They didn’t come down here to have a debate among people,” Bannon said of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Senate Leadership Fund. “They didn’t come down here to talk about the great issues of our day. They came down here on the politics of personal destruction to destroy Judge Roy Moore and his family.”
Bannon said an important element of Moore’s victory was refusing to take his substantial lead in the polls for granted or, conversely, to be intimidated by the enormous amount of money spent against him.
“When I stepped in on President Trump’s campaign, I had a very clear idea. We had 88 days to go. I think we were down 16 points. He was like 70 on the generic ballot; you’ve got to be at 90. They didn’t have much cash. But I had a very clear idea. I told him 100 percent chance was the probability we’d win,” he recalled.
“That came off of this radio show. It came off the comments section of Breitbart,” he said. “I had a very good feel for where people in the country were, simply for the fact that I had just been listening to people off this show. The same thing with Judge Roy Moore. I don’t think we ever doubted about Judge Roy Moore, no matter how much cash was put into it.”
Bannon promised more innovative, grassroots campaigns were coming in the 2018 midterm elections. “We’ve got a pretty good idea about how this rolls out,” he said. “And by the way, we’re not going to have victories everywhere, but you can see the trend of this, right? This is a populist nationalist conservative revolt. It’s a revolt against the elites in this country. It’s a revolt against the globalists among those elites. It’s a revolt against the progressive agenda that is trying to be jammed down the throat of the American people.”
Bannon agreed with Kassam’s assessment that Tuesday was a “pretty bad day for Mitch McConnell,” between Strange’s defeat in Alabama, the announced retirement of his ally Sen. Bob Corker, and the ignominious end of the latest Obamacare repeal effort. Bannon pronounced the latter “another disastrous run by the majority leader.”
“Let’s talk about the healthcare thing,” he said, looking back to his time as chief White House strategist. “We did work with Lindsey Graham, starting in May, on this bill. The reason I liked this bill – and it’s not perfect, we’re not in a world of perfect – but it was about federalism. Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum came to me at the White House in May, when it looked like we were going to do other options. The reason I thought this was an interesting option is that this really was about federalism.”
“It turns out at the end of the day this was the most viable alternative they could get up there. They couldn’t get it voted on,” he said.
“By the way, we’re going to have some news on what really happened behind that, probably tomorrow or the next day on the show,” he teased. “It’s very interesting what happened. You’re going to see the ultimate reason this was not brought up is something that happened a couple of years ago that Breitbart News was in the middle of.”
“Mitch McConnell didn’t support this bill,” Bannon lamented. “When Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum and guys like Mark Meadows were going around trying to corral these governors – because it was all predicated on Republican governors – Mitch McConnell and others were working at cross-purposes to that. What we had yesterday was another epic fail, but maybe there’s some hope early next year to get this healthcare bill back up.”
Bannon anticipated that the mainstream media would “go into full destruction mode” on Moore, attacking his constitutionalism and religious beliefs to weaken him for the general election.
“Look, folks, like we’ve said: if you think it’s over, it’s never over. You’ve got to fight every day,” he told the audience. “We’ve got another big fight here coming up on December 12, and, of course, Mitch McConnell and the guys are going to say this is the Todd Akin of 2016; this is a bunch of hobbits that don’t know what they’re doing, that put up guys who are too controversial to win. It’s time to get up on the horse and to get running.”
Bannon said it was important for President Trump to learn how he “ended up on the wrong side of the football” in Alabama.
“His hardcore base, from Sarah Palin to Ann Coulter to Mark Levin to Dr. Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, the Breitbart crew – all of us were on Judge Moore’s side,” he noted. “There’s a big lesson here: stick to the program. The program got you elected on November 8 in 2016. Another resounding victory last night by sticking to the program, that was Judge Moore, he just kind of blew it out of the water. There’s a lesson: stick to the program; your base will be there, and you’ll grow your base.”
“The hard-working men and women of the world are tired of the global elites. They’re tired of being told what to do,” he declared. “This is a global revolution. You see it. It goes all the way from places in England. You see it happening in Europe. You’re actually starting to see it happen in Asia. You see it in India. It’s starting to take place in the Middle East, in Australia, and yesterday, was in Alabama.”
Bannon credited “the interconnectivity of the Internet and Internet news” with driving this global revolution.
“We have readers all throughout the world,” he said of Breitbart News. “There’s going to be a magazine that comes out this week that I think Breitbart may be on the cover on. I haven’t officially gotten clearance, but it is exactly about this topic. It is called, I think, ‘Beijing to Birmingham,’ which shows the global nature of this revolt, and it shows that people are very, very focused on getting control back of their lives at this level.”
Kassam provocatively suggested that the “political capital of the world” is no longer Washington, DC, but wherever the front line in the global revolt against the elite happens to be, from the Brexit vote in England to Montgomery, Alabama, for the Senate race. Bannon said the global press seems to be getting the idea, noting how many national and global media outlets provided extensive coverage of the Alabama primary.
“The world’s capital markets, they wanted to know yesterday who is sovereign in this country. Is it the corporate cash from Wall Street, or is it the people of the great state of Alabama?” Bannon argued. “The markets in Singapore, the markets in Shanghai, the markets in the city of London, the markets on Wall Street, they want to know because these guys make bets every day. What’s the direction of the world? What’s the direction of the world’s economy?”
“That’s why this is a populist nationalist conservative revolt. We’re populist because we’re anti-elite, and that’s because the elites in this world are both corrupt and incompetent. We’re nationalist because we’re anti-globalist. We don’t believe in this globalist system that takes power away from people at the local level,” he explained.
“That’s what I think you saw yesterday in Alabama. The nationalists down here voted to throw the representatives of the global system out,” he said.
“And we’re conservatives because we totally and completely reject the progressive agenda that’s trying to be jammed down the throat of hard-working American citizens,” Bannon added.
“We’re going to have ups and downs. We’re going to have victories and defeats,” he cautioned. “There’s going to be some days that look like nothing but sunlit uplands, and then we’re going to have arguments.”
In a similar vein, he advised aspiring revolutionaries to remember that their candidates will not be perfect or completely in sync with any policy checklist.
“We don’t agree on every topic,” Bannon noted. “Folks in our audience that call in here every day, folks who go to Breitbart – you know we’ve got libertarians, we have limited-government conservatives, we have people who believe in free trade, we have economic nationalists who think free trade is a radical idea. We don’t agree on everything, but we agree on enough that we are a coalition.”
“At one time, when we won the campaign with President Trump, we had the establishment along with us,” he pointed out. “At that time, we could not have won without aspects of the establishment. But they’ve got to get with the program. The program is no longer going to be central control, as you saw yesterday with this resounding victory by Judge Roy Moore.”
“That victory was everybody out here in this audience. Everybody goes to Breitbart because we’re proud of the fact that we are at the tip of the spear in helping to augment you folks in leading this revolt throughout this country and the world,” he said.
A caller prompted Bannon to reflect at length on the importance of Moore’s devotion to the Constitution, which was also a driving force behind the Tea Party revolt.
“I think the great thing about the Tea Party revolt is that it’s brought these documents – the Constitution, the Declaration, these foundational documents – back into the forefront,” he said. “I remember at the beginning of the Tea Party, all these people would have books and pamphlets about the Constitution. They started to get ‘coached up,’ as Alex Marlow would say, on the Constitution.”
“As economic nationalists, we have another set of documents that came from that same period of time, and that’s from Alexander Hamilton” he continued. “It’s about the American system, how we built the economy. The foundational document of that is the ‘Report on Manufactures’ that Alexander Hamilton wrote to George Washington.”
“With Judge Moore, you’re getting a constitutionalist. You’re getting a strict constructionist. This guy knows the Constitution, as he said. That’s why I think they fear him. They see a God-fearing man, a righteous man, going to Washington, DC, a man who could not be bought,” he said.
Bannon agreed with a caller who cited New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as an example of an impressive conservative campaigner who quickly lost his principles once in office, leaving supporters to feel deceived and betrayed.
“He started out as a bold guy. He was the guy taking on the unions. A lot of stuff happened to him,” Bannon said, recalling that in his halcyon early days, Christie was a powerful enough speaker to capture the attention of the late Andrew Breitbart.
“What you need today is authenticity,” he advised. “That’s why a guy like Donald Trump can win – because he’s authentic. That’s why someone like Judge Roy Moore can win. They’re authentic. They’re not phony. Luther Strange had to make himself up every day, to try to be something he wasn’t.”
“The power of the Internet is it disintermediates not just the big news organizations. It’s quite personal to a degree. You can’t hide as a phony on the Internet. People are searching for it, particularly young people are searching for authenticity,” he noted.
Bannon said this was one of the reasons traditional “30-second attack ads” on TV don’t impact political races the way they once did, not compared to the effect of a candidate like Moore campaigning door-to-door and “speaking from the heart” to persuadable voters.
“If you do that, we’re going to win every campaign. They can’t afford, the way the math works, they can’t afford to buy that,” he predicted. “Luther Strange had the best ground game money can buy. They’re called ‘paid walkers.’ They have people that are paid, that are professional, that go door-to-door. But here’s the difference: they’re not passionate about it. They don’t know the candidate. They can’t convince people. It’s like a Fuller Brush salesman coming to the door. They can’t do it.”
“What Judge Moore had is people who understood him as a constitutionalist, understood him as a conservative, that had a passion for it. They can sell it. That is the difference,” he said. “Folks, you have all the power in the world. You just have to go out and take it. That’s what we did yesterday in Alabama.”
Bannon was not optimistic about the ability of the traditional GOP consultant class to learn this lesson.
“They’re not going to pivot away quite yet. The business model still works for them,” he said, speculating that much of the $32 million spent on Luther Strange’s losing campaign was skimmed off the top by consultants.
“People get so rich off this. Listen, the donors reached out to me to have a conversation. Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove, if you’re listening, Steven Law: your folks are not happy with you because they contacted me,” Bannon said pugnaciously. “The donors were in panic mode that so much money was being poured into Alabama to destroy Judge Roy Moore. They knew it was not right, and they knew they were ultimately going to be blamed for it.”
“Here’s what happened: that business model, those guys get rolling, and they’re skimming 20 percent off the top. There was a lot of money made down here in Alabama by the forces of darkness,” he charged. “One of the reasons they kept pumping money in, the reason they kept doing these ridiculous 30-second spots, is they’re making money off it.”
“Everything has an internal business logic to it. Their business model works. They’ve enriched themselves,” he stressed.
“You go to Washington, DC; it’s like Paris. You’ve got the best boutiques in the world. You’ve got the finest restaurants in the world. You can’t get a reservation in any of the top restaurants because the corporatists – and by the way, I don’t even like calling them ‘lobbyists.’ Luther Strange and what he represents, they are influence peddlers. That’s an Old Testament term from the Old Testament of American politics.”
“By the way, I know the First Amendment. Corporations have their ability to make their case, et cetera,” he added. “But it’s gotten out of control. They do not care about the working men and women in this country. They treat you as a commodity.”
“What they want you to do is, they want you to get in that car, they want you to go to work every day, they want you to keep your mouth shut, they want you to work your fingers to the bone, they want you to pay your taxes, and they want you to send your sons and daughters into the military. That’s what they want,” Bannon said.
When a caller expressed concern about the intensity of personal attacks and slander against Bannon in the media, he countered that he “wears their contempt as a badge of honor.”
“When you’ve got your enemies focused on that kind of stuff, we’re just grinding them. As long as the left is focused on identity politics, we will win every day. Economic nationalism will crush them. That’s how we won in 2016. That’s how we’re going to win here in Alabama,” he explained.
“You know why they’ve come after me? Because we’ve given access to folks like you,” he told the caller. “What they don’t want to hear is from the working men and women of the United States of America. Anybody that stands up for the working men and women in this country, they’re going to go after, and they’re going to try to rip their face off.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern
LISTEN:
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.