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Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon called out the “devil” Sen. Mitch McConnell for trying to stop President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.

The podcast host blamed McConnell and the Republican establishment for sinking Trump’s nomination of former Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Bannon saw Gaetz’s eventual withdrawal from consideration as a “big win” for the mainstream media, for McConnell and other anti-Trumpers in Congress.

“You gotta give the devil its due,” Bannon told Michael Warren, senior editor at The Dispatch.

“Matt Gaetz was the best of the best,” he said on his “War Room” podcast last week, referring to the former Florida Republican who resigned from office ahead of Trump’s nomination.

Bannon reflected on the opposition within the GOP to some of Trump’s agenda and how they could thwart the changes that must be made.

“I think we have to get a lot more aggressive. I think [the transition] has to be more aggressive,” he told Warren.

“He selected controversial candidates, including a couple of Democrats that are quite controversial and quite controversial to be accepted by traditionally hidebound, standard-stock, Republican establishment, the established order of the Republican Party, which is still infesting the Senate, and they’re not going to just sit there and say, ‘Oh, this is terrific,’” Bannon said.

“They are anti-populist, they’re anti-economic nationalists, and they’re going to show the donor class, which is really who they report to, that they can stop Trump, and they’re going to try to stop Trump in the U.S. Senate,” he continued.

He put lawmakers “on notice” ahead of confirmation hearings for the president-elect’s picks.

“You have to put them on notice by developing candidates right now, and letting them know every day on these shows that if you don’t stand tall and support President Trump’s candidates, you’re going to be primaried,” Bannon said.

On his show, Banon referred to Gaetz’s withdrawal as a “casualty.”

“We took a casualty today. One of the best warriors we have in all his imperfections, and he’s quite imperfect, as Donald Trump is imperfect, as Stephen K. Bannon is super imperfect,” he said. “And Tucker Carlson and Vivek Ramaswamy, Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., all of it. Very, very, very imperfect instruments. But in that imperfection is some of their power. We took a casualty today. One of the reasons we took a casualty, I hate to say it, and let me be brutally frank. You can’t stick these people out there with no air cover. What are we doing? You can’t stick them out there and take them off television. They’re the best at selling themselves. You take them off television for five, six, seven, eight days, and it’s nothing but incoming. Where is the plan and where is the execution of the plan?”

“It’s a big defeat for President Trump today,” Bannon said. “And trust me, those demons and jackals and hyenas up there in the United States Senate, Mitch McConnell, that crowd, they know it.”

Frieda Powers
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