“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s the winner,” Steve Bannon told a group of supporters on October 31, 2020. “He’s just gonna say he’s the winner.”
Mother Jones just released a tape of Bannon yukking it up with his pals before the election, straight up admitting that Donald Trump’s plan was to declare victory when there was still a good chunk of the vote still out in swing states, taking advantage of the predicted “red mirage” as in-person votes were counted before the absentee ballots favored by Democrats were even opened.
More of our people vote early that count, theirs vote in mail. And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage, and Trump’s going to take advantage of it and declare himself the winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm. You’re going to have antifa crazy, the media crazy, the courts are crazy. And Trump’s going to be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out — “You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.”
To put a fine point on it: this means Trump understood then that he probably wasn’t going to win, so fuck off with all this rigamarole about how Trump just fell in with a crowd of bad influences. So much for Jason Miller and Bill Stepien trying to blame it all on drunken Rudy Giuliani talking the old man into shooting his mouth off. It was always the plan to claim victory on election night. That’s why the Trump people lost their shit when Fox News called Arizona for Joe Biden — those assholes were counting on the country going to sleep thinking Trump had pulled it out.
LEAKED AUDIO: Trump planned to falsely claim victory, according to Bannonwww.youtube.com
Even if it was clear that Biden was winning, they intended to use the Justice Department to stop the count.
If Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say “They stole it, I’m directing the attorney general to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states.” It’s gonna be, no, he’s not going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.
And having secured a second term, by hook or by crook, Bannon says Trump was going to unleash a wave of retribution, knowing that he had four years and no election in front of him.
Remember, here’s the thing, after then, Trump never has to go to a voter again. He’s going to fire Wray, the FBI director. He’s going to say, “Fuck you, how about that?” Because he’s never going to — he’s done his last election. Oh, he’s going to be off the chain. He’s going to be crazy.
Golly, wonder why this babbling traitor didn’t want to sit down with the January 6 Select Committee and tell the nice Congress people what he did!
Shit, he could have just showed up and pled the Fifth like the rest of the anti-Democratic slimeballs. Hell, even Alex Jones was smart enough to do that! But Bannon, who thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room, thought he’d just give them two big middle fingers and roll the dice. And wouldn’t ya know it … snake eyes!
So now he’s facing contempt of Congress charges and US District Judge Carl J. Nichols already blocked him from claiming that someone — Trump, the DOJ, Bannon’s own lawyer, the angel Lucifer — signed his Get Out of Congressional Subpoena Free permission slip. The Supreme Court has been very clear that “mistake of law” is not a defense to contempt of Congress, and aside from that one asshole Trump appointee in Texas, there’s no judge going to find otherwise.
The court also blocked Bannon’s ploy to drag Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the January 6 Committee in to testify, which totally boned his crafty plan to make this case “the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden.” The judge wouldn’t even let Bannon push his trial off after the midterms so that Republicans could retroactively declare the subpoenas invalid and try to disappear the contempt charge.
So rude! Particularly for a Trump appointee.
So now “Sloppy Steve” is going to trial Monday on contempt of Congress charges. And the odds of him getting a pardon out of this White House are not looking good.
[Mother Jones / US v. Bannon, Docket via Court Listener]
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