Steve Bannon spent the morning broadcasting to his followers and answering questions from reporters with one key message: Prison didn’t break him; it made him stronger.
But after plopping down on a couch in the 5,500-square-foot hotel suite that served as Bannon’s campaign headquarters for the day, he admitted that may not have been the case.
The lowest point was walking through a thick steel door and realizing this was real.
‘They put the key in a huge steel door. They open the steel door, you walk in and you say, ‘Wow, this is a cell block,'” he said Tuesday, describing the lowest point of his four months.
But I said, “Hey, I did it in the Navy when I was 20. I’ll do it here.”
And it turned out that it was no big deal. I just had to focus and turn it into something positive.”
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon was released from federal prison on Tuesday after serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress.
Bannon sat down with Dailymail.com hours after leaving federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.
He served a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress, charges he said were politically motivated and part of an effort to silence him before Tuesday’s election.
Now it’s out. And he says he’s full of new ideas and plans for the “politics of money,” after the world leaves behind “race politics” and “gender politics.”
He has advice for Trump on how to win the election and harsh words for his enemies.
But in an exclusive interview, he also talked about what he learned in prison, his weight loss regimen and how he stayed on top of one of the closest elections in history.
But first he can’t resist attacking a high-profile enemy while describing life behind bars.
‘This is not a camp. “It’s not what Michael Cohen went to,” he said. ‘This is a prison. I think if you saw the photo last night when I went out, it has barbed wire and fencing.
‘It’s a prison. He was in a cell block. I was in a cell, a very small cell.’
Cohen, Trump’s former fixer turned star witness against him, served part of a three-year sentence for lying to Congress and tax fraud at the Federal Correctional Institute in Otisville (often named among the top ten most comfortable prisons) and part for its luxury. apartment due to the COVID pandemic.
Bannon said he was lucky to be housed in a veterans unit, but still had to maintain a “manic focus” for his own safety.
He has advice for Trump on how to win the election and harsh words for his enemies. But in an exclusive interview, he also talked about what he learned in prison, his weight-loss regimen and how he stayed on top of one of the closest elections in history.
His early years as a naval officer aboard a destroyer helped prepare him for the experience.
“You live in very tight spaces and you’re stuck there,” he said.
Violence and drugs, particularly K2 synthetic marijuana, were common.
“You have to be very focused,” he said. “But if you’re focused and you come up with a plan… my plan was to listen, learn and observe, then you can make the time pass quickly.”
Bannon was released shortly after 3 a.m. Tuesday and traveled to New York, where he was soon back behind the microphone presenting his show ‘War Room.’
He was dressed in signature style, with two overlapping black shirts and a waxed Barbour coat on top, despite being inside.
His face had more jowls than usual, the result of a prison diet and time spent in the exercise yard. At one point he had lost 20 pounds, he said, although it had probably plateaued around a 12-pound loss.
Bannon held a news conference in the 5,500-square-foot hotel suite that served as his base after his release.
He was interrupted by Robbie Roadsteamer: ‘When is the next insurrection?’
Bannon served his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
Coupled with the early start, he seemed devastated for his first day of freedom in four months.
He spoke to Dailymail.com after concluding a chaotic press conference. The followers applauded his arrival and applauded the responses.
At times, an anti-Trump Republican writer pressed him before a man calling himself Robbie Roadsteamer, dressed in a red suit, stood up and interrupted the proceedings.
“When is the next insurrection? Can we storm the Burger King?” he asked before a security guard led him away.
Bannon kept a questioning look until he was able to resume his attack on Trump’s election opponent, Kamala Harris. He ridiculed his “politics of joy” as having failed to translate it into a government program.
“She fails to connect with minority, Hispanic and African-American men,” he said.
‘They understand what the scam is. They understand that this administration deliberately let in millions of illegal alien immigrants to reduce labor costs.’
He explained to DailyMail.com how he had used his time in prison to explore inmates’ opinions.
Bannon said he kept up to date with the news through the Daily Mail when he was in prison.
‘YO “I met fascinating people, particularly young African-Americans,” he said.
“I taught a course on civics and government there, and I met incredible young people there.”
Every Tuesday afternoon, several dozen inmates crowded into a simple classroom as Bannon turned his ‘War Room’ stunt into lessons on how the world works, complete with whiteboards and random quizzes.
“What we’re trying to do in ‘War Room’ is take a working-class audience and really expose them to what they would see on Bloomberg TV or reading the Wall Street Journal,” he said.
It included economics, capital markets and macroeconomics. How deficits turn into $36 trillion in debt and the interest payments that follow.
Listeners to his show will know how he connects the dots from big numbers to small numbers in American pockets.
“I put it all together and they can’t get enough of it,” he said. ‘People want to learn how the system works. “They want to understand how the system works, because right now the media is trying hard, frankly, to obfuscate how it works.”
Bannon was Trump’s chief White House strategist before losing a power struggle with other advisers to the president.
Thousands of Trump supporters marched to the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, as part of an effort to overturn the election result.
The result is a Wall Street and Silicon Valley oligarchy, run in collusion with the political class of Washington, DC.
“This is what class was about, tying it to the Constitution, tying it to the Declaration of Independence, tying it to the founding documents of our great Republic,” he said.
Attendees obtained certificates signed by Bannon.
He also spent time monitoring the news and supervising the production of ‘War Room’ via email, even if wider use of the computer was impossible.
“Well, you don’t have access to the internet, but I have staff who give me a digest from news sites, including the Daily Mail, every day,” he said.
From prison he was able to ensure that a series of guest presenters stayed focused on the grassroots of the MAGA movement.
“So I think the content stayed pretty much the same,” he said.
But he said there was no getting around the fact that it was a tough place.
“These are dangerous and difficult places, and that’s one of the reasons I feel empowered,” she said.
“I came out more focused, in better shape, lighter and, frankly, interacting with people.” I listened, I watched and I learned.’