Steve Bannon was released from federal prison around 3 a.m. Tuesday. Seven hours later, he livestreamed his War Room podcast to “flood the shit zone” exactly one week before the presidential election.
Flooding the area with shit is Bannon’s thing. frequently cited description of your media strategy: throwing so many lies or half-truths into the stratosphere that it is impossible to draw a line between reality and fiction.
“I’m more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Bannon said on the War Room broadcast at Rumble, which drew nearly 100,000 live viewers at one point. “The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, they made me stronger.”
Bannon, 70, a longtime ally and former strategist for Donald Trump, spent four months in a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt after defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 riot in the Capitol.
Bannon has presented himself as a martyr: someone who, like the January 6 protesters and like Trump, is being unfairly persecuted by the same tyrannical forces he will face next week in the election.
On air Tuesday, and later at a news conference, Bannon repeatedly suggested that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banished him to prison because she wanted to contain his influence.
“If you are not prepared to be sent to a federal prison as a political prisoner, then you are not worthy of being in this movement,” he said. “You have to understand that they want to put you in prison and they will put you in prison. “If you can’t accept that, then you don’t know what they stand for.”
Bannon’s return to the public sphere also means the return of a mass mouthpiece to amplify the voter fraud conspiracies already sweeping online. And Bannon got to work, telling his viewers a story about Democrats plotting to steal the 2024 election.
“Every day after November 5th will be Stalingrad,” Bannon said. “If they can’t take it away from Trump, if they can’t overturn it right there, at least they want to delegitimize his victory.”
“They will do everything they can to stop President Trump,” Bannon continued. “That is the reality.”
TO Brookings Study 2023 on disinformation in political podcasts identified Bannon’s War Room as the largest spreader of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims; About a fifth of all episodes evaluated by the researchers were determined to have claims flagged as false by detractors like Snopes or Politifact.
“If the Pelosi apparatus wins, they better be prepared to go to federal prison,” Bannon said. “Because these people have no qualms about weaponizing the justice system, weaponizing the legal system against Americans who have different political opinions.”
His fans seem to be happy that he is back. “God bless you Steve, get out the Bannon gavel and start smashing the TRAITORS,” one viewer wrote during Tuesday’s livestream.
“Welcome back Steve, we need our leader,” wrote another. “Give us our marching orders and let’s do this.”