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Steve Bannon got out of federal prison at around 3 am Tuesday. Seven hours later, he was live on his War Room podcast to “flood the zone with shit” exactly one week before the presidential election.
Flooding the zone with shit is Bannon’s own oft-quoted description of his media strategy: churning so many lies or half-truths into the stratosphere that it becomes impossible to draw a line between fact and fiction.
“I am more energized and more focused than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” said Bannon on the War Room stream on Rumble, which garnered nearly 100,000 live viewers at one point. “The four months in federal prison not only didn’t break me, it empowered me.”
Bannon, 70, a longtime ally of and former strategist for Donald Trump, spent four months at a low-security federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt after he defied a subpoena in the congressional probe into the January 6 Capitol riot.
Bannon has cast himself as a martyr—someone who, like January 6 rioters and like Trump, is being unfairly persecuted by the same tyrannical forces they’re up against next week in the election.
On Tuesday on air, and later at a press conference, Bannon repeatedly suggested that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi banished him to prison because she wanted to contain his influence.
“If you’re not prepared to be sent to federal prison as a political prisoner, then you’re not worthy to be in this movement,” he said. “You have to understand, 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 represent.”
Bannon’s return to the public sphere also means the return of a massive mouthpiece to amplify the election fraud conspiracies that are already raging online. And Bannon got directly to business, spinning a tale to his viewers of Democrats plotting to heist the 2024 election.
“Every day after November 5 is going to be Stalingrad,” Bannon said. “If they can’t take it away from Trump, if they can’t nullify it right there, they want to at least delegitimize his victory.”
“They will go to any length to stop President Trump,” Bannon continued. “That’s the reality.”
A 2023 Brookings study on disinformation in political podcasts identified Bannon’s War Room as the biggest disseminator of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims; about a fifth of all episodes assessed by researchers were determined to have claims flagged as false by debunkers such as Snopes and Politifact.
“If the Pelosi apparatus wins, you 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 views.”
His fans seem to be happy he’s back. “God Bless You Steve’ Get The Bannon Sledge Hammer Out, And Start Smashing The TRAITORS,” one viewer wrote during the Tuesday livestream.
“Welcome back Steve, we need our leader,” wrote another. “Give us our marching orders and lets get this done.”
