Steve Bannon Confronted About Donald Trump’s ‘Retribution’ Campaign

Conservative media personality Steve Bannon was confronted on Sunday about former President Donald Trump‘s “retribution” campaign promises.

Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, has long portrayed himself and his base as the victims of President Joe Biden‘s Democratic administration. The former president claims that the four criminal indictments he has pleaded not guilty to are politically motivated, despite there being no evidence of this. He also claimed that Biden’s 2020 election victory was due to widespread voter fraud, even though there is no evidence to support such claims.

Meanwhile, Trump also blames the White House for the surge in illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border and the state of the economy. Biden, however, often boasts about the roughly 15 million jobs created under his administration. He has also signed an executive order earlier this month to curb the number of asylum-seekers coming into the United States.

During Sunday’s episode of ABC News’ This Week with George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor Jonathan Karl said that a “central theme” of Bannon’s podcast War Room was “retribution,” which is also a “cornerstone of the Trump campaign.”

A clip of Trump giving a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March 2023 then played: “In 2016, I declared, I am your voice. Today, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

The show then jumps to a recorded interview between Karl and Bannon, in which Karl says, “Some of those who served Trump and crossed him say they’re worried.”

Bannon, the former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, said he is in favor of investigating people in positions of authority, but said, “If you haven’t done anything, you shouldn’t worry.”

“Well, they are worried because Trump and you are talking about retribution,” Karl probed.

Bannon then referenced what Trump said at Thursday night’s CNN presidential debate in Atlanta, in which the former president told the American public, “I said my retribution is going to be success. We’re going to make this country successful again, because right now it’s a failing nation.”

“What we’re saying is we want justice,” Bannon added. “We want them to have full investigations, and then if criminal charges come up, then criminal charges come up.”

Newsweek reached out to Trump’s campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, via email for comment.

Bannon told Newsweek via text message on Sunday: “[Former] President Trump makes his own decisions but my strong belief is that there will be major investigations into DOJ [U.S. Department of Justice] and the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]. Also [Retired] General [Mark] Milley and Sec Def [former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper.

Two of Trump’s indictments were brought by the DOJ, one alleging federal election interference and one alleging that Trump mishandled classified documents that the FBI found during a raid of his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in August 2022.

Newsweek reached out to the FBI, which declined to comment, and Esper via email as well as the DOJ via online form for comment. It also reached out to Georgetown University Center for Security Studies via email for comment from Milley who a distinguished fellow in residence there.

Milley served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from October 2019 to September 2023. Esper served under the Trump administration from July 2019 until he was fired in November 2020. Milley and Esper opposed Trump’s threat to have the military crack down on civil rights protests that erupted in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.

On Sunday, Karl also brought up when Bannon implied that Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as one of the leaders of the White House’s task forces for COVID-19 in both the Trump and Biden administrations, and Trump-nominated FBI Director Christopher Wray—both of which have faced fierce Republican criticism—should be beheaded.

Bannon said on a November 2020 podcast, “I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England. I’d put the heads on pikes. Right? I’d put them on the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you’re gone.”

The media host defended his 2020 comments, saying it was a “total metaphor. Anybody understands that.”

Trump criticized Wray for not doing more to investigate the then-president’s voter fraud claims, which began ahead of the election, calling him “disappointing” in a Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo in October 2020.

Meanwhile, in July 2020, Trump claimed that Fauci “made a lot of mistakes” in his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “A lot of them said don’t wear a mask, don’t wear a mask,” Trump told Fox News‘ Sean Hannity. “Now they are saying wear a mask. A lot of mistakes were made, a lot of mistakes.”

Newsweek has reached out to Georgetown University Medical Center’s communications team via email for comment from Fauci, who is a professor there. It also reached out to the FBI via email for comment from Wray, but it declined to comment.