Bannon sees GOP ‘civil war’
OUSTED WHITE House strategist Stephen Bannon said he would have advised President Trump to abolish all protections for young undocumented immigrants to avoid the “civil war” he predicts will follow in the GOP.
“I’m worried about losing the House now because of this, because of DACA,” Bannon told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview that aired Sunday night.
“And my fear is that with this six-months-down range, if this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March, it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party.
“And to me, doing that in the springboard of primary season for 2018 is extremely unwise.”
In his first television interview since he was fired last month, Bannon spoke with CBS a day after the Trump administration announced it was ending the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Bannon, the administration’s lightning rod, whose ties to white nationalists became more of a liability after last month’s lethal hatefest in Charlottesville, Va., touched on a range of
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topics, including Obamacare, Russia and his relationship with Trump.
“I’m a street fighter,” he said. “And by the way, I think that’s why Donald Trump and I get along so well. Donald Trump’s a fighter. Great counterpuncher, great counterpuncher. He’s a fighter. I’m going to be his wing man outside for the entire time.”
Bannon called the idea of Russian collusion “a farce.”
And he called the “Access Hollywood” tape featuring Trump bragging to host Billy Bush that he would “grab them (women) by the p---y” a litmus test of campaign loyalty. He said several supporters, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, failed that test. In Christie’s case, it cost him a cabinet position, Bannon said.
To hear him tell it, Bannon was the most loyal.
“By the way, after the Charlottesville situation, I was the only guy that came out and tried to defend him,” he said of Trump. “I was the only guy that said, ‘He’s talking about something, taking it up to a higher level.’ ”
After a counterprotester was killed by a neo-Nazi supporter who police say plowed his car into a crowd, Trump was slow to condemn the “Unite the Right” rally and called some of the participants “very fine people.”
“When you side with a man, you side with him,” Bannon said. “I was proud to come out and try to defend President Trump in the media that day.”
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