USA TODAY International Edition
Bannon slams GOP’s establishment wing
Tells activists that Republican senators must fall in line
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon told conservative activists Saturday that the upset victory of firebrand Roy Moore in last month’s Alabama Senate Republican primary has refocused the White House on its conservative agenda, which may include moving the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Bannon said it is no coincidence that the White House has rolled out a series of hard-line policy announcements in recent days, including a long list of new immigration demands and the decision to stop Obamacare subsidy payments to insurers to support coverage for low-income customers.
“Those are not random events, folks,” Bannon said at the Values Voter Summit in Washington. “That is ‘victory begets victory.’ We owe that to Judge Moore and the good men and women of Alabama because that all came from them.”
Bannon said he expects more conservative policy announcements, including possibly one next week that the U.S. is moving its embassy in Israel and a declaration that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization. The Brotherhood is the Egyptian political and religious movement that elected Mohamed Morsi president in 2012 after the nation’s populist revolution. He was overthrown a year later.
The White House has made no indication these announcements are coming any time soon and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Trump “had some bad information given to him and some bad advice given to him” and joined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in endorsing Sen. Luther Strange in the Alabama Republican primary, Bannon said. But Moore, a former state Supreme Court justice, beat Strange handily and is leading Democrat Doug Jones for the December election to take the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, now Trump’s attorney general.
Since leaving the White House in August, Bannon has pledged to launch a crusade against establishment Republicans who support McConnell and are not doing enough, in his eyes, to implement Trump’s agenda.
On Saturday, Bannon excoriated Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., who responded to criticisms from Trump on Twitter with his own tweet saying the White House has become an “adult day care” facility. Corker had already announced he will not run for re-election next year.
Bannon said that is not enough: Activists now must demand that other Republican senators condemn his comments.
“All you folks that are so concerned that you might get primaried or defeated, there is time for a mea culpa,” he said. “You can come to the (microphones) and condemn Sen. Corker.”
He called out Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Deb Fischer of Nebraska and Dean Heller of Nevada and said grass-roots conservatives “are coming for you.”