On Sunday, former Trump strategist and top adviser Steve Bannon took time away from not paying his legal fees to pontificate about the upcoming presidential election on his “Bannon’s War Room” show. Bannon had some big predictions, including the mystical math that Donald Trump could win big in 2024. All people needed to do was get through the “lawfare” and Trump very well could pull in “55 percent or more of the country.” Trump was unable to reach 47% vote against Biden in 2020.
Maybe more perfectly bananas, Bannon explained that if Donald Trump ran on a ticket with vaccine misinformer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his running mate, the two could get 60% of the electorate’s vote. Now, before you wonder whether or not Bannon’s roof ain’t nailed tight enough, he admitted that this dream of his was a long shot “because of the structure of the Democratic and Republican parties and ballot access and all that.”
While Kennedy is technically running as a presidential candidate in the Democratic primary, all of his stances have been identical to the Republican Party’s talking points. His penchant for promoting unfounded and indefensible conspiracy theories that lean transphobic, pro-Russia, and anti-vaccine have found him an audience—albeit a conservative one. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Kennedy’s campaign contributions are coming from conservative megadonors who either like what he’s saying or just like the fact that he is running against President Joe Biden.
Kennedy’s campaign has consisted of doing press almost entirely inside of the right-wing media ecosphere, with speaking appearances at truly abhorrent anti-trans and racist functions like the Moms for Liberty Summit. In June, RFK Jr. went on NewsNation for a town hall-style interview where he told a story about how his deceased father brought people together, and therefore he was “proud that President Trump likes me.”
Kennedy has also worked the same faux-persecution rhetoric employed by conservatives in this country for decades, crying to Fox News, “I’ve been really, you know, slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented,” and saying his campaign’s lackluster popularity among Democratic voters was the result of a “media” that has been meaner to him than they have been to Trump.
As for whether or not Bannon is serious about this thought experiment, what’s most telling is how he sells the idea of a Trump landslide victory:
“We stay maniacally focused in the general, particularly as remember this, the firestorm of the lawfare will start next spring with him. If you can walk through that, which you can do, you can walk through that fire, which you can do and I think, get 55 percent or more of the country.”
One way to interpret that is Bannon telling his audience to stay “manically focused” on his show, at least until Election Day. There are advertisements to sell, you know.