From a Capitol Hill Basement, Bannon Stokes the
Republican Party Meltdown
The former Trump adviser has helped create the
spectacle of G.O.P. dysfunction, using it to build his own following and those
of the right-wing House rebels who took down Kevin McCarthy.
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Annie Karni
By Annie
Karni
Reporting
from the Capitol and Stephen K. Bannon’s townhouse nearby
Oct. 4,
2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/04/us/politics/bannon-republicans-gaetz-mace.html
On
Wednesday morning, two Republicans who hours earlier had toppled Kevin McCarthy
as speaker of the House made a well-worn trek to a 19th-century brick townhouse
a few blocks away from the Capitol and entered the cluttered sanctuary of
Stephen K. Bannon’s recording studio.
Representatives
Matt Gaetz of Florida, the instigator of the rebellion, and Nancy Mace of South
Carolina, one of seven other Republican defectors, huddled with Mr. Bannon for
a morning meeting ahead of a joint appearance on his “War Room” podcast.
“Tectonic
plate shift here in the imperial capital,” Mr. Bannon told his listeners at
showtime, while directing them to donate to his guests online. “We must stand
in the breach now. We have to lance the boil that is K Street in this nation.”
From this
cavelike studio not far from where Congress meets, Mr. Bannon, the former Trump
adviser, has been stoking the chaos now gripping the Republican Party,
capitalizing on the spectacle to build his own following and using his popular
podcast to prop up and egg on the G.O.P. rebels.
Mr. Bannon
has spent years promoting the lie that the 2020 presidential election was
stolen from former President Donald J. Trump, railing against coronavirus
mandates and what he refers to as a “criminal invasion of the southern border.”
His obsession of late was toppling Mr. McCarthy and taking out what he
describes as “uniparty” Republicans who have become indistinguishable from
Democrats.
With Mr.
McCarthy’s historic downfall this week, his wing of the party has claimed its
most prominent trophy.
Mr. Bannon
represents a clear through line from the grievance-driven MAGA base to
Congress. And his role in the meltdown that played out this week in the House
helps explain why the Republican Party appears to be eating its own. He is a
vital part of a feedback loop of red-meat media hits and social media posts,
online fund-raising and unfettered preaching to an often angry and fervently
right-wing base that rewards disruptions and detests institutions.
In past
decades, right-wing rebels on Capitol Hill have encountered trouble getting
real traction — shunned by lobbyists and big-money political action committees,
excluded from leadership suites in the Capitol and disregarded by Fox News. But
with the help of Mr. Bannon, who streams live for four hours every weekday, Mr.
Gaetz and others don’t need to rely on any of that.
Mr. Bannon
casts the agitators as heroes to his devoted MAGA acolytes, and helps boost
their small-dollar fund-raising. He participates in calls with members and
donors. He offers strategic advice. He hounds Fox News hosts who he argues
don’t give them a fair shake. But mostly, he offers an unfiltered platform
where individual rabble-rousers can speak directly to the base, known on “War
Room” as “the posse,” creating more incentives for them to wreak havoc on the
House floor.
For weeks,
Mr. Bannon has been strategizing with Mr. Gaetz on the bid to take down Mr.
McCarthy, offering himself up as a sounding board as Mr. Gaetz plotted his
moves.
“KABOOM,”
Mr. Bannon texted a reporter on Monday night, minutes after Mr. Gaetz filed his
long-dangled motion to oust the speaker.
He has also
encouraged hard-right lawmakers to use the House floor to yank legislation as
far to the right as possible — earning themselves media attention in the
process. His advice to them: “Get an amendment. Make it as outrageous as
possible. Just be on there — don’t worry if you’re not on Fox — we’ll cut it,
we’ll play it.”
On
Wednesday, Mr. Bannon introduced his guests on his podcasts as the “architects
and heroes of yesterday” and gave them airtime to make a fund-raising pitch.
“I do need
help because they’re coming after me,” said Ms. Mace, who represents a
politically competitive district. “They’ve threatened to dry up all my money.
I’ve had multiple members, previous to the vote last night, threaten to
withhold fund-raising if I took this vote. It’s a huge amount of pressure. They
call your staff, they scare them.” Twice, Mr. Bannon cued her to spell out her
campaign website so that listeners could find it.
His
audience is still wary of Ms. Mace, a fiscal conservative who leans toward the
center on some social issues and voted to hold Mr. Bannon in criminal contempt
for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee.
But Mr.
Bannon sees her as a gift. Her vote to oust Mr. McCarthy allowed him and his
cohorts to push back on the notion that it was only an angry group of
ultra-MAGA hard-liners who had lost faith in Mr. McCarthy.
“Nancy is
not a hard-right intransigent lawmaker,” Mr. Gaetz said on the show. “Nancy is
a fiscal hawk.”
Ms. Mace
has previously called Mr. Gaetz a “fraud” and accused him of opposing Mr.
McCarthy because he wouldn’t defend him against “allegations that he
sex-trafficked minors.”
But all of
that appeared to be water under the bridge the morning after Mr. McCarthy’s
ouster. They were, at least temporarily, allies. On Wednesday, they sat next to
each other in Mr. Bannon’s basement, where books about China, Trump and
sensible weight loss programs live in messy piles on any flat surface that
avails itself. Notes from Mr. Trump written in his trademark Sharpie (“Steve!
Your show is sooooo great — Proud of you! Donald”) sit stacked with other
miscellany.
The group
was still digesting the historic events of the previous day, while figuring out
their next moves. They decided, together, to use Wednesday’s broadcast to look
ahead, rather than to “dunk” on the former speaker.
“He was
punching down; it was really ugly last night,” said Ms. Mace, whom Mr. McCarthy
targeted at his evening news conference, suggesting she was lying when she
claimed he had not kept his word.
During
commercial breaks, they mulled who might be the next speaker, but there was no
clear answer. “I asked Jim Jordan on the floor yesterday, you’re going to be
the next speaker?” Ms. Mace said. She turned to Mr. Gaetz with an idea. “Want
to go meet with any of them today, together? Like, Scalise or Jordan or
anyone?” He was noncommittal.
Mr. Bannon
was, too.
“I’m just
going to see how it develops,” he said. “Who’s got the stones to take on the
apparatus?”
Mr. Gaetz
has described himself to people as a “Bannonite tribalist.”
Mr. Bannon,
for his part, is in awe of Mr. Gaetz, whom he compares to Daniel Webster. He
credits the Florida Republican with recognizing early on last year how helpful
a slim G.O.P. majority could be to the hard right.
“He sat
right here in July and talked about how we weren’t going to have a 30- or
40-seat majority, but that was actually going to be better,” Mr. Bannon said.
“We were going to have leverage. He’s a very special guy.”
Many of the
newer rebels in Congress have relied on Mr. Bannon for backing as they look to
make their own mark.
Representative
Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she was grateful to him for recently offering
her a slot on his show to talk about the southern border, rather than to rehash
her embarrassing evening at “Beetlejuice.”
“Steve is
an actual trusted source, he understands that my one personal night out does
not impact the work that I’ve been doing for four years,” she said. “Steve
understands the base and what the base wants. I don’t go on there for the donor
aspect, but I’m grateful when folks do chip in.”
Mr.
Bannon’s name is often greeted with an eye roll, even among Trump loyalists.
He’s seen by some as a man who has made the wrong bet on candidates, like the
failed Senate candidate in Alabama, Roy Moore, and has an inflated sense of his
own influence. He was charged with defrauding donors who were giving money to
build a wall along the southern border, before being pardoned by Mr. Trump. He
was sentenced to four months in jail for criminal contempt of Congress for
defying a subpoena and is free while he appeals the conviction.
But last
week, as Mr. Bannon’s cohort debated amendments to the annual military spending
bill on the House floor, Mr. Bannon was glued to C-SPAN like a proud stage
parent.
“This is
red meat,” Mr. Bannon exulted, as Representative Matt Rosendale of Montana
defended an amendment that would prohibit mandatory coronavirus vaccines for
service members, referring to the vaccine as an “experimental drug.”
Mr. Bannon,
an unrepentant agent of chaos, admits he was spoiling for a government
shutdown.
“You create
a firestorm now that totally changes things,” he said. “People right now think
government is a benefit. I’m going to show government spending as
cootie-infested.”
Mr. Bannon
is also famously temperamental. He has turned on former friends, like
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, for backing Mr. McCarthy
during the speaker’s race and on the debt ceiling deal. She has been
blacklisted from the show for months.
But after
she said she was opposed to any spending bills that included aid to Ukraine,
Mr. Bannon said he was warming back up to her. “There’s always a path back,” he
said.
On
Wednesday morning, Mr. Bannon and his guests tried to temper their glee.
“Do not
allow the posse to get punch drunk,” Mr. Gaetz said on the show. There was more
work to do.
Mr. Gaetz
and Ms. Mace stayed for three segments of the show, until it was time for Mr.
Rosendale to pick up the mantle and fire up the base.
“I’ll talk
to you later today,” Mr. Bannon said as Mr. Gaetz showed himself out.
Annie Karni
is a congressional correspondent. She was previously a White House
correspondent. Before joining The Times, she covered the White House and
Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign for Politico, and spent a decade
covering local politics for the New York Post and the New York Daily News. More
about Annie Karni
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