I chatted with Bannon on Monday evening, after one of his War Room tapings, about his expectations for Trump 2.0, what he really thinks about Elon Musk and Trump appointees like Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio, why mass deportations need to be conducted “humanely,” how Democrats fumbled their connection with the working class, and much more. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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The Trump Punch List & Seinfeld Politics

Peter Hamby: You were recently down at Mar-a-Lago. What’s on your wish list that you want Trump 2.0 to accomplish, specifically?

Steve Bannon: We talked about this back in the first week of February 2017. I got up on the stage at CPAC and Reince Priebus and I were talking, and they asked me the same question. I said, look, it’s three lines of work. You have an America First national security agenda, which is basically, Make sure we don’t get into a third World War. And that, somehow, between Beijing, Iran, and Moscow—this new axis that’s been formed—we can negotiate a meaningful peace, put America first, cut the defense budget, and start to really think through the idea that we’re not an empire. NATO, Western Europe, the Gulf Emirates, Japan, and Korea—they’re not American protectorates. They’re allies in helping us confront—but very smartly, and not get into shooting wars with—our opponents.

Next, on economic nationalism, we have to deal with this crisis we have with federal spending and the national debt. We’re adding $1 trillion every 100 days. We passed $35 trillion in July, when I was in federal prison. Four months later, when I got out of prison, we just hit $36 trillion! It’s an unsustainable system and it has to be dealt with.

The last part: We have to deconstruct the administrative state. This is what DOGE, Vivek and Elon, are going to do with the Office of Management and Budget and the appropriations process. We have to get control of federal spending by deconstructing this massive fourth branch of government we’ve got, and part of that is to get our sovereignty back on the southern border and to make sure that we can humanely and smartly go through this process of deportations. 

President Trump’s got the right policies. Clearly, the American people have his back. He’s seen the polling. Now it’s about getting the right people in there and hitting it with muzzle velocity… The thing that’s holding us back on the right is the established order of the donor class Republicans that are manifested in the Senate. What’s going to hold us back is Mitch McConnell. What’s going to hold us back is Paul Ryan on the board of Fox, with Fox being a cheerleader, because the Murdochs are cheerleaders for the neoliberal, neocon established order that exists that we have to shatter. I think President Trump has, right now, a mandate from the American people. And we’ve got to get on with it. I think you’ll start to see that.

Speaking of the McConnell wing of the G.O.P.: It was reported that Republican senators opposed the Matt Gaetz nomination. So there are clearly Republicans willing to push back on Trump a bit this time around. Are you worried they’re going to contest more of his nominees, like Pete Hegseth, and if so, how do you beat them? Is it recess appointments?

Let’s be blunt, Peter. They got a big scalp with Gaetz, for all his imperfections. But this is what I say about Trump: Trump is a blunt force instrument that’s giving the system blunt force trauma. This is the only way you’re going to do it. By playing traditional politics, nothing’s going to change. The American people are demanding change.

They can’t totally articulate it, but they want change and they want fundamental change. Any system that spends $6.5 trillion and has as many vested interests that come with that money, when you have five of the seven richest counties in the country encircling the imperial capital, that’s politics as usual. It’s not going to change anything. This is why the debt keeps increasing, the spending keeps increasing. People think we’re inexorably just drawn to this catastrophe. We’re not. But the system needs blunt force trauma.

Okay, but how do you get around the Senate if they push back on Trump?

I think you put the Senate on notice. If you try to stop the Trump agenda, and you try to do that in confirmation hearings, well, look at Jeff Clark and the Center for Renewing America. We have an alternative. We may need to go to the Supreme Court. They’ve looked at the Constitution. If the House goes into recess, the president’s the tiebreaker, the executive branch is the tiebreaker, according to the Constitution. He can force the Senate to go into recess. If we have to do it, you do recess appointments. In particular for people like Bobby Kennedy. If you have to do it, you have to do it. 

But you put the Senate on notice, by saying, Look, we have a mandate from people to implement and execute on this agenda. We’re all about advice and consent. We want to hear your advice, but we need your consent. But if you fail to give it, you’re signing your political death warrant. 

My point is like Frankie Pentangeli says in The Godfather, “Let’s hit them now while we’re strong.” I don’t believe in playing nice. I think the only thing these people understand in the Senate is smash mouth. I give credit to Mitch McConnell. We ran him out of there as a leader after the Ukraine vote last year, but John Thune is his creation. We lost that battle [for Senate Majority Leader], and then we lost Gaetz. So it’s pretty obvious that McConnell has staying power, and we have to confront that. We have to confront it now, because they’re not going to agree with President Trump’s program going forward. Trust me.

Obviously, you’ve been a big Trump guy for a long time, but how much of this election do you think is Trump’s success versus how much Democrats failed to sell themselves?

Peter, here’s the thing: Populism is the wave of the future. Finally, after over a decade—15 years since the Tea Party—populism on the right is getting traction against the established order of the Republican Party. But if you look at the Democratic Party—Ro Khanna, Sherrod Brown, John Fetterman— you have some tremendous voices there that are very powerful on economic nationalism and populism. Khanna and Fetterman are the future of the Democratic Party. Those guys get it. They really get it. Khanna gets it at a very deep level. But they’re kind of back-benchers. The Democrats have allowed a credentialed class to take over, with the donors funding the credentialed class. 

If you just watch MSNBC every night—which we do, we monitor it very closely at the War Room—it’s what I call Seinfeld politics. It’s really about nothing. I mean, President Trump won this, but the Democrat Party got essentially rejected. I think it’s pretty striking that the civil war we’ve had against the Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans, that’s been going on since really the Tea Party, is now starting to culminate with big victories. The Democrats are going to have a decade in the wilderness until they sort themselves out. 

They have been putting off a civil war for 10 years, and they’re paying the price for it now. Peter, you’ve seen what we have been doing since the beginning, the shit we have been through against the establishment. The Democrats have been putting it off. Bernie Sanders has been playing patty cake with everybody. These guys have got years of work before they’re ready to field a team again. They need to get in there with trenching tools. If the Ro Khannas and the Fettermans and the Sherrod Browns get traction and organize, you’ll see a rise of a populist center-left. They’ll be able to compete with us. If not, they’re going to spend a lot more time. What we’re looking at is a 1932 type of realignment.

Neoliberalism, and the neocon movement, started with the rise of the American empire. That happened in 1932, when unfettered capitalism—the robber baron era—crashed with the stock market crash. F.D.R. came in and essentially saved capitalism with the regulatory apparatus. That regulatory apparatus metastasized into the administrative state, and then the deep state. The Democrats are in a tough position. Smart people like Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes talk about this every night on MSNBC—that the Democrats are in the unenviable position of defending the system, of defending the administration of the deep state. It’s not a good place for Democrats to be. They have naturally been anti-big business, anti-government overreach, anti-government secrecy, and really the American empire. They now find themselves defending it. 

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MAGA-nomics 101

You had Scott Bessent on War Room earlier this year. Do you think he’s going to be serious about tariffs? Can he be trusted to help Trump carry that out?

Look, he’s a great pick. Obviously, we pushed him hard, because right now, with $36 trillion in debt and increasing, you need somebody who understands global capital markets. This guy understands them. President Trump’s program is going to be difficult to get through both houses of Congress—and then you have to execute on it. 

I think Scott gets MAGA economics. I think he takes a sophisticated look at tariffs. Remember, Peter Navarro and I back the president 100 percent in the use of tariffs. We are protectionists, and we’re proud to be protectionists. We want to bring high-value jobs back to the United States. I think Scott adds sophistication, with Robert Lighthizer and others, to say, Hey, tariffs are powerful if they’re implemented, but they’re also powerful negotiating tools. People should not lose sight that to do the deportations in a humane way, we’re going to need to work through some economics with some of these countries to take these folks back. That’s the reality. Tariffs are going to be a big part of that. I think Scott looks at tariffs as a negotiating tool and Trump’s a great negotiator. 

Wait, so explain to me how tariffs would relate to deportations?

Tariffs are going to be quite strong because it’s going to be, Hey, we want to work together, but if you’re going to be recalcitrant, guess what? We’re going to put tariffs up and you’re not going to get access to the American market. All tariffs are about is the tolling fee to get access to the greatest consumer market in history. The tariff war against China, which I think will even be more intense, was to kind of break the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on taking high-value-added manufacturing jobs away from us. Tariffs are a central part of President Trump’s economic plan. The reason is bringing back high-value-added manufacturing jobs, that’s central to his program. With deportations, we should work with our friends and allies in the West. You are going to take your people back. But if you don’t get with the program? So we need to do it as some sort of mutual agreement, or we will block access to the American marketplace until you agree to take your folks back.

By the way, remember we have, let’s say, 10 million people that are here under Biden’s watch. There’s never been a mass deportation program of 10 million people in human history.

Not in peacetime!

Well, we’re going to do it because we have to do it. If you don’t do it, the African American and Hispanic working class is never going to be able to thrive. You can’t throw the five or six or seven or eight million low-skilled workers against them. You’re just going to keep wages down forever. You can’t do it. To save the Black and Hispanic working class, deportations have to take place. Now, you’re going to have to work in conjunction with the home countries. That’s just a fact, you just can’t put people on planes and put them in the air and send them back to Central America.

Those relationships can be built. I’ve been a big advocate of having a summit meeting in the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term, in McAllen, Texas, the capital of the Rio Grande Valley. We have the frontline nations of Central America and Mexico, even have Brazil and a couple other countries in Latin America. The reason is that a lot of these people, let’s take Haiti for example, they’re not coming directly from Haiti. They’re going through Brazil or Chile or Peru for a number of years. Then they come in. So we have to get some working agreements with our friends and allies in the western hemisphere. We need to work that through.  

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The China War

I noticed that Marco Rubio was not included in your ‘Five Horsemen of the Deep State Apocalypse’ like Gaetz and Kennedy and others. Are you queasy about Rubio at State? He’s a China hawk, but he’s also got neocon tendencies. Were you disappointed with that pick?

No. Actually, Senator Rubio wrote one of the most important reports here last year. He finally did something I thought the Senate should have done a long time ago. He identified the leaders of the C.C.P. and he did a deep analysis of how much wealth they’ve stolen from the Chinese people. Remember that to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party, which is a totally illegitimate dictatorship, it has to come from the Chinese people. 

Look, [Mike] Waltz is the hardest hawk on China in the House. Senator Rubio is the hardest hawk in the Senate on China. I’m not crazy about some of his neocon positions. But in the transition, he’s been fantastic. I think Senator Rubio is going to be a great Secretary of State. I’m looking forward to working with him. I’ve had some reservations, but when I rank in order all the problems in the world, number one is the Chinese Communist Party. And he’s almost as hard a hawk as I am.

On that note, there are a lot of China hawks Trump has appointed so far. If Tom Cotton is running the Senate Intelligence Committee, you’ve got another one. All those folks have said that TikTok is a national security threat. How does that square with Trump’s position that he won’t ban TikTok?

Remember, initially, President Trump came out the hardest on TikTok about banning. I think TikTok is a destructive apparatus of the Chinese Communist Party. President Trump has changed his idea on that. I think it’s because of guys like Jeff Yass, who’s a very influential investor and a very persuasive guy. We’re going to have to work through that. I’m still a super hawk when it comes to both Huawei and TikTok. I’m also a big hawk about even allowing any Chinese companies to have access to American capital markets. That’s all going to have to be worked through.

Here’s what I think. I like that President Trump does have some sort of balance. He’s got Rubio as his Secretary of State. You have Waltz as his national security advisor. You have Peter Navarro, they’ll probably get him a job in the White House. You have Scott Bessent, who’s no accommodationist when it comes to China. So you have a number of strong voices. With President Trump as a deal maker, he’s going to say, “Hey, look, we have to think this thing through.” I think that’s actually a positive. You don’t want to have too many of what I call the crazies.

Look, I’m as hard as you can get on the CCP, and I appreciate the fact that the president’s trying to leave some way to say, “We’ve got to figure out how to work with these guys, because we don’t want to get into a major shooting war, particularly around Taiwan.” I would tell your audience to focus on the conference they had down in South America, where Xi presented Biden with four red lines. Two of those red lines should not be lost on people. One was that Taiwan is a province of China and not an independent country. And if the United States stands up there, there’s going to be a problem, because that gives you the advanced chip design.

The last was the United States has got to back off any support of the democracy program over there. They just announced the imprisonment of 45 pro-democracy young people in Hong Kong. The Chinese just infused their economy with $1 trillion dollars. They’re in deep trouble. We have to work through the situation. I am all for the overthrow of that government, because I think it’s illegitimate. President Trump, I think, takes a smart and reasoned approach about, hey, we really got to figure out how to work with these guys.

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The Doge of Mar-a-Lago

How much does Trump talk to and trust Elon Musk? Is this a marriage of convenience, or do you think he’s really going to be influential in the White House? Do you think Trump is going to get annoyed with him?

Elon and I disagree on some things. But Elon deserves his place at the table. Look, he stroked a $150 million check for the ground game, which is not sexy, at the exact moment we needed it. He came in with the money and the professionals. To be brutally frank, it’s the reason we won. His money, Miriam Adelson’s money, Charlie Kirk, those guys that put the money in— they are the reason we won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. Those states won the Presidency. 

The other thing is, look at DOGE. DOGE is not sexy. DOGE is really OMB, it’s an advisor to that. He’s looking at very fundamental things we have to do to basically reorganize the administrative state. Elon’s doing things that are not sexy. He’s doing things that are not glamorous. I think he’s earning the respect of the president. I anticipate with DOGE, we will actually gain more and more influence over time.

Right before the election, Elon said that reining in government spending could cause some “economic hardship” for ordinary Americans. Doesn’t that sort of budget cutting clash with the economic populism you’ve been evangelizing about for so long?

Hang on, let’s look at the flip side of that. For decades, people have talked about deficits and it’s had no impact. One of the main reasons inflation is there is that it’s so hard to run out of the system, now that we have debt at such a high level and the interest payments are so high. Remember, we have to refinance one-third of that debt every year. That’s embedded into the system. The American people are going to have more and more economic hardship, which they already have right now, the working class and the lower middle class, until we get control of federal spending and the debt. That’s what I think he’s talking about.

Is there going to be some austerity? Are there going to be bumps? Definitely. I don’t think anybody could paint just a totally rosy scenario. The alternative for the American people is catastrophic. If we go down this path, that’s simply not sustainable. You can’t add $1 trillion of debt every 100 days, and refuse interest payments. The American people, the working class in particular, are going to be wiped out. Remember, 80 percent of our people don’t own anything. They don’t own any real assets, they don’t own any financial assets. That’s only going to get worse, unless we address it.

This is what I like about Elon Musk. He and Vivek are talking about what we’ve been preaching on the War Room for years. They are down in the trenches with the hard part of how you actually start to turn the country around. That’s what I appreciate. I think they’re going to make a case to the American people. I quite frankly think the wealthy and the billionaire class should bear the brunt of any hardships to come. I think if we put the burden on the right people, we’ll get through this as a country and you’ll see a flourishing of the working class and the middle class, which we haven’t had in 20, 30, or 40 years.