Steve Bannon Is Out of Prison and Spreading Lies Online

Steve Bannon obtained out of federal jail at round 3 am Tuesday. Seven hours later, he was dwell on his Warfare Room podcast to “flood the zone with shit” precisely one week earlier than the presidential election.

Flooding the zone with shit is Bannon’s personal oft-quoted description of his media technique: churning so many lies or half-truths into the stratosphere that it turns into not possible to attract a line between reality and fiction.

“I’m extra energized and extra targeted than I’ve ever been in my whole life,” mentioned Bannon on the Warfare Room stream on Rumble, which garnered almost 100,000 dwell viewers at one level. “The 4 months in federal jail not solely didn’t break me, it empowered me.”

Bannon, 70, a longtime ally of and former strategist for Donald Trump, spent 4 months at a low-security federal jail in Danbury, Connecticut, for contempt after he defied a subpoena within the congressional probe into the January 6 Capitol riot.

Bannon has forged himself as a martyr—somebody who, like January 6 rioters and like Trump, is being unfairly persecuted by the identical tyrannical forces they’re up in opposition to subsequent week within the election.

On Tuesday on air, and later at a press convention, Bannon repeatedly prompt that former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi banished him to jail as a result of she needed to comprise his affect.

“For those who’re not ready to be despatched to federal jail as a political prisoner, you then’re undeserving to be on this motion,” he mentioned. “You must perceive, they wish to put you in jail, and they’re going to put you in jail. For those who can’t settle for that, you then don’t know what they signify.”

Bannon’s return to the general public sphere additionally means the return of an enormous mouthpiece to amplify the election fraud conspiracies which might be already raging on-line. And Bannon obtained on to enterprise, spinning a story to his viewers of Democrats plotting to heist the 2024 election.

“Each day after November 5 goes to be Stalingrad,” Bannon mentioned. “If they’ll’t take it away from Trump, if they’ll’t nullify it proper there, they wish to at the least delegitimize his victory.”

“They may go to any size to cease President Trump,” Bannon continued. “That’s the truth.”

A 2023 Brookings research on disinformation in political podcasts recognized Bannon’s Warfare Room as the largest disseminator of falsehoods and unsubstantiated claims; a few fifth of all episodes assessed by researchers had been decided to have claims flagged as false by debunkers similar to Snopes and Politifact.

“If the Pelosi equipment wins, you higher be ready to go to federal jail,” Bannon mentioned. “As a result of these folks don’t have any qualms about weaponizing the justice system, weaponizing the authorized system, in opposition to Individuals who’ve completely different political opinions.”

His followers appear to be blissful he’s again. “God Bless You Steve’ Get The Bannon Sledge Hammer Out, And Begin Smashing The TRAITORS,” one viewer wrote in the course of the Tuesday livestream.

“Welcome again Steve, we’d like our chief,” wrote one other. “Give us our marching orders and lets get this achieved.”