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Leaked Audio: Bannon said Trump planned to falsely claim victory
Steve Bannon revealed to a group of associates on the evening of October 31, 2020, that President Donald Trump had a plan to declare victory on election night, even if he was losing. Trump was aware that the sluggish processing of Democratic-leaning mail-in ballots would result in early lead indications for him in crucial states. Bannon added that his “plan” was to leverage this fact to claim victory while alleging that any foreseeable shifts in the vote totals in Joe Biden’s favor must be the result of fraud.
“Trump will simply declare victory, I predict. Right? He will proclaim victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon joked, according to recordings of the conversation that Mother Jones was able to get.
He intends to declare triumph. But that does not imply that he has prevailed.
Later in the conversation, Bannon described a scenario in which Trump had an early advantage in crucial swing states: “As it sits here today, Trump’s going to go in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner.'” It’s over. Awful on it.
Even before the election, the public was aware of Trump’s plan to declare victory while tens of millions of votes were still being tabulated. The scheme was covered at the time by Axios. On November 3—Election Day—Bannon addressed the topic on his War Room program. Weeks prior, Bannon spoke with a former Trump administration official who described how Trump would use claims of fraud to contest an electoral loss and would work to have Congress declare him the victor. The congressional committee looking into January 6 described last month how Rudy Giuliani persuaded Trump to declare victory on November 4 after 2 a.m. in spite of opposition from campaign personnel. In that infamous news conference, Trump insisted, “Honestly, we did win this election.”
New evidence shows that Trump’s late-night tirade, which came a few hours later than Bannon had intended, was part of a larger scheme to deceive the American people about the election results in order to maintain power. The stunning honesty and attention to detail with which Bannon discussed a plan to use lies to defeat democracy makes the new recording stand out. In addition, Bannon predicted that Trump’s erroneous statement of victory would spark massive political violence and that he would make “crazy” measures to hold onto power. Throughout the recording, Bannon and his companions can be heard laughing at those scenarios.
Robert Costello, Bannon’s lawyer, and Bannon did not reply to inquiries regarding the recording.
After election day, Bannon rose to prominence as a strong supporter of Trump’s false claims of electoral fraud. According to a Monday article in The Washington Post, Bannon’s “vociferous support” for those lies persuaded Trump to pardon him at the last minute on unrelated fraud charges. Costello questioned the reporting in a statement to Mother Jones. According to him, Trump “never made any such comment” connecting the pardon to Bannon’s campaign rhetoric.
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