Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon urged the MAGA movement to “fight” amid heightening fissures and disagreements over President Donald Trump‘s policies.
Why It Matters
Bannon’s call comes as the MAGA base has grown increasingly frustrated with the Trump administration’s foreign policy, as well as some issues on the domestic side.
The split has been most evident in the right-wing media sphere, with influencers like Bannon and Tucker Carlson publicly criticizing U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine and Iran and questioning the Trump administration on its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
What To Know
“WE’RE IN THE FIGHT CLUB,” Bannon wrote Tuesday on Gettr, a social media platform geared toward conservatives. “ACT LIKE IT.”
“For all of you WarRoom Posse and MAGA, let’s not curl up in the fetal position,” Bannon added, referring to fans of his War Room podcast. “Let’s not get in the mumble tank. Let’s not say, oh my God, he’s going to war in Iran, he’s getting sucked into Ukraine, he’s pushing amnesty, it’s Epstein. Yes, it’s all of those, and maybe more. That’s fine. You’re in the fight club. And in the fight club, what do we do? We fight.”
Bannon and Carlson are the face of MAGA’s isolationist wing, publicly breaking with hawkish lawmakers who have advocated for the U.S. to play a larger role in both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Iran-Israel conflict.
In June, Bannon vocally criticized Ukraine’s decision to target Russian air bases with a series of drone strikes, saying on War Room that if Ukraine didn’t consult with the Trump administration before carrying out the strikes, the U.S. should “condemn this immediately and pull all support [for Ukraine].”
He also targeted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for supporting the strikes while on a congressional visit to Ukraine, saying Graham should “come home or we are going to put you under arrest when you come home.”
After Israel started a war with Iran last month, both Bannon and Carlson immediately took to the airwaves to speak out against U.S. involvement.
“You think we’re going to join in the offensive combat [operation]?” Bannon asked Carlson on the June 16 episode of War Room.
“Yes, I do,” Carlson said. “I do.”
“Well, we have to—we can’t—we have to stop that,” Bannon said.
Five days later, Trump announced that the U.S. had joined the conflict on Israel’s side, launching a series of strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites that Trump said “obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear program.
Top Trump administration officials—though not the president himself—also drew Bannon and Carlson’s ire when the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a memo earlier this week saying “no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted” in the investigation of the disgraced businessman and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The announcement threw a wrench into years of far-right conspiracy theories about Epstein’s 2019 death, whether he had any additional coconspirators and if he kept a client list.
Bannon, Carlson and other right-wing influencers lashed out at the DOJ, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel after the memo was released.
“We have to take these apparatuses down,” Bannon said, referring to law enforcement agencies.
Carlson described the memo as a “cover-up” and told a guest on Tuesday’s episode of his podcast: “The president promised to reveal the truth about this. Pam Bondi, as you said, went on television and said, ‘We have the truth, we’re going to give it to you.’ I think this is a big deal.”
On Tuesday, Bannon wrote on Gettr that the MAGA movement shouldn’t “curl up” and “suck our thumbs.”
“We don’t say, this is so terrible. President Trump, not just the President of the United States but the leader of our movement, is under pressure from all sides,” he wrote. “From donors, from corporations, from hedge funds, from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, from [Chinese President Xi Jinping], from everywhere.”
What People Are Saying
Carlson told Bannon while arguing against U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran war: “The point is, if you think that saying, ‘Hey, let’s focus on my country, where I was born, where my family’s been for hundreds of years, that was the promise of the last election, please do it,’ if you think that’s hate, you know, you’ve really lost perspective, I guess, is what I would say … It’s like, all of that is now ignored because a leader of a country who does not have majority support in that country … wants a course of action that includes the United States and I just disagree.”
What Happens Next
Bannon has generally been steadfast in his support for Trump despite publicly criticizing his policies. The divisions within the Republican Party, meanwhile, will play a pivotal role ahead of the 2026 midterms, as Trump and his backers publicly target GOP lawmakers, like Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who have opposed the president’s agenda.
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