Steve Bannon was spotted entering the White House just hours before President Donald Trump announced a two-week delay on making an Iran decision.
The president’s former chief strategist paid the visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to lunch with the president Thursday as the MAGA base clashed over the U.S. joining Israel and taking military action in the Middle East.
Bannon has been a fierce critic of the U.S. getting involved in the escalating conflict, and the timing of his visit did not go unnoticed.
On Thursday afternoon, the president said in a statement delivered by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that he will make his decision on the U.S. involvement “within the next two weeks” and pointed to the “substantial chance of negotiations” in the near future.
Bannon spoke with Politico’s Playbook late Thursday about his meeting with the president, and while he would not discuss their meal, he said “the MAGA movement tonight is in a great place.”
The right-wing podcaster also said the president told him that he wants to “look at other alternatives.” Bannon described Trump as a guy who “before he turns to violence in terms of military kinetic action, he looks at every other alternative you can do. I think it just once again reinforces the reason that the MAGA movement loves him.”
A day before Bannon met face-to-face with Trump, he publicly urged the president to take his time making a decision.
“My recommendation is, if we are being forced into a corner to actually do a military strike on Fordo, this strike does not have to happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. The president should take his time and think this through with his advisers,” Bannon said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast on Wednesday.
He also said Israel needs to “finish what it started.”
It remains to be see whether the president’s postponement of his decision on direct U.S. involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict calms the MAGA infighting or simply delays it as well.
Pressed over the president often turning to two-week delays to address multiple issues, Leavitt on Thursday pushed back, saying, “If there is a chance for diplomacy, the president will grab it, but he is not afraid to use strength.”
Bannon predicted this week that the MAGA base will rally behind the president no matter what he eventually decides on Iran.
Some of Trump’s loudest MAGA supporters responded with praise for the president following the two-week announcement. Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk cheered the president’s unpredictability on Thursday while continuing to bash those backing regime change in Iran.
“I’m so glad President Trump is giving time for diplomacy to work with Iran and Israel,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in an X post.
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