Steve Bannon warns that a Democratic House takeover would unleash daily subpoenas and impeachments aimed at President Trump, a fight he says Republicans cannot afford to lose.
In a CBS News interview taped September 29 in his War Room podcast studio, Steve Bannon put the coming midterms in blunt terms for Republicans. Lose the House, he said, and the White House becomes a bunker under constant fire.
Ted Koppel, a senior contributor to “Sunday Morning,” pressed him for two hours of talk that ranged from turnout strategy to a third Trump term. The core message never drifted far from the ballot box.
Bannon hosts War Room two hours in the morning and two hours at night. He remains one of President Trump’s most unapologetic backers, years after serving as chief White House strategist early in the first term and landing on the cover of Time in February 2017 as “The Great Manipulator.”
Bannon told podcast listeners what a Democratic majority would mean in practice. He did not soften it for Koppel.
He said:
"If we lose the House, it's going to turn the White House into Fort Apache."
He went further on who would face the first wave. Bobby Kennedy and Pete Hegseth would be impeachment targets, he predicted, with subpoenas flying every day.
He said Democrats “will look to destroy President Trump, and we'll be bogged down for two years.” That framing is the entire midterm case he is making to the base: protect the agenda by holding the chamber that notes the subpoenas.
Koppel noted that Republicans do not need a majority to cause trouble in the minority. Bannon brushed past the point. “But you don't need the majority,” he replied, then returned to his real worry, low-propensity MAGA voters staying home.
He said:
"Here's my point on the midterm: Remember, midterm elections are always driven by base getting out, and the base's ability to get more of their low-propensity voters out."
CBS noted that polls suggest Bannon’s argument may not be landing with a majority of voters. He was not campaigning to the middle. He was talking to the people who already agree with him.
Pressed on the stakes, Bannon refused any fallback plan. Old-line Republicans, he claimed, are already angling for a post-Trump era. He wants the opposite posture.
He said he would “push all our chips in the middle of the table” and tell allies there is “no retreat, and there's no substitute for victory.” Then came the line that framed the whole sit-down.
He said:
"Oh, we can't afford to lose. I don't think there's any doubt about that."
Working-class voters, he argued, are not embarrassed by Trump’s style. Media and East Coast elites may hate it. His audience, he said, does not.
He also cast Trump in historic company. When the president eventually leaves the stage, Bannon said, no one can replace him. He compared the moment to George Washington at the nation’s birth and Abraham Lincoln at its rebirth, and called Trump the figure of its “salvation”, a view he said 99% of MAGA shares.
“I am right wing; I'm not conservative. I'm a right-winger and proud of it,” he added, drawing a hard line between his brand of politics and the institutional right.
Bannon did not hide his long-shot project. He said he is leading the effort to get Trump to run again beyond the two elected terms the 22nd Amendment limits.
“First off, President Trump, I would say I'm the leader of trying to get President Trump to run for a third term,” he told Koppel. He also conceded the obvious obstacle: “It appears that he's not interested or it just won't happen.”
That did not stop the legal speculation. Bannon said he has talked to constitutional lawyers and believes there are “a number of different alternatives.” Any path, he admitted, would be contested in court, “because everything [Trump] does is contested in the courts.”
His colorful summary of the amendment’s limits:
"Oh, I think you could drive a truck through that amendment."
Trump turned 80 this year. Bannon claimed the president still works 20-hour days and sometimes goes off-script. None of that, in Bannon’s telling, reduces the need to keep hostile investigators out of gavel range.
Over the past nine years Bannon has built ties with hard-right parties across Europe. In March 2018 he addressed the French National Front’s annual congress and told Marine Le Pen’s followers they were part of a movement “bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary.”
He is especially interested in Germany’s AfD, the fiercely anti-immigrant party that recently won a state election in a landslide. Bannon said the party went door to door with little money and sold a simple package: re-industrialize, stop mass immigration, and pursue “re-migration.”
“Alternative for Deutschland is now here to teach us,” he said. American conservatives, in his view, should study that turnout machine.
When Koppel raised fascism, Bannon rejected the label. “It's not fascism. It's actually more inclusionary, it's more entrepreneurial. It's not fascism at all,” he said. MAGA’s core method, he added, is winning at the ballot box. He claimed the movement’s only loss was “the Pelosi election of '18.”
On the 2020 election, Bannon and the record remain far apart. He said the core belief of MAGA is that “we won the 2020 election.” When challenged, he answered, “That's not true. We won!”
CBS reported that Joe Biden won and that Trump’s fraud claims failed in more than 60 court cases. Bannon’s reply was procedural: “We didn't have standing. We never even got into court.” The dispute was left unresolved in the interview, as it has been in public life for years.
Bannon’s own legal history came up as well. He served four months in prison for contempt of Congress after refusing to testify about his role in events leading up to January 6. On Jan. 5, 2021, he had told War Room listeners, “All h*** is going to break loose tomorrow.”
Koppel challenged Bannon on Trump’s Iran policy and on claims of a “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program in a 12-day conflict. Bannon split the issue. He said the first phase damaged the program enough, and that Treasury-linked pressure under Scott Bessant, currency measures and an oil blockade, is the longer economic war.
CBS noted that a majority of Americans oppose the war with Iran and that outside assessments have not backed a “total” wipeout of the nuclear effort. Bannon held his ground and said working-class voters still back how Trump presents U.S. power.
The conversation also returned to Bannon’s filmmaking influences. Critics have called his style fascist. He answered by citing Leni Riefenstahl, a powerful filmmaker who worked for the Nazis, and said he wanted to recreate that visual force so “the little guy” understood he had a voice. In the 2019 documentary “The Brink,” he was heard asking how Riefenstahl would cut a scene. He called her amoral and her films powerful. He did not apologize for studying the craft.
Some Democratic candidates, he warned, may sit outside the mainstream, but they have dedicated organizers. “They have a ground game that people have to understand,” he said. His counsel to the right was to match it, not dismiss it.
Midterms reward the side that gets its infrequent voters to the polls, and Bannon is done pretending a House loss would be a manageable setback.
