Political conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon is turning to establishment conservatives to guest-host his podcast while he serves his prison sentence—and they’re all too ready to take on the job.
A couple dozen guest hosts are slated to take over Bannon’s far-right podcast, War Room, before he wraps up his stint in federal prison. The names filling up the time slots—and effectively elevating the fringe platform—include top conservative lawmakers such as Representatives Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert.
They’ll join the likes of alt-right conspiracy theorist and white supremacist Jack Posobiec, Trump administration officials Kash Patel and Peter Navarro (who will join once he finishes his own prison sentence on July 17), former Fox News commentator Monica Crowley, and, strangely, Osama bin Laden’s niece, Noor bin Laden.
Bannon headed to prison Monday for defying a congressional subpoena from the house January 6 investigative committee. The former Trump adviser played a key role in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and helped stoke the anger among conservatives that boiled into the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol building. Bannon is scheduled to be released November 1, just days before the next election.
“It doesn’t matter that I’m in prison,” Bannon told The Daily Beast on Sunday. “The show will be bigger.… They’re making me a martyr.”
“The audience will not notice any difference in the intensity, the urgency, the topics we cover, contributors,” he continued.
But the 70-year-old’s perspective on his own imprisonment is still a bit askew from the reality of his situation. Rather than viewing it as an immediate and legally expected consequence of failing to respond to a mandatory congressional inquiry, Bannon seemed to believe the prison sentence boiled down to an effort to shutter his peripheral political platform. For the alt-right, that makes the podcast’s longevity a symbolic success.
“It’s very simple,” Bannon said. “I’m a political prisoner, because I have a very successful platform that reaches the common man. They hate that; they will do anything to shut that down.”
Meanwhile, the former Trump strategist seemed ready to take on his sentence, telling the Beast that he wasn’t expecting any “special deals.”
“I’m just showing up tomorrow,” Bannon told the publication. “Let’s roll.”
