Steve Bannon has been teaching a civics class to a group of fellow inmates, including a Jan. 6 rioter, according to a new report.
The former White House chief strategist has declined interviews while serving a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress, but sources told Rolling Stone that around 50 inmates, most of whom seemed to be strong Trump supporters, to learn about government and the U.S. Constitution.
“Everything you need to know about business or politics can be learned from Godfather I and Godfather II,” Bannon told his class, according to the report.
About half the inmates in attendance were Black, the rest of them a mix of white and Hispanic prisoners serving sentences for drugs, fraud or sex crimes at Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, and Bannon often held forth on his views of current events and boasted that he still had Trump's ear.
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“Watching Fox is like watching professional wrestling,” Bannon said, telling the inmates how much he hated the Murdoch family. “They want you to focus on phony things, the shiny toys.”
Bannon, who will be released Tuesday, told the class that the nation's founders had drafted the U.S. Constitution to guard against tyranny, but the report states that many inmates were attracted to the idea of a king as the “only way to get things done,” although the Capitol rioter disagreed – much to Bannon's surprise.
“Wasn’t that what you were trying to do on Jan. 6?” Bannon asked, but didn't mention his own role on that day. “To make Trump king?”
“No,” the inmate said, saying that he believed Trump's claims about a stolen election. “I was there to protest the lack of an investigation.”
Bannon led discussions about immigration and apologetically switched to the term "illegal immigrants" when an inmate objected to him using the term "illegal aliens," and he attempted to console an inmate who was unable to answer whether he was better off with Trump as president because he was selling drugs at the time.
“Trump’s 34 felony convictions have taken some of the sting out of being a felon,” Bannon told the man.
