Steve Bannon isn’t predicting a blowout election result for Donald Trump—rather, he seems to have resigned himself to a painfully close presidential race.
During Monday’s episode of The War Room podcast, the former Trump strategist said that the margins in swing states would be “razor-thin at best.”
National polls do show an incredibly close race: 538, which aggregates national polls, found Trump and Kamala Harris were in a dead heat Monday, with Harris leading Trump 48 percent to 46.9 percent, within the margin of error.
But Bannon’s willingness to deliver hard truths represents a notable shift for the mastermind behind the MAGA movement. Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump’s ex-national security adviser, once described Bannon as Trump’s “fawning court jester” during his first administration. Now, even Bannon has given up on padding the former president’s ego.
In an interview with Newsweek Monday, Bannon said that in 2016, he’d had “100 percent metaphysical certitude” Trump would win, Now, he was “close to 100 percent” certain Trump would win, if Republicans were able to “execute” their ground game on Election Day. Unfortunately for him, early voting has indicated that Trump’s ground game has been falling apart in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state.
Acknowledging the close race between Trump and Harris likely won’t change Bannon’s strategy for what the Republican presidential nominee should do on Tuesday night: declare victory regardless before the election has been called.
Only days before the 2020 presidential election, Bannon said that Trump would announce himself as the winner regardless of how Americans had voted, according to leaked audio obtained by Mother Jones.
“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon said. “He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”
Trump was able to claim that the election had been stolen by seizing on early returns and voter perception that he’d been ahead. After being released from jail last month, Bannon urged Trump to do the exact same thing.
“If the votes come in like it looks like they’re gonna come in, he should step up and inform American citizens of exactly what’s going on and not keep people in the dark like was done in 2020,” Bannon said.
Bannon isn’t the only Trump ally whose unshakeable faith in their beloved leader has begun to falter. Susie Wiles, co-manager of Trump’s campaign, issued an internal memo Sunday filled with qualifying phrases like, “should we be victorious,” “regardless of the outcome of the election,” and “God willing,” seeming to acknowledge that Trump no longer had the election in the bag.
