Steve Bannon, the one-time political adviser to Donald Trump, predicted on Saturday that the former president will see "nothing but a war" in the 2024 general election.
Co-founder of the far-right news outlet, Breitbart News, Bannon rose to national prominence as the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Following that election, he served as Trump's White House chief strategist for the first seven months of his presidency. Not long after his departure from the administration, comments he made about the Trump family were published in journalist Michael Wolff's 2018 book, Fire and Fury, leading the then-president to disavow him.
Bannon has spent the last several years advocating for right-wing political movements worldwide and hosting the War Room political program for the Real America's Voice conservative news network. On Saturday, he appeared on Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN) during the lead-up to Trump's appearance at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he predicted "political warfare" over the next several years, while also echoing Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election being stolen from him.
"We got a fight ahead of us," Bannon said. "There's still the primary, the RNC and the donors are gonna try and [block] Trump, so we gotta get through that. The general election, and I don't have to believe Biden will be the nominee, I think they'll trade him out, but we've got nothing but a war in the general election, and then we gotta make sure they can't steal it. And by the way, that's the easy part...We've got six to eight years ahead of us of absolute political warfare."
Newsweek reached out to Trump's campaign via email for comment.
Trump is currently the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, in spite of a string of federal and state-level criminal indictments, as he attempts to win a second term in the White House. Recent polls have consistently given him a double-digit lead over his closest competitor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, with the former president regularly topping 50 percent support.
A July YouGov/Economist poll surveying 549 Republicans and right-leaning independents found a slight dip in Trump's support compared to a similar poll from the same outlet conducted last month, 49 percent compared to 51 percent. Despite that slip, he still maintained a commanding 29-point lead over the governor who came in a distant second with 20 percent.
"If they don't like Ron DeSanctimonious now, they won't like him any better 6 months from now with the start of 'Primary Season,'" Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday regarding his competitor's stalling campaign. "The more people get to know him, the lower go his polls. He is now in the mid-teens, and falling fast!"
