‘We have to increase taxes on the wealthy’: Steve Bannon

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

David Weigel: So what is populism? How are you defining it?

Steve Bannon: Populism is two things. It has a non-material aspect, which is anti-elite, and in that, a redemptive, almost kind of spiritual quality — what we call the sovereign will. On a practical basis, it’s economic policies, tax policies, industrial policies, and national security policies that make the citizen the actual focus of the government. Look at military recruiting. Why is it down? It’s not just about “woke.” It’s also down with parents and even young people who don’t see the purpose of some of our military endeavors.

On the economic side, it is things like taking on tech, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, and driving the benefits to working people, to the middle class. Over the last 30 or 40 years, if you look at total returns from productive activity, more returns have gone to capital than have gone to work. Whether it’s trade policies that are populist in nature — bringing high-skilled manufacturing jobs back — whether it’s immigration and shutting down the border, because you’re trying to stop the competition from unskilled workers, the one thing in our movement that I think is different than some of the populism that you see, you know, in other places that we are populist nationalists.

I don’t think you look at Republicans and Democrats anymore. I think those labels are meaningless. The Morning Joe mindset is no different, really, than what the Murdochs really think. The elites have had this concept of an empire that has destroyed the country.

It sounds like Biden was the perfect foil for this, a Democrat who watched Morning Joe and believed in projecting America’s greatness around the world.

He was, but the tragic figure in this is Barack Obama. Barack Obama beat the Clintons in the primary. The 2008 economic crash leads to his victory. But Obama’s solution for it, which was zero interest rates, saved the established order. That sets the fuse for Trump in 2016. It’s Gore Vidal’s old analysis of D.C. — this is a one-party town. It’s just two faces to one party. There’s not that much difference between Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer at the end of the day. Fundamentally, they are systems players. They understand that if the underlying anger out there isn’t put down, they’re going to be gone.

This is why our coalition is broader. It’s also why you see this seething anger about this healthcare CEO being assassinated on the street in New York. A guy that lies in wait, steps out, and shoots a guy at point blank range — pure evil — and that’s as anti-American as you can get. That’s Robert Ford. When terribly misguided people say this guy is a hero, you can’t look away from that. The response to that is not more security for CEOs. It’s looking at how much, since 2008, has gone to stock buybacks for shareholders, not to reinvest in plants and equipment and capital to build jobs and robust communities. The country is a bad way right now.

But there are a lot of Republicans in Congress who want to keep those old economic rules in place, and extend all the business tax cuts.

In President Trump’s house, there are many mansions. You’re going to see a fight. You’re going to see a fight from the populist right. If you look at 2024 as just a win for Trump, he’ll be here for four years, and we’ll figure out what happens after, then you don’t think things have to change. You think we just need the tax cuts. If you look at Trump as a historic figure, as I do — Washington, Lincoln and Trump, right? — then this is the age of Trump, and Trump is a personification and manifestation of deeper forces in the world and in the United States.

This is a 1932-type realignment, if we do this right. Look at the demographics that got us here – black, Hispanic, white, working class, all of it. If we deliver for these people, and I mean deliver in a big way economically, then this is a coalition that could last for 50 years. We could win seats in the House. We don’t have to lose to Speaker Jeffries, and Democrats who get in there and impeach Trump. To do that you have to break that mindset that stock buybacks are fine, that crony capitalism is fine, and the tax breaks for the corporations are fine, then you’re going to squander a unique moment in history.

There’s no more strategy involved. This is just execution.

Where does Elon fit into this? Where do the other very wealthy people coming into this administration fit into this?

Number one, these guys were all progressive Democrats in Trump’s first term. Look at Bezos, Zuckerberg, and all these guys coming to kiss the ring. With Elon — look, he wrote a quarter of a fucking billion dollar check when we had no money, when Trump had no money. He and I are disagreeing on just about everything, particularly China. But he didn’t do what most wealthy people do, and got sucked in by the consultant class to do TV ads. This guy came in, with his engineering brain, and said what I’ve been saying: This was a base-plus election. This was all going to be ground game at the end.

The changing of the architecture of the electorate was a key component of this — taking Ohio and Florida off the map. That’s a key component of populism. You have to make sure people understand that their individual agency, when activated, has a meaningful result. We have an army at War Room that puts out the content all day long. I go to these conferences, and the people come up — these are women in their 50s, 60s and 70s — they haven’t been active before. They are force multipliers. I call it the Army of the Awakened.

But if I’m a Democrat, I know exactly I’m going to challenge that. I’ll focus on the working class tax cuts, wait for Republicans not to prioritize them, and say: These guys are all giving handouts to the rich. They’re doing Elon’s bidding, we’re the party that’s going to stop that.

We’ve been working on this populist project for 14 years. It’s just not something you glom onto. They don’t really speak in the nomenclature of populism. You’ve got a couple of guys — Fetterman, Ro Khanna — but if you look at AOC and the Squad and the people really driving things, there’s no natural reflex for populism.

The far right of the populist movement — we’re going get ahead of that and say the same thing about the tax cuts. There has to be no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security. Guess what that’s gonna do? You get DOGE and OMB to do cuts in year one — not this Kevin McCarthy bullshit where you have $2 trillion of cuts, but they’re all in year nine and ten, so they never materialize. Real cuts.

Now, of the four and half trillion dollars in revenue we get, how much is from corporate taxes? Only $500 billion. Since 2008, $200 billion has gone into stock repurchases. If that had gone into plants and equipment, think what that would have done for the country. I’m for a dramatic increase in corporate taxes. We have to increase taxes on the wealthy. For getting our guys’ taxes cut, we’ve got to cut spending, which they’re gonna resist. Where does the tax revenue come from? Corporations and the wealthy. And when they start squealing, we have a conversation. We’re all partners in this, everybody’s going to take a little pain, but the working people are going to take less pain than you guys.

This is the last days of the long con. The first six months of the second term is going to be politics like you’ve never seen before.