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Bannon tells Republicans voting for spending bill ‘You vote for this, you’re done’

March 22, 2024 | | Print Article

Steve Bannon fired a warning shot at Republican lawmakers who may consider backing a spending bill to avoid a government shutdown.

The former Trump adviser railed against GOP support for a new $1.2 trillion spending package, notifying them on his “War Room” podcast that they are “done” if they vote with Democrats to support it.

“I got to tell you this deficit and this budget is outrageous. It’s going to be over 2 trillion dollars. Mark my words. It’s going to be over $2 trillion, and this is why it’s got to be fought, it’s got to be stopped now,” he said, foretelling the restraints it would put on former President Trump if he is reelected in November.

“We’re going to hamstring — all these people say, ‘oh, we need a bigger majority, we need to take the Senate, we need to get President Trump back in,’ you’re going to hamstring President Trump on his economic plan,” Bannon said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is pushing his colleagues to support the bill that many have already indicated they have problems with. Bannon told his audience to contact their representatives and assert that their future re-elections will depend on how they vote on the package.

“This is what we got to fight, and you’ve got to tell people, hey, you vote for this, you’re done — I’m done with you. I don’t care what good they’ve done in the past,” Bannon said, urging voters to “hit them with both barrels today.”

While on the topic of calling out Republicans, Bannon took aim at the “impeachment fiasco” targeting President Joe Biden.

“Most of the Republicans didn’t sit there for the entire time. That shows you how much seriousness they put into it,” he said before laying into the president about the disaster at the southern border.

“You need to tell Biden, you need to shut down the border now or you’re going to shut down your government and we’ll get in a room over the weekend and you convince us of what you’re going to do [with] executive orders and others to shut down the border from the invasion,” Bannon said. “Once you do that then we can talk about giving you the money to open your government back up. Until then, sorry, and we’ll win that argument with the American people.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) concurred, joining Bannon on the Thursday podcast to declare that “Mike Johnson blew it.”

“It’s total lack of backbone, total lack of leadership and a total failure by Republican leadership! There’s no other way to describe it. This bill is an abomination. I don’t even have words for any Republican that votes for this bill. I promise you I will not be going out and supporting any Republican who votes for this bill for any position, ever again,” he said.

“Republican leadership refuses to use leverage to fight for those things. Look, you understand dealmaking. Former President [Donald] Trump understands dealmaking. You can’t get everything you want. None of us would say you can, but dag gummit, we should get at least something significant in the fight,” the Texas Republican continued. “We should use our leverage, and Mike Johnson blew it when he walked away from a continuing resolution that we could have extended through this year to trigger the caps that we had put in place last year. We would force Democrats to the table and then leverage this.”

 

Frieda Powers
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