Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist, urged President Donald Trump to forget the rallies and instead emphasize “action” during the final four months of the presidential campaign.
“He is trying to get conservative commentators to go negative on the campaign so that they wake up and realize they are in bad shape before it is too late to do anything,” a former White House official told The Washington Examiner in regards to Bannon’s recent appearance on “The John Fredericks Show.”
During the Tuesday interview, Bannon said there’s “no set of rallies, no campaign speech, no messaging” that will save the president’s campaign.
“It’s how you govern every day. He’s the incumbent. He’s the protagonist in this drama. He’s the driver of action. You have to drive action,” said Bannon.
He praised actions like Trump’s Tuesday visit to the border wall in Arizona and his signing of an executive order to protect the nation’s monuments from radical agitators.
“Trump is the center of order, Biden is the pusher of chaos,” Bannon added. “Biden and the Democrats support the chaos, and Trump has got to show that he is the stability factor and the provider of order. And that’s through action.”
Bannon said the Trump base and his supporters in the media are “getting too hung up on” the rallies and messaging.
“That’s all important,” he said. “But this is about governing. You’re going to win reelection if people feel comfortable that you’re taking action and you’re actually governing.”
“You don’t need a campaign to get the message out,” he continued. “He is the president of the United States. He’s not a candidate for president. He’s the president of the United States. You act like president of the United States, you take action like the president of the United States, you govern like you are president of the United States, you’re going to be reelected.”
The campaign “needs a slogan” and “the right ball cap,” but none of that’s going to “make a difference on November 3,” said Bannon.
“It’s just not. What’s going to make a difference is the actions you’ve taken and the results of those actions,” he said. “It’s very simple: action, action, action. You have jobs, you have law and order with necessary reform, you have China, you still have this pandemic, you have this overall financial and economic crisis. This is probably the most turbulent time in, I think, modern American history, maybe all of American history.”
“Everything that’s converging towards us plus this radicalism of Antifa, which is a cultural Marxist organization that now is trying to go to the actual underpinnings of society – and they’re very open about that – so that’s gasoline on this fire of the pandemic, the financial and economic crisis, the geopolitical confrontation with China. That’s all part of it. But that’s called being president of the United States,” Bannon continued.
He said the president “is a man of action,” and the actions he takes over the next four months can serve as his campaign.
“You take action – that’s your campaign,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a rally. We don’t need rallies. What we need is the president five days a week out there doing those types of things and showing people that he is, as president, the driver of action.”
Listen to the full interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qzzZ1bIdbc&feature=emb_title
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of The Minnesota Sun and The Ohio Star. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Steve Bannon” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “Trump Rally” by raschau. CC BY 2.0.
