Hours before prison, Steve Bannon uses ABC appearance to make his case before the country

Steve Bannon is going to federal prison on Monday in Danbury, Conn. But on Sunday, he appeared on ABC’s This Week, with Jonathan Karl instead of the regular host, George Stephanopoulos.

He is going to prison to begin a four month sentence following his conviction in a federal court for contempt of Congress. The case revolved around his refusal to testify before the controversial January 6 committee, for which he claimed executive privilege.

On Friday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts denied Bannon’s last minute request to delay reporting to prison pending the result of his ongoing appeal of his conviction, according to Michael Patrick Leahy in The Tennessee Star.

Bannon has had an unusual and varied past, having earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, he worked for a couple years at Goldman Sachs. Before that, he had spent six years in the U.S. Navy, mostly as a surface warfare officer. He was an executive at Breitbart News, and was the chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and later was named chief strategist and senior Counselor to the President following Trump's election. 

For the last several years he has been host of the War Room, which airs live for four hours a day during the week and two hours on the weekend, most of which can be seen on Real America’s Voice, the same network that airs Just the News’ nightly show, Just the News No Noise hosted by Just the News CEO and Editor in Chief John Solomon and co-hosted by Amanda Head.  

While Karl focused on certain words that Bannon and former President Donald Trump have used in describing what a second Trump term would look like, such as “retribution,” Bannon pushed back, quoting Trump from his recent debate with President Joe Biden, that by retribution he is talking about “success,” as in a successful second term as president.

Bannon said that it is about “justice,” that certain people, like Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Retired Gen. Mark Milley, Bill Barr and others would be investigated to see if they had committed any crimes, not that they were going to be subject to any political prosecutions.  

The Tennessee Star also cited Jen Psaki, former press secretary to President Biden, saying that “First of all, he [Bannon] is a brain bending communicator.”

“What I mean by that is when you watch it, and I was sitting there thinking he’s suggesting they’re going to work within the system to go after enemies, right, which makes it sounds almost rational, and that to me is very scary,” Psaki continued, speaking as a panelist on "This Week" after Bannon's interview aired. 

Psaki’s comments and the entire interview with Bannon are posted in Leahy’s article in The Tennessee Star.