Bannon, Patel say Trump ‘dead serious’ about revenge on media: ‘We’re going to come after you’

Steve Bannon and Kash Patel claimed that former President Trump is “dead serious” about exacting revenge on his political enemies if he wins a second term as president, and they warned members of the media to take the threats seriously, saying Tuesday, “We’re going to come after you.”

In an episode of Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Bannon and Patel, two of Trump’s close allies, pledged to prosecute members of the media who “lied’ about the 2020 presidential election results — falsely suggesting Trump truly won.

“We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media,” Patel told Bannon. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”

“We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators,” Patel said, suggesting those were terms used sometimes to describe them. “Because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

Bannon, in setting up the question to Patel, underscored the same point, mentioning MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show producers, as well as all media.

“And I want the Morning Joe producers that watch us and all the producers that watch us — this is just not rhetoric. We’re absolutely dead serious,” Bannon said. “You cannot have a constitutional republic and allow what these deep-staters have done to the country.

“The deep state — the administrative state, the fourth branch of government, never mentioned in the Constitution — is going to be taken apart, brick by brick, and the people that did these evil deeds will be held accountable and prosecuted, criminal prosecutions,” Bannon said, before asking Patel whether he thinks he can deliver the goods for the former president.

The comments underscore recent reporting about Trump’s plans for a second term in the White House. Since leaving office, The New York Times reported Trump and his allies have made plans to expand executive power, prosecute his enemies and increase presidential power over bureaucratic agencies. Trump has also made clear he would get rid of career government officials and replace them with loyalists.

Patel echoed these plans in his comments Tuesday.

“The one thing we learned in the Trump administration the first go-around, is we got to put in all American patriots, top to bottom, and we got them for law enforcement. We got them for intel collection, we got them for offensive operations. We got them for [Department of Defense], CIA, everywhere,” he said.

Trump is the leading candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential race, leading his closest competitor by at least 30 points in most national polls. In a recent poll, Trump led President Biden in a hypothetical general election match-up between the two candidates.