Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon said this week that if President Trump is reelected in 2020, the country is going to get “pure Trump off the chain.”
In comments to Politico, published in Playbook on Thursday, Bannon said that the president’s second term would be “four years of Donald Trump in payback mode.”
The “payback” would likely be in response to Democratic-led investigations into the president, special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and negative media coverage, all of which Trump has derided as personal attacks throughout his first term.
Bannon also suggested that a second Trump term is likely, unless Democrats veer away from their current strategy and pool of candidates.
{mosads}“Every other day I see another person jumping into the race. I think those people are rational and the people around them are rational,” Bannon said of the Democrats running for president. “They must see something in the field that makes them feel like they can make a run. … I don’t see anybody in that field as of now who can take on Trump one-on-one.”
He added that “you’re not going to beat Trump with policies,” pointing to low polling numbers from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
“Warren has an incredibly detailed and probably the most well thought-through set of policy prescriptions, and they keep coming every day,” Bannon told Politico. “She’s at, what, 7 percent, 8 percent?”
The ex-White House official, who left the administration in summer 2017 and later had a public falling out with Trump, also echoed recent comments predicting that Hillary Clinton could still run for president, despite assurances from the former secretary of State that she does not plan to enter the race.
“If they don’t think that they’ve got somebody that can beat him, the vampire is going to be in the bullpen,” Bannon said, referring to Clinton. “She did get 63 million votes.”