Ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, prominent right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon predicted on Sunday two things that history will remember from Trump's time in politics.
Newsweek has reached out to Trump's transition team via email for comment on Sunday afternoon.
Why It Matters
Bannon, a staunch Trump ally and former White House chief strategist during the president-elect's first term, played a key role in shaping Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and early presidency. Known for his hardline populist views and support for nationalist policies, before his time in the White House, Bannon was executive chairman of Breitbart News.
Since leaving the Trump administration in 2017, Bannon has remained a prominent voice in right-wing media, hosting the War Room podcast, on which he continues to support Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement. He resumed his media activities after being released from prison in October 2024 after serving four months for defying a congressional subpoena related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
While Trump gears up to take office on Monday, he continues to face pushback from his critics, specifically as the incoming administration gears up to enact a hardline immigration agenda and other controversial policies.
What To Know
In a Sunday interview with ABC News' This Week with host Jonathan Karl, Bannon spoke about Trump as he predicted the two things history will remember from Trump's time in office.
"When history is written, Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, we'll all be washed away and forgotten in the footnotes. They'll know two things, and [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi be washed away, [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer. They'll know two things. Trump and the MAGA movement. This is changing American politics. American politics is, as I said for years, is ultimately going to get a place of two alternative versions of populism. A populist nationalism that President Trump has built up, America first. And you're going to have some sort of still populist globalism that looks like the left may try to come together with," he said.
Bannon previously laid out an aggressive plan for his former boss' first 48 hours back in the Oval Office.
Speaking with Donald Trump Jr. on his Triggered podcast in December, Bannon described a blitz of executive orders, mass deportations regarding illegal immigration and a direct confrontation with Washington lawmakers.
"I think it's Homan and Miller on everything," Bannon said, referencing Trump's incoming border czar Tom Homan and Trump's incoming deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller. "We deal in 50 or 60 executive orders regarding that. I think it's also on the economy. I think it's immediate—you cap everything in executive order immediately. Full stop."
Since Trump's election win, many of his critics have continuously warned that he is a threat to democracy and have expressed concern about what he might do once in office, specifically in regard to his agenda and his mass deportation plans.
Others have also made predictions on what a second term will look like including John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser.
In a Sunday interview on United Kingdom-based LBC Radio with host Lewis Goodall, Bolton was asked about how the second Trump term will look in comparison to his first.
"I think it will be just as chaotic; that's just the way Trump is. One day he is talking about imposing 60 percent tariffs of China, the next day he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico, now he is forcing the Israeli government to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza that Joe Biden has been working on for seven months because he wants the conflict out of the way...So I think it will be a very wild ride. I think it will be duplicated in many respects in domestic policy as well because Trump is just not disciplined by what the job requires," Bolton said.
What People Are Saying
President-elect Donald Trump wrote in part in a Truth Social post on Friday: "January 20th cannot come fast enough! Everybody, even those that initially opposed a Victory by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Administration, just want it to happen."
University of Kentucky political science professor D. Stephen Voss told Newsweek in September: "Trump has built what scholars call a charismatic movement—a political movement inseparable from the man himself. The Trump movement is not defined by an ideology, not defined by an identifiable social group, and to the extent it's united by grievances, they're not fully articulated. Trump might try to pass the mantle to another figurehead, such as a member of his family or a politician molded in his image, but leadership of a personality-based movement typically is hard to pass on."
Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney wrote in part earlier this month in a post to X, formerly Twitter: "Remember how you sent a mob to our Capitol and then watched the violence on television and refused for hours to instruct the mob to leave? Remember how your former Vice President prevented you from overturning our Republic? We remember."
She added: "And now, as you take office again, the American people need to reject your latest malicious falsehoods and stand as the guardrails of our Constitutional Republic—to protect the America we love from you," she wrote.
What Happens Next
Trump will take office on Monday as only the second president in U.S. history to serve two nonconsecutive terms.
With resuming office, preparations are already underway from the incoming administration to carry out Trump's immigration agenda. He is expected to sign a series of executive orders on "Day 1" of his presidency, focusing on mass deportations and enhanced border security.
English (US) ·