Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon cast Tuesday’s U.S. Senate election as a pivotal moment in the populist-nationalist movement, stressing that Judge Roy Moore’s victory would be a major blow to the forces trying to destroy President Donald Trump and his agenda.
“I thought we litigated that. Didn’t the American people already vote on that? Alabama’s the firebreak in all that. Judge Moore wins tomorrow, it’s a totally different deal; you understand that, right?” Bannon told the crowd at an election eve Moore rally in Midland City, Alabama, regarding Democrats’ effort to oust President Trump over the “Billy Bush Weekend” Access Hollywood recording.
Bannon then unloaded on the disparate people and institutions engaged in what he called the “politics of personal destruction” in an effort to destroy Judge Moore. “They are trying to send you a signal … that if you put up another guy, they’re gonna destroy him too. That’s why the men and women in this room, we have to have the backs of these people,” he said at the barn venue.
To start, Bannon mocked CNN over recent major corrections and overplayed reporting. He called the network “C.F.N. – Cable Fake News.”
“I’m here as a private citizen, Anderson,” Bannon said, breaking the fourth wall to address CNN anchor Anderson Cooper directly in the studio from which he was covering the rally. “I know it must hurt you for a guy from Breitbart to say that.”
The Republican establishment, a member of which was implicated this week as the possible source for the Washington Post article that unleashed the torrent of unconfirmed sexual allegations against Moore, was not spared from Bannon’s ire.
“One of these establishment guys, I think his name was Willard Mitt Romney,” Bannon said, the failed Republican presidential candidate’s name eliciting boos from the crowd.
Bannon has gotten personal with Romney over the last week after Mitt explicitly impugned Moore’s “honor and integrity” in a tweet. “Honor and integrity,” Bannon repeated several times, “About an individual who went to the United States Military Academy at West Point and served his country in Vietnam … and Mitt Romney, who avoided service, talks about the integrity and honor of Capt. Roy Moore.”
“What kind of country we living in? Things in the media praising Mitt Romney when he does this and he does that. That doesn’t wash. Does not wash,” Bannon added.
In contrast, Bannon presented Tuesday’s electorate as the determiner of the future of American politics. “Tomorrow they call the question. Sons and daughters of Alabama are gonna show the world where they stand for this nation,” he said. “This is a national election. It is the Trump miracle versus the nullification process.”
“In this country, it’s not our natural resources … it’s not even our constitution, our legal system … it’s not the capital and the wealth we built up. It’s the American people,” Bannon said, extolling Alabamians not to allow elites to “manage” America’s decline. “That’s the power that elected Donald Trump. That’s the power that’s gonna elect Roy Moore tomorrow. That’s the power they fear. And I’m telling you: properly harnessed, it’s the greatest power on this earth.”