Exclusive -- Rep. Jim Banks Predicts 2010-Level 'Wave' for House GOP by Embracing Trump, America First

House Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (R-IN) predicted a 2010-level “wave” for the  Republicans to take back the House majority by embracing former President Donald Trump’s “winning” America First platform and by exposing the left’s increasingly divisive policies, he told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Friday.

Banks spoke to Breitbart News after he and members of the RSC met with Trump to discuss their policy agenda and path to gaining the majority back from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Banks said, after speaking with the 45th president for hours, that Trump will be “extremely engaged” in the fight to take back the House. The Hoosier conservative said he also remains committed to drafting and guiding the House GOP towards an America First agenda.

Banks said that the RSC, which comprises roughly three-fourths of the House GOP Conference, will be working on crafting “a consensus conservative agenda that Republicans can rally around to help us win back the majority, and then an agenda that we can enact when we do, so we’ve come … we have arrived at an understanding with a broad unity within the Republican Study Committee and recognizing that the Trump agenda is the winning agenda, we will win back the majority in ’22 and the White House in 2024 so Republicans can run on the Trump agenda.”

He continued saying that the policy platform would include “tough immigration policies that we’ve endorsed, and bad policies from the Biden administration, the Democrats, that we proposed to big tech legislation; election integrity bills that we’ve introduced; the Save Democracy Act. We spent over four hours with him in total last night. And most of that was in a very detailed policy discussion about all of those issues. So he was very interested in what we’re doing. But, he’s also tracking very closely with what the Republican Study Committee has been up to on Capitol Hill as well.”

Banks emphasized that the Republican Party has only become stronger due to Trump’s influence and his issues that appeal to America’s working class.

“The Republican Party is in a much better place today because of Donald Trump’s influence. And what he’s done to transform the Republican Party back into the party of the working class.”

He continued, “The Republican Party is the party of the working class because of the agenda that Donald Trump ran on and fought for four years. He won over millions of working-class voters who didn’t identify themselves as Republicans before, who are now in the Republican Party. And if we don’t stay focused on that agenda, we will lose those Trump voters,” Banks said. “We need those voters [to] win back the majority and win back the White House. So that’s what we strongly believe that RSC, there’s a lot of, you know, there are a lot of stories in the left-wing or mainstream media about division and the Republican Party is just completely false. Republicans are 99% unified in recognizing that. And our meeting with President Trump yesterday was a testament of that.”

Banks also said that the current turmoil Americans continue to experience from inflation to the rapid expansion of critical race theory and other leftist policies strike a strong contrast between Biden and Trump’s administrations. He added that America continues to see “cracks” in the Democrat Party’s unity that prevent Biden from enacting his agenda.

He explained that “from inflation to the crisis that’s occurring at the border, too, to the geopolitical situation … a world that’s obviously more in turmoil today than what it was about [when] Donald Trump was in the White House. The critical race theory in your face, all day, every day coming from the media, from the left, infiltrating, infiltrating all of our institutions … the working class, families are seeing that they are seeing Joe Biden’s hidden tax through inflation every time they go to the grocery stores and they fill up [at] the gas pump. They’re recognizing that this economic situation is not good for working-class families and understand that, that life was better under Donald Trump.”

Banks said in contrast that Trump helped rebuild the GOP as a “working-class coalition” that appeals to a broad spectrum of Americans across the country. This further would [allow] the GOP [to] retake the House as they would need to flip districts in traditionally blue states such as New York and New Jersey, and flip districts in red-leaning states such as Iowa.

The RSC chairman concluded, saying that Trump feels the “duty” to remain engaged in Republican politics.

Banks said, “He feels like he has a duty to get back out and hold on, hold the rallies, engage with the American people and weigh in on how disastrous the Biden-Pelosi agenda is for our country. So I think we’re getting … we’re gonna be seeing a lot more of him. And I think that’s good for Republicans. It’s good for … it’s good for America.”