Steve Bannon Celebrates Matt Gaetz Pick—and Names His First Targets

Steve Bannon has a vision for the future, and it involves locking up MSNBC’s anchors and their producers for criticizing President-elect Donald Trump.

“You better be worried. You better lawyer up. Some of you young producers, you better call Mom and Dad tonight. ‘Hey Mom and Dad, you know a good lawyer?’ Lawyer up. Lawyer up,” Bannon said on his show, War Room, Wednesday.

The shocking threat came on the heels of news that Donald Trump had tapped Florida Representative Matt Gaetz to be his attorney general (a conveniently timed appointment that has the dual benefit of killing a House Ethics investigation into Gaetz’s alleged misconduct with women and minors). That decision will effectively hand Gaetz the keys to the Justice Department during Trump’s second term—so long as the unsavvy but deferential political operative can ride the wave.

“You try to destroy Trump. You try to imprison Trump. You try to break Trump,” Bannon continued. “He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him. And now he is turned on you. And he’s put a firebrand in charge of main justice—Department of Justice. And you’re going to have to live with it.”

The ex–Breitbart editor then went on to name names, calling out host Ari Melber and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann, who was part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“I’ve never complained about this,” Bannon said. “Never bitched and moaned about it. Just came with the territory. I understood they feared us. And why do they fear us? Because we were coming to take down the globalists and the deep state!”

Bannon was himself, at one point, at the epicenter of Trump’s universe, serving as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist before the former Apprentice host fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

But despite his incredible fall from grace, Bannon has continued to posit his influence in the far-right sphere. In 2023, the political provocateur issued a similar threat, promising to slam MSNBC with “prosecutions and accountability.”

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

Republican Senators Rand Paul and Thom Tillis got into a heated exchange Thursday over aid for hurricane victims in Virginia and North Carolina.

Tillis asked for an aid bill to be passed by unanimous consent during a floor speech, but Paul had other ideas, pushing for an amendment that the relief be paid for with green energy funds and complaining about unrelated funds to Ukraine. In effect, Paul’s amendment would block the aid bill, which drew Tillis’s ire. The North Carolina senator then asked the Kentucky senator to yield his time for questions, setting off an argument.

“Look, our state motto is Esse quam videri,” Tillis, who represents North Carolina, said. “It says to ‘be’ rather than to ‘seem.’ This is a disingenuous offer to amend my bill.”

Tillis suggested that Paul was grandstanding and perhaps planning to use his rant, which attacked the Green New Deal, in a fundraising email. “This bill, if it got amended, has no prayer,” Tillis said. “I came to the Senate to make a difference, not to make a point.

“I assume that Senator Paul knows how to count votes,” Tillis added. “He has to know that he doesn’t have the votes to get this bill done if it’s amended. To be rather than to seem. I’m focused on trying to get North Carolina back on track and not playing a game on the Senate floor.”

Paul stuck to his guns, insisting that the funds weren’t available thanks to the “accumulation of $35 trillion worth of debt,” prompting a response from Tillis that Paul was “playing a game of being disingenuous.” The North Carolina senator noted that the House, which is controlled by Republicans, would find a way to pay for the aid relief and that Paul was “putting a poison pill” that would prevent the bill from passing in the Senate.

Paul used debate over the bill to expound upon a favorite Republican punching bag, the Green New Deal, missing the irony that the environmental plan seeks to reduce the greenhouse emissions that are a major factor in increasingly severe hurricanes. Tillis has a point—people who have suffered because of Hurricane Helene care more about immediate relief than funding technicalities.

It’s only been a week since Republicans had a successful election in which they won the presidency as well as Congress, and they are already having trouble passing a simple aid relief bill for hurricane victims that even had Democratic support. If this is how Congress is going to function when the GOP takes full control next year, we can expect more gridlock and hardly any bills being passed.

For anyone who was worried that Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Representative Matt Gaetz to be the next attorney general seemed a little half-baked, that’s because it was: The plan came together within the span of only a few hours, Politico reported Thursday.

At the beginning of Wednesday, Gaetz wasn’t even on Trump’s short list for the position, but the president-elect wasn’t quite feeling his spate of options, according to Politico’s Playbook.

Then Gaetz boarded Trump’s plane Wednesday morning, and Boris Epshteyn, the Trump team’s top lawyer, went to work convincing Trump that the Florida Republican, who’d previously been investigated by the Justice Department, should now be its leader. (Epshteyn is accused of assisting Rudy Giuliani’s fake electors scheme in Arizona and obstructing the certification of the 2020 election result. He pleaded not guilty, but the case is still ongoing.)

One Trump adviser told The Bulwark that Trump liked Gaetz, who has no experience as a government attorney or judge, for his unorthodox, extrajudicial style.

“None of the attorneys had what Trump wants, and they didn’t talk like Gaetz,” the adviser said. “Everyone else looked at AG as if they were applying for a judicial appointment. They talked about their vaunted legal theories and constitutional bullshit. Gaetz was the only one who said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go over there and start cuttin’ fuckin’ heads.’”

It seems that Trump didn’t actually want a lawyer; he wanted a loyal mercenary. Meanwhile, Gaetz’s nomination, and subsequent resignation, has raised a considerable ruckus on the Hill.

The House Ethics Committee was planning to release a report on its multiyear investigation into Gaetz Friday. Gaetz is being investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and a spate of other alleged ethics violations.

He was previously investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with a 17-year-old girl and violating sex trafficking laws, but he was never formally charged—though the probe still might explain his take-no-prisoners attitude toward the attorney general spot.

John Clune, the attorney representing the underage girl, on Thursday urged the House Ethics Committee to release its report. “She was a high school student and there were witnesses,” he wrote on X.

House Ethics Chair Michael Guests insisted he had no plans to release the report, though not all Republicans agree. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin demanded that the report be shared with his committee, and Republican Senator John Cornyn also urged its release. Some GOP sources suggested that the report will be leaked as early as Thursday, per Pablo Manriquez.

Alex Jones is having a full meltdown on the cusp of InfoWars’ extinction.

The far-right conspiracy network was auctioned off to the satirical outlet The Onion, ending what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

During a breathless rant on Steve Bannon’s War Room from the InfoWars studio, Jones called the news of The Onion’s acquisition “ridiculous,” referred to U.S. regulators as “imperial troops,” and insisted that the auction rules had been changed at the last minute by the “deep state.”

“They are in the building, they told the office manager, and they’re calling me right now, that they have ordered the I.T. providers to cut all the I.T. off to shut InfoWars off,” Jones said. “I could get on a live camera right now and go show you the U.S. trustee and the auctioneer.”

“It’s confirmed now that they’re going to cut the power,” Jones said before busting into a grueling laugh. “We are literally sinking, tied up to the new boat, and we’re taking both ships right now, Steve Bannon, God bless you.”

“They’re in the control room.… Imperial troops are through the glass,” Jones said before standing up and walking off camera. “It is a distinct honor to be here in defiance of the tyrants.”

Bannon then suggested that Jones and his crew should put a microphone in front of the regulators as they comb through Jones’s assets.

At one point during the live broadcast, Jones attempted to project that he had made peace with the major loss, encouraging his viewers to tune in to his new news site.

“All you’re doing is shutting down the building and taking away AlexJones.com and the Infowars store,” he said. “We got funds coming in. We got high-powered lawyers. We’re moving forward. The tide has turned.”

In the run-up to the auction, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy the fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, like Donald Trump ally Roger Stone.

The Onion’s monumental media scoop was made in partnership with the families of Sandy Hook victims, whom Jones owes at least $85 million after he lost a $1.5 billion case for claiming that the massacre, which claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six adults, was a hoax.

Ben Collins, The Onion’s CEO, playfully shared the news on social media, asking if anyone needed “millions of dollars worth of supplements.” As the news broke, The Onion—in true form—published an article by Bryce P. Tetraeder, the so-called CEO of Global Tetrahedron (The Onion’s “parent company”), in which the faux executive praised the conspiracy network as an “invaluable tool for brainwashing and controlling the masses.”

“With a shrewd mix of delusional paranoia and dubious anti-aging nutrition hacks, they strive to make life both scarier and longer for everyone, a commendable goal,” the satirical piece read.

Donald Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz as attorney general is not just drawing backlash from Senate Republicans—even Fox News hosts aren’t fans. 

On Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade didn’t hold back their misgivings about Gaetz potentially ascending to the post, pointing out the House Ethics Committee investigation against him over sexual misconduct, drug use, and public corruption. 

“The report has been written, apparently, and Washington, D.C., leaks like a sieve. And you can bet, dollar to donuts, if he is … undergoes the confirmation hearing process as is standard, somebody is going to read verbatim from whatever it says,” Doocy said.

Kilmeade pointed out that Gaetz was “solely responsible for blowing up the House last year,” referring to his leading role in ousting former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and said he had “no plan” to fix the situation before House Republicans coalesced around Representative Mike Johnson. Later, Kilmeade called out Gaetz for being part of the “clown car.” 

“I always thought when Susie Wiles took the job [of chief of staff], you heard, she says, ‘The one thing I would say is I don’t want to see any of the clown car,’” Kilmeade said. “I always thought Matt Gaetz was in the clown car, so I’m surprised he’d be part of the starting lineup.” 

Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress Wednesday after being named by Trump to the attorney general post, only two days before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on releasing its report about the investigation into Gaetz. While the move ends the investigation, it has raised more questions about what Gaetz is trying to hide. On Thursday, a “close friend” of Gaetz is petitioning a court to destroy records detailing a drug-fueled sex party that a trafficked 17-year-old and Gaetz allegedly attended in 2017. 

With Gaetz taking heat from Republicans and conservative media alike, it’s unclear if he’d be able to make it through the Cabinet confirmation process. The investigation into his alleged misdeeds must contain damning information for Gaetz to take a drastic step such as resigning, especially since the contents of the House committee’s report will likely come out before or during his confirmation hearings. In any case, it’s an inauspicious start for any Cabinet nominee, let alone one who is vying to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.