Donald Trump will be US president for a third term, his former adviser Steve Bannon has predicted.
He also suggested that Mr Trump was seeking to avoid ‘kinetic war’ with China by showing Beijing ‘respect’ and seeking ‘some sort of accommodation’.
In an interview with the Mail’s David Patrikarakos for his podcast, Apocalypse Now?, Mr Bannon forecast that the president would find a way of running for a third term, and would win.
America’s constitution restricts presidents to a maximum of two terms in office – but Mr Trump has said he is ‘not joking’ about wanting a further four years in the White House.
The Trump Organisation is selling red caps that read ‘Trump 2028’ in an apparent reference to the next US presidential election.
Bannon Predicts Trump Will ‘Run and Win Again’
And when asked in an interview in March about the possibility of seeking a third term, Mr Trump said: ‘There are methods which you could do it.’
Responding to a question from Mr Patrikarakos about whether he thought this was realistic, Mr Bannon said: ‘Yes, President Trump is going to be eligible, is going to run again, and will win again.
‘And I will tell you, on the afternoon of the 20th January of 2029, he’s going be in the White House signing executive orders.’
Mr Bannon served as a key strategist to Mr Trump for his 2016 presidential campaign. He served a four-month jail term last year for defying a congressional subpoena from the committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. He now has a daily live podcast called Bannon’s War Room.
The former Trump adviser told the podcast he was certain that Joe Biden ‘stole’ the 2020 election.
He said: ‘The whole reason he came back and ran again was his burning conviction that he had won in 2020, it had been stolen…
‘His inner group and our audience – almost to a person, I think it’s almost 100 per cent – believe strongly to the core of their being that the 2020 election was stolen.’
Bannon Hits Out at Musk
Mr Bannon also spoke of his dislike for Elon Musk, the tech billionaire who helped to bankroll Mr Trump’s election campaign and is now heading the Department of Government Efficiency, known as Doge.
He dismissed the Tesla chief executive as a ‘techno-feudalist’ who was part of a group of Silicon Valley oligarchs who had created ‘an apartheid state’.
Mr Bannon said: ‘Remember, we are anti-oligarch, because we don’t trust the oligarchs. The oligarchs are all progressives, including Elon Musk. They were all progressive.
‘They’re all progressive in their outlook. They’ve just come to President Trump because he’s a winner.’
He also criticised as ‘very dangerous’ Mr Musk’s ‘transhumanist’ work – referring to enhancing humans through technology – on implanting microchips in brains through his company NeuraLink.
Elsewhere in the podcast interview Mr Bannon attacked the Chinese Communist Party, describing it as an ‘illegitimate dictatorship’ that is ‘worse than the Bolsheviks, worse than the Nazis’.
Bannon Backs Trump’s China Approach
He defended the president’s approach towards China amid fears that Beijing is plotting to invade Taiwan – which it regards as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland – by 2027.
He said: ‘President Trump is trying to balance to make sure that we don’t slide into a kinetic war with the Chinese Communist Party, either in the South China Sea or around the Straits of Taiwan.
‘And so I think President Trump’s doing what a world leader and the leader of the free world and the president of United States and our commander-in-chief should do – to show the guys respect and try to make sure that we can get some sort of accommodation.’
But Mr Bannon spoke of his love of ordinary Chinese people, saying: ‘The basic common man and woman in China are spectacular people, fantastic people, and I think have a very close bond to the citizens of the United States.’
–
Source: Trump will be president for a third term, Bannon predicts | Daily Mail Online