'Sparse': Steve Bannon's speech raises eyebrows — for the turnout

Longtime President Donald Trump ally and far-right strategist Steve Bannon gave a fiery speech at this year's National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. — but he did so to a crowd of mostly empty seats.

"Sparse turnout for Steve Bannon at his just-concluded speech at the National Conservatism conference," wrote conservative Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York, showing a picture of Bannon's speech, where a very small crowd was spread out through the auditorium.

During the speech, Bannon railed against recently-nominated left-wing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, reported Religion News Service's Jack Jenkins, saying, "The existential threat to Israel, the Jewish people, is not in Tehran … The threat is right in New York City … [Mamdani] is going to win running away."

Bannon went on to call Mamdani a "Marxist and Jihadist" and warned the crowd about the perils of Muslim immigration in Europe.

In the same speech, he proclaimed that "England is heading to a civil war as we speak."

Bannon, who infamously proclaimed he wanted the "administrative state" destroyed years before Trump began enacting the Project 2025 vision, has become increasingly worried in recent months about Trump's administration boxing itself in.

Most recently, he sounded the alarm that the Trump administration's purge of public health experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including its director, Susan Monarez, could blow up in his face as the very senators who demanded she be put in, like Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), could then obstruct Trump's ability to nominate a replacement.