Bannon: MAGA 'decapitated' GOP leadership if it can 'take out' speaker hopeful Tom Emmer
Right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon lashed out at former President Donald Trump on Monday because he had not done more to undermine Rep. Tom Emmer's (R-MN) bid for House Speaker.
Media Matters first reported that Bannon had called for his MAGA audience to "take out" Emmer.
"If you take out [Emmer], who's the whip, in less than three weeks — the people, the populists, the MAGA, the deplorables — you have taken out basically 12 years of leadership. What they've worked on for 12 years as the cartel's leadership apparatus," he opined.
"The first thing to do is to stop Emmer today. Once Emmer's stopped — just want to repeat this — you have decapitated what they've invested, what the cartel, the lobbyists, the corporatists, Wall Street, they've invested over 12 years. This is their team."
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Emmer is serving his fifth term in Congress and is currently majority whip. He is the highest-ranking Republican vying for the speakership but, according to Bannon, represents old-school Republican rather than MAGA values.
Bannon encouraged his audience to sustain the "pressure" campaign on members of Congress.
Bannon also warned his audience that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) might make a play for the speaker's gavel. And he blamed former President Donald Trump for not having a "whip operation" to rally votes against Emmer.
"Our objective is to make sure he doesn't go back in," Bannon said. "[Emmer] is going to suck [up to] President Trump. He's going to suck up the people around him. And honestly, the political team around President Trump should have been on top of this there should have been a whip operation."
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"There should be guys [at] the microphone this morning," he added. "Just saying. So, Emmer's got to be stopped."