'That's funny?' Bannon fumes as crowd laughs at his crusade to ban Sharia law
Steve Bannon, former advisor U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives to attend a pre-trial conference hearing in his fraud case stemming from a fundraising effort to build a border wall, at the New York Criminal Court, in New York City, U.S., January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Former President Donald Trump adviser and far-right webcaster Steve Bannon appeared put out as he didn't get the reaction he was hoping for when he boasted about his efforts to protect Texas from Islamic Sharia law.

Bannon made the remarks at the Semafor World Economy 2026 Summit in Washington, D.C., while bragging about his personal efforts to topple Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

"Look at John Cornyn," said Bannon. "John Cornyn spent $80-100 million, the same old playbook to destroy Ken Paxton. We went down to Texas with [far-right Dutch politician] Geert Wilders and Glenn Beck in January. We had a proposition on the ballot, we put a proposition on it to galvanize people, that was to prohibit Sharia law in the state of Texas."

At this point, some members of the audience burst out laughing.

"That's funny?" shot back Bannon. "Okay fine, you're going to see how funny it is. We're prohibiting Sharia law in Texas, and we're going to shut down a lot of this nonsense that's going on. The next thing we're going to shut down is H-1B visas. People of the United States, citizens of this country are not prepared to have this. You may think it's funny, folks in Texas don't think it's funny. Folks in South Carolina don't think it's funny."

"And this is that seething anger right below the surface, because the global elites, you sit there and mock these people like they don't count," Bannon added. "These people are the backbone of America."

While there are some heavily-Muslim communities cropping up in Texas, there is no evidence of Sharia law being forcibly imposed on communities there or anywhere else in the United States, despite a wave of conspiracy theories cropping up on the far right.