Conservative broadcaster Steve Bannon admitted on Wednesday that he had plotted with President Donald Trump to "kill the Biden presidency in the crib" ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
During his Warroom broadcast, Bannon played clips of journalist Robert Costa and Bob Woodward explaining how events unfolded prior to the Jan. 6 riot.
"You look at January 5th, we discovered that Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, was there at the Willard Hotel blocks from the White House with Rudy Giuliani, having an almost war-room-type meeting with other Trump allies the eve before the January 6th insurrection," Costa recently explained to MSNBC. "And Bannon had actually been in close touch with President Trump for days before January 6th. Based on our reporting, he privately told President Trump to have a reckoning on January 6th. And he said to the president, it's time to kill the Biden presidency in the crib."
Bannon seemed proud to confirm that the conversation had taken place.
"Yeah, because his legitimacy," Bannon said of Biden. "42% of the American people think that Biden did not win the presidency legitimately."
"It killed itself," he continued. "Just look at what this illegitimate regime is doing. It killed itself. OK? But we told you from the very beginning, just expose it, just expose it, never back down, never give up and this thing will implode."
Facebook reportedly exempted the right-wing site Breitbart and other "select publishers" from rules against spreading false news reports, according to a new whistleblower who filed a complaint against the social-media company with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.
The whistleblower, a former member of Facebook's Integrity team, told the Washington Post that Joel Kaplan, a former Bush administration official who led the company's Public Policy team, once defended the decision to "white list" Breitbart.
"When a person in the video conference questioned this policy, Kaplan, the vice president of global policy, responded by saying, 'Do you want to start a fight with Steve Bannon?'" the whistleblower told the Post.
Kaplan, who has long been accused of using his role at Facebook to protect conservative interests, denied the whistleblower's account.
"No matter how many times these same stories are repurposed and re-told, the facts remain the same," Kaplan said in a statement. "I have consistently pushed for fair treatment of all publishers, irrespective of ideological viewpoint, and advised that analytical and methodological rigor is especially important when it comes to algorithmic changes. There has never been a whitelist that exempts publishers, including Breitbart, from Facebook's rules against misinformation."
Less than 24 hours after a tragic New Mexico film set accident involving Alec Baldwin claimed the life of a cinematographer and injured the movie's director, Republicans were already making light of the incident and cracking jokes about Baldwin, a longtime right-wing boogeyman.
The A-lister was reportedly rehearsing for a scene in the western, "Rust," when he fired a prop gun that was loaded with a "live single round." The shot killed the film's 42-year-old director of photography, Halyna Hutchins, and injured director Joel Souza, 48, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 44 said in an email to its members.
Just hours after news of the incident broke, Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance was already online and gloating about the situation.
"Dear @jack," he wrote, tagging Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "Let Trump back on. We need Alec Baldwin tweets."
But he wasn't the only one deriding Baldwin in the wake of the tragedy — conservative commentator Candace Owens added in a since-deleted Tweet that "what has happened to Alec would be poetic justice if it weren't for the actual innocent people that were murdered by him."
She later added: "Will correct that last tweet to say Alec Baldwin *killed* someone— not murdered someone, as murder carries a different legal definition."
A number of other pundits and right-wing personalities also jumped on a tweet of Baldwin's from the first round of Black Lives Matter protests, in 2014, which read: "I'm going to make bright, banana-yellow T-shirts that read: "My hands are up. Please don't shoot me." Who wants one?"
Even Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., got in on the action, posting a screenshot of Baldwin's tweet with the caption: "@AlecBaldwin are these still available? Asking for a movie producer…"
The comments horrified a number of Twitter users, who flooded the Congresswoman's replies with admonitions.
"Have you no shame? Remove this tweet. It's utterly disrespectful to the victim & her family," one person wrote.
"I'm sorry you are so broken inside," another added.
Baldwin released his first statement Friday since the incident occurred, saying the he was cooperating with authorities and that he has spoken with Hutchins' family.
"There are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours," he tweeted.
"I'm fully cooperating with the police investigation to address how this tragedy occurred and I am in touch with her husband, offering my support to him and his family. My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna."
On Friday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," David Gergen, a Beltway insider who worked under four presidents, said that former President Donald Trump has been emboldened in his determination to run for president again every time bad news or bad polling has hit President Joe Biden.
Recent reporting indicates that Trump had to be talked out of prematurely announcing his 2024 run by his aides this summer — and, said Gergan, the impulse has not gone away.
"The signs are that he's increasingly interested," said Gergen. "Strikingly, Anderson, they intensify when he sees Biden in trouble. During the Afghanistan situation, he was really chomping at the bit, according to the various reports, he had to be talked out of it. And now, the economy still not straightening out and pandemic still not over, you know, there — that just makes Trump very, very hungry."
"I think it's going to take something hugely unexpected, or change — dramatic change in his health or prison sentence to stop him," added Gergen.
Watch below:
David Gergen says Trump is "hungry" for a rematch against Biden
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