The White House needs to start taking Democrats’ impeachment inquiry more seriously, as it could be a “mortal threat” to Trump’s presidency, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told The New York Post.
Bannon said during a wide-ranging interview with The Post that “Nancy Pelosi is very focused” to get US President Donald Trump impeached, predicting he has a limited time to act.
“This is serious. As sure as the turning of the earth, he is going to be impeached by Pelosi in the next six weeks,” Bannon said.
Bannon said he’s been dismayed by what seems to be an uncoordinated White House approach to impeachment.
“I don’t feel comfortable when I see the chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney,” Bannon said, citing a press conference Thursday in which Mulvaney first confirmed and then denied Trump’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine was part of a quid pro quo. “The problem we have is that the president needs a team around him and somebody has got to step up and make a play. Trump can’t do everything. There is just no coordination with the team. The fake news and witch hunt stuff is not working.”
The former head of the 2016 Trump campaign said Trump shouldn’t look to dump off-message surrogates like Mulvaney or Rudy Giuliani, but rather bring in people to share the burden, advising the White House to establish an impeachment squad.
“You need to augment the legal team,” he said, adding that what worked on the probe by Robert Mueller into Russian interference “was bifurcation of the White House Counsel’s office. You need … a team put together that can focus on [impeachment] 24/7.”
The 65-year-old ex-Breitbart News chairman also said that, besides impeachment, the president may have to face a real challenge in 2020 from surprising candidates, like Mike Bloomberg or Hillary Clinton.
If Biden falls back and Warren appears to be the frontrunner for the nomination, “Bloomberg and Clinton, both will … get into the race,” Bannon said. “Nobody is on the stage. The Cory Bookers and Kamala Harrises haven’t gotten enough traction to compete with Warren. The hedge fund investment banking corporatist community of the Democratic Party is not prepared to have them.”
Clinton and Bloomberg would be much stronger than the current field, Bannon conceded.
“Bloomberg or Clinton could be very competitive,” he said. “She is a very formidable candidate and I think Bloomberg would be very formidable.” However, whoever ends up as the Democratic nominee would also “have to live in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,” he said, referencing the 2016 race, where Clinton famously neglected these states, and they turned against the party for the first time in a generation.
