Just before he reports to a four-month federal prison sentence on Monday, Stephen K. Bannon, the longtime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump, will host the final two hours of his podcast outside the low-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut.
“We’re going to be as close to prison as we can possibly get,” Bannon said in a cheery interview this weekend. And when the filming, which he cast as an unsubtle troll pointing fingers at the Justice Department, is complete, “I’m going to walk across the street and surrender.”
Mr. Bannon lost his latest attempt to avoid imprisonment on Friday after the Supreme Court denied a request for a stay of sentence while he appealed a jury verdict that found him in contempt of court for ignoring a congressional subpoena. As a result, the very public figure will remain out of sight — and off the air — until just days before the Nov. 5 election.
But the right-wing fire-eater insists that trading in his studio microphone for a prison job, and his signature double-collar shirts for government khakis, will have little impact on his influential podcast “War Room.” In fact, he claims, it will “only get bigger and more powerful” while he is incarcerated.
He has been preparing for this moment for months, Mr. Bannon said, and has enlisted a team of nearly two dozen guest hosts to continue the show, which delivers four hours a day, Monday through Friday, its signature stew of unchanging pro- Trump broadcasts political chatter. , plus two additional hours on Saturdays.
That group includes Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump’s former lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani; Bannon’s daughter Maureen; Noor bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s niece, known for her belief in conspiracy theories; and Jeffrey Clark, who served under Trump in the Justice Department and is facing criminal charges in Georgia in connection with efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. They will be responsible for managing the flow of Republican politicians, advisors, media figures, pollsters, policy experts, donors, intellectuals and economists using ‘War Room’ as a megaphone aimed directly at what is reportedly Trump’s most loyal and committed base .
Mr Bannon said it would also involve Peter Navarro, a frequent War Room contributor and former trade adviser in the Trump administration who ready to serve his own contempt of Congress sentence in prison on July 17.
“The show must go on,” said Jack Posobiec, who will schedule his hosting duties between episodes of his own popular political podcast.
He interviewed Mr. Bannon on Sunday night, along with Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA. He said he would arrange for Mr. Navarro to be brought directly from the low-security prison in Miami, where he has been since mid-March, to Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention.
But not everyone is certain that the absence — in the critical final months of the presidential race — will not leave a mark. Mr. Bannon managed Mr. Trump’s successful 2016 campaign in its final months, and while he has no official role in this iteration, he speaks regularly with Mr. Trump and several of his top advisers on policy matters. Recently, Mr. Bannon said, he and Mr. Trump discussed strategy for last week’s debate with President Biden.
He is also a huge celebrity on the right, routinely drawing larger crowds at events like CPAC or Turning Point USA conferences than most politicians or any news outlet aside from Tucker Carlson.
“This is a major political blow,” said Mike Davis, a former congressional aide and lawyer who has become one of Trump’s top legal deputies. “Steve Bannon is by far the intellectual leader and the general of the MAGA movement and cannot be replaced.”
Mr. Davis, a frequent guest on “War Room” who has also been tapped as a pinch-hit host, noted that Mr. Bannon has an almost unique ability to galvanize the masses into action. “I get far more social media activity and donations when I go on Steve’s show than on any other platform, including Fox News,” Mr. Davis said.
“It will definitely be a void,” agreed Laura Loomer, a right-wing activist with her own podcast who also has strong ties to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bannon’s ability to reach the Make America Great Again contingent will be severely limited by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Although Federal Correctional Institution Danbury is a low-security prison, rules still limit phone calls to 15 minutes at a time, with a total limit of 320 minutes of calls per month. Inmates have no access to the Internet and can only send emails and text messages to approved recipients through a fee-based email system that can be monitored by prison officials. Inmates are also required to perform prison duties, often in facility maintenance or kitchen service for recent arrivals and short-term stays.
Clay Travis, a conservative radio host who also has a popular sports podcast, said that if he went to prison, he would definitely call into his own show from behind bars. “I would get my team together to figure out if I could make a call to distribute the show,” Mr. Travis said.
Mr. Bannon said he has no such intentions. He compared prison to his regimented years as a Marine officer and plans to use his time there for focused work. He will limit the number of phone calls and visits to his lawyers, he said, and asks his fans not to send him messages of support, which he will return unread.
Instead, he said, he will spend his free time sending emails about the campaign to key people (he would not say who is on his approved list). He also plans to catch up on his reading: He has ordered five books to work through, including the King James Bible, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” and a history of the Russian Revolution.
He believes his temporary disappearance will be a motivator for the millions of loyal listeners who routinely make “War Room” one of the most listened to political podcasts in the country. And according to Mr. Posobiec, he will be freed just in time to help make the final push for victory on Election Day.
“It feels like an epic story where the shrivelled leader can’t be there until the final battle,” he said. “It’s going to be very much like the return of Gandalf.”
