Steve Bannon is pushing a wild new conspiracy theory to his MAGA audience, claiming the protests in Los Angeles are part of a nationwide plot to destabilize the country—and that government officials should be arrested for allowing it. From his War Room studio in Capitol Hill, Bannon is framing the unrest as proof that America is already in the middle of a global war, with LA as one of its frontlines.
“We’re in the Third World War,” Bannon said. “And it’s a battlefield that’s everywhere, including in downtown Los Angeles.”
The weekend protests, according to Bannon, weren’t organic. He says they’re being fueled by Democratic leaders and immigration activists trying to tear the country apart.
“The Democrats allowed in 10 to 13 million illegal alien invaders into this country,” Bannon said, according to The Spectator. “They all must go home. All. Not some. All must go home. They must be deported. They must go home or we don’t have a country, OK?”
He says this is just the beginning of a violent summer. “They just kicked it off,” he said.
Bannon likens this moment to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests—only now, he claims, it’s centered on immigration. And unlike that year, he says Trump’s team should crack down hard, starting with local leaders.
“They’re calling for [unrest] nationwide,” Bannon said. “And it’s already expanded to San Francisco. The question here is, who told the police to step down? I think there’s only ten arrests. The LAPD allowed that thing to metastasize. Who gave the order? Whoever. Whoever was the government official that gave that order should be arrested this morning.”
He’s not subtle about who he thinks should be in handcuffs.
“We need to start arresting government officials, including the Mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who’s stirring this pot up,” Bannon said. “If that means suspending habeas corpus, so be it.”
Bannon also tore into California Governor Gavin Newsom, calling him “a neo-confederate” and comparing him to John C. Calhoun, the pro-slavery vice president under Andrew Jackson. “Andrew Jackson said, ‘hey, if this guy goes against me, I’m assembling the US Army, and I’m going to hang him from the first lamppost.’”
Bannon didn’t say Newsom should be hanged—but he wasn’t far off. “If Gavin Newsom is saying, ‘hey, come on, arrest me.’ Hey, well, if he gets in the way of federal officials trying to sort this mess out, he should be arrested.”
He also claimed credit for cutting ties between Elon Musk and Trump. “I’ve taken out Elon Musk from the Trump administration,” Bannon said, calling him a “dangerous narcissist” and accusing him of being “controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”
Bannon then attacked the tech elite, especially the All-In podcast hosts. “They’re pussies,” he said, claiming they skipped last week’s show after he blasted them.
As far as Bannon is concerned, taking down Big Tech is next on MAGA’s to-do list.
“We’re going to break up Facebook,” he said. “We’re going to break up Google. We’re going to break up Amazon. I think hopefully we get to eventually break up Walmart. You’ve got too much concentration of private power. It’s obvious it’s anti-populist. It’s anti-economic nationalist.”
Asked about far-right Argentine president Javier Milei—who handed Musk a chainsaw on stage—Bannon brushed him off. “I think he’s more of a libertarian right? More to the libertarian side.” Pressed on whether that means he’s backed by tech, Bannon added: “When I say ‘libertarian type,’ that’s a code for being controlled by Big Tech.”
So how does Bannon think MAGA will win against tech billionaires and powerful corporations?
“The tech bros at their core are soft,” he said. “They’re a bunch of fucking pussies. Just like the tech bros. They lived a soft life. They’ve never had to make hard decisions. They’ve never had any kind of real challenges in their life, hard challenges. And that’s where they’re soft. And the soft will never beat the hard.”
In Steve Bannon’s world, the war isn’t coming—it’s already here. And he says it starts with arresting mayors and governors.
