Steve Bannon: I'm 'Honey Badger,' Will Fight

On his podcast, he calls arrest a 'political hit job'
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 21, 2020 12:24 PM CDT
Bannon: 'Everybody Knows I Love a Fight'
Steve Bannon leaves federal court in New York Thursday.   (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

Steve Bannon isn't lying low. The former Trump strategist returned to his War Room podcast Friday, one day after his arrest on allegations that he stole money from donors to an online campaign. "Everybody knows I love a fight," he said, per CNN. Bannon reiterated a claim he made Thursday that his arrest is meant to "intimidate people" who support construction of a border wall—the subject of the online campaign at the center of the charges. Prosecutors say Bannon and three others took hundreds of thousands of dollars for personal expenses, despite pledges they would go unpaid. "This is a political hit job," said Bannon.

He also told listeners that "I was called 'honey badger' for many years," per Politico. "You know, 'Honey badger doesn't give.' So, I'm in this for the long haul. I'm in this for the fight." For a counterpoint to Bannon's take, see Joshua Green's scathing assessment at Bloomberg, which goes back to Bannon's days working by President Trump's side. It concludes: "It takes just a glance at the polls—Trump is behind in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—to see that the electoral lock Bannon envisioned, like so much else, is a fiction and that Trump's political career, like that of his former strategist, could be about to draw to a close." (More Steve Bannon stories.)

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