Steve Bannon says Trump 'will be impeached in next six weeks', warns White House to take Nancy Pelosi's threat seriously
As the impeachment procedure against President Donald Trump gains momentum, his former chief chief strategist and former executive chairman of Breitbart News Steve Bannon has made an explosive claim. On Saturday, October 19, Bannon shocked Trump’s supporters saying the seriousness of the Democrats, especially House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, could see the president getting impeached in six weeks' time and warned the White House to take the threat seriously.
Speaking to the New York Post in an interview on Saturday, October 19, Bannon considered impeachment as a “moral threat” to Trump. He told the Post: “This is serious. As sure as the turning of the earth, he is going to be impeached by Pelosi in the next six weeks. Nancy Pelosi is very focused.”
Bannon was a prominent face in Trump’s right-wing team when he took over but could not continue for more than seven months as the president’s chief strategist. Continuing his claims Bannon also said the Republican may face surprising challenges next year from the likes of Hillary Clinton and Michael Bloomberg even if he manages to avoid being removed from office.
It was a reiteration of Bannon’s prediction made earlier this month that Hillary will run for the office in 2020 too once the Democratic Party sacrificed Joe Biden to bring down Trump in connection with the impeachment. Biden, one of the frontrunners in the Democratic camp at the moment, is also closely connected with the impeachment episode since it was launched over allegations that Trump tried to influence the government of Ukraine to probe Joe and his son Hunter over their links with that country, apparently to derail the former vice president’s electoral campaign.
Bannon believes Hillary could be running for 2020 elections
Speaking to Fox Business, the 65-year-old Bannon said the Democrats will shift their allegiance to another candidate and that could be Hillary after Joe is out of the scenario. He also cited that the number of media appearances that Hillary has been making of late cement his viewpoint that she could try her luck for the third time in 2020. “They will throw Biden away to get to Trump and hope Elizabeth [Warren] or I even think Hillary Clinton or [Michael] Bloomberg or some centrist comes in here,” Bannon, who likened the scenario with a chessboard, said.
Biden's exit could see Bloomberg in
Bloomberg, the 77-year-old millionaire former New York mayor, signaled recently that he’s still considering running for the White House but people close to him claim that it could be a reality only if Biden, who has now fallen behind Elizabeth Warren in the race, drops out before or during the early stages of the primary.
Bannon was also less sure that the Republicans-controlled Senate will find Trump guilty in the impeachment trial, but he refused to show full trust in Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the Senate and called him an adversary. He felt McConnell might go for a drawn-out public trial, the Post reported.
Bannon, who continues to air his populist nationalist viewpoints in public speeches, was also confident that nobody in the Democratic fray can beat Trump at the moment and the only person who could beat the incumbent is Trump himself. He warned if Biden fails and Warren inches closer to the nomination, Clinton and Bloomberg will enter the race and they would be much stronger than the current runners. He called both the veterans “formidable”.
At the same time, Bannon expressed disappointment with the White House’s handling of the impeachment. He was not happy with acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s recent press conference in which he said Trump’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine was part of a quid pro quo. Mulvaney later backtracked.
Bannon said Trump needed a team around him and somebody from that needed to step up. “Trump can’t do everything,” he said, adding the president needed to get rid of people like Mulvaney and Rudy Giuliani and bring those who are capable of sharing the burden.