Going to a more conservative platform wouldn’t help him reach more Democrats, Bannon said.
Conservative media personality Steve Bannon has dismissed criticism from Republicans who say they shouldn’t agree to be a guest on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast.
Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump and host of Warroom, a real American voice podcast, said he wanted to promote these topics to a wide range of Democrats who haven’t heard about them in mainstream media.
“We have to attract these people,” he said. “I’ve reached a huge audience of Democrats looking for answers. Populism is the answer.”
Going to the governor’s podcast “is having Gavin Newsom, the most progressive governor in his most progressive state, so I’m going to sit there and essentially agree with me on all the topics related to populism and economic nationalism and the apartheid state of Silicon Valley,” Bannon said.
Political Flak
Newsom, who previously launched the “This Is Gavin Newsom” podcast, said he was planning to bring guests who disagree with him, but gave Bannon a platform and took Flak from his own political camp to not burn him.
The governor traded several political barbs with Maga Republican guests on his debut podcast, including Bannon and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk, but agreed with them on many points.
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He told Bannon he “works with him 100% on industrial policy,” and that he brought manufacturing back to the US.
“We’re on the same page about it,” Newsom said. “As the governor of America’s largest manufacturing country.”
Skeptics believe Newsom’s motivation is based on his presidential ambitions and his strategy to reach a political middle ground before the 2028 election. Neither Newsom’s Office nor the crew of his podcast responded to requests for comment on criticism.
Newsom moves further towards the center, trying to make itself a viable national candidate, while “telling that the California model cannot be sold,” Bannon told the Epoch Times.
“He’s gone, and he’s proven he can’t sell California (the model). He’s running for president and can’t sell California models. It’s a huge and big break in its own right,” he said. “He’s definitely pivoting.”
Bannon said he received feedback from thousands of Democrats who wanted to learn more about his views on the wealthy people’s oligarchs, populism and taxation.
Going to a more conservative platform wouldn’t help him reach more Democrats, Bannon said, saying he’s hosting “the most Magazine Podcasts with the biggest audience of all conservatives” over 20 hours a week.
“The problem with conservatives in California is that it’s all about it and there’s no action,” he said. “I took action. I got there. In the arena, and I didn’t retreat.”
Trump’s tariffs
Newsom began an interview with Bannon on April 2nd by questioning Trump’s plan to impose mutual tariffs on Canadian products, the economic upheaval they could cause, and how Trump used tariff threats to secure the north border and disrupt the fentanyl flow.
“Now I understand how it was unfolded. Because of its urgency, the focus was on fentanyl and this chemical war,” Bannon said.
But the majority of Trump’s tariffs are the president’s “systematic” strategy that brings manufacturers and jobs to the United States, despite being deployed with a focus on fentanyl and border security.
“Yeah, that’s a little bs, isn’t it?” Newsom was messed up. “So there’s a bigger framework of economic populism here. Let’s be honest with the people. It had nothing to do with the tyrannical nature of the prime minister, the 51st governor of America.
Trump called Trudeau “Governor 51” to the banter, suggesting that Canada would become the 51st province.
Canada as the 51st state?
Bannon said he had a message to Canadians scoffing Trump’s proposal to become the 51st state over the Chinese Communist Party’s expansionist intentions in the far north during the Epoch era.
In January 2018, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared that China is a “close distance nation” and plans to become a “polar power” by 2030. China’s Arctic policy outlines the CCP’s intentions to develop infrastructure and expands resources within anti-tic circles, even if they are not within reach in China’s northern part of the country.
“It’s a great struggle of power,” Bannon said.
Canada, which has the world’s least protected coastline, does not have the military power to protect its borders and needs to protect us from potential invasions, he said.
Without the US, Canadians would have been caught up in a jam “visiting Russia and visiting the Chinese in the Arctic,” Bannon said.
“They are daring to take the territory and get it back,” he said. “I need a brother. I need a partner.”
Otherwise, Canada could become a “vassal state,” he said.
“I tell Canadians very simply, you were a Dominion until 1981… you have a head in the sand, or in this case, your head in the ice,” he said.
Even if Canada becomes the 51st state or joins the US as several states, Bannon said some economic coalition between Canada and the US is creating “a perfect geostrategic meaning.”
Addressing the fentanyl crisis
The amount of fentanyl made in Canada isn’t close to the masses of mass that come across the southern border with Mexico to the United States, Bannon told the Epoch Times, comparing the issues of Canada’s western provinces to problems of states like Missouri and Arizona.
“They can’t afford to live, so they go to sell drugs,” he said. “There are labs everywhere.”
The fentanyl crisis is so “severe” that the US could work closer to working with the Mexican Marines to block supply from China, which is used to create deadly synthetic opioids responsible for overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands.
The actual war with drugs, including a “military attack on northern Mexico,” may be the only way to stop the flow of lethal substances from the Mexican cartel to the United States, Bannon said.
Cartels must be defeated like ISIS, Bannon said.
“There are cities in northern Mexico. There are 100 main fentanyl labs and about four to five cartels that own them. It’s all going to be leveled,” he said.
