Here’s the Whole Transcript of That Leaked Steve Bannon Tape, Annotated – By Dan Friedman and Abigail Weinberg (Mother Jones) / Aug 17, 2022
Disclosing Trump’s plans to falsely claim victory was just the start.
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The Halloween 2020 meeting in which Steve Bannon explained that Donald Trump planned to declare victory on election night, regardless of the actual results, was not supposed to be a big deal. The gathering was intended for Bannon to help associates of his patron, exiled Chinese mogul Guo Wengui, plan election night coverage on GTV News, one of Guo’s media companies.
But Bannon wanted to talk. He explained repeatedly that Trump would announce early that he had won and would suggest that any apparent Biden victory had resulted from fraud. “He’s just gonna go in—remember, this is just with like 20 percent of the vote counted, Trump’s just gonna walk in and go, ‘I’m the winner,’” Bannon said.
Bannon also took credit for maneuvering Trump into position to execute that strategy, saying several times that he had masterminded a plan that arrested Joe Biden’s momentum late in the campaign. That was the leak of material from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
