Steve Bannon
Executive Chair of Breitbart News
Values Voter Summit
Omni-Shoreham Hotel
Washington, DC
Oct. 14, 2017

Thank you very much.  Thank you.  To every season, to everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.  A time to rend and a time to sow.  A time to be silent, a time to speak out.  A time of war and a time of peace.

Now the AP story today, that kicked off my speech before you all, talks about Bannon enlists the value voters in his war against the Republican establishment. [applause]

This is not my war.  This is our war. [applause]  And you all didn't start it; the establishment started it.  But I will tell you one thing.  You all are going to finish it. [applause]

Let's talk about -- let's have a partners discussion about Alabama.  In Alabama, the elites, the permanent political class, as personified by Mitch McConnell and Steven Law and Karl Rove and that clique that's been running this town 30 or 40 years, raised over $30 million to go after a good and righteous man, Judge Moore.  And this money was not used to debate the great issues of the day.  It was not to debate illegal immigration or America's foreign-policy or Obamacare.  That money was used to destroy Judge Moore and his family.  The politics of personal destruction, as personified by the permanent political class, is the only way they can win.  Now Judge Moore raised about $2 million bucks, alright.  Two million dollars versus $32 million.

The entire contest, and a lot of folks called up and said hey, you know donors, do you want to give money to Judge Moore?  I was telling folks, as a private citizen, I do not think that is smart.  We have to prove the theory of the case in Alabama.  This is a test of wills.  We are going to determine down there who is more powerful.  The money of the corporatists or the money of the people.

You know all of us folks, you know why they are taking these photos?  This is not about me.  It's not about Seb Gorka, it's not about Laura Ingraham, it's not about Tony Perkins.  It's not about Mark Meadows.  It's not about our beloved commander in chief, Donald J. Trump.  They are here because of you.  They fear you.  And they fear you because they understand you've had a belly full of it, and you're taking your country back. [applause]  And from the city of London to Beijing to the Gulf to iWashington, DC, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, they're nervous.  And you know why they're nervous.  They understand that you're the transmission of the best values of the Judeo-Christian West. [applause]

The one thing we proved in Alabama, and you guys proved more than anything else, is that money doesn't matter anymore.  In the days of the Internet and the digital era, the Internet has helped disintermediate the mainstream media and the party bosses.  And what it's done is made the analog world even more important, that a good man with good ideas, with good people to back him up can beat any amount of money.

Here's what's so unbelievable about Alabama.  They think the good men and women, the sons and daughters of Alabama, just like they think of the working-class folks, the middle class folks are a bunch of morons, a bunch of idiots, a bunch of rubes.  They think 30-second TV spots, tens of millions of dollars of 30-second TV spots, can change people's opinion.  Well it can't.  The most powerful thing is an authentic candidate, whether that is Donald Trump or whether its Judge Moore, with good people going door to door and knocking on the door and telling people with passion this is who you ought to vote for.

You know who taught us that lesson?  Barack Obama.  You may not like Barack Obama's policies, you might not like him as a president, but as a politician he knew what he was doing.  Rudy Giuliani, a good friend of mine, a man I really respect, stood on that stage in 2008 to mock and ridicule him in front of the Republican Convention – had that great line, what's a community organizer?  I'll tell you what it is, somebody that can kick your ass.  Twice.

But the grassroots of the tea party and the evangelical Christians and the conservative catholics learned that lesson.  You too can go door to door.  You too can ring doorbells.  And folks understand when you come to the door, your lived experience, they respect you.  When you talk about a Donald Trump or you talk about a Judge Moore it means something.  In Alabama, you folks were able to turn the tables.  You made, you took Mitch McConnell's money and you took it from his biggest asset to his biggest liability.  The more money they spend, the fewer votes they get. [applause]

Now Mitch, I don't know if you're watching today.  I don't know if you're watching Value Voters or you maybe have your staff, but if I can take a little riff on Plutarch and Shakespeare.  Up on Capitol Hill, because I've been getting calls, it's like before the Ides of March, right.  The only question is, and this is just an analogy or metaphor or whatever you want to call it, they're just looking to find out who's going to be Brutus to your Julius Caesar. [applause]

Yeah, Mitch, the donors, the donors are not happy; they've all left you.  We've cut your oxygen off, Mitch, okay.  Money is not courageous, but money is smart, okay.   And right now money is sitting there saying, hey I see these folks.  They're worked up; they're mad, and they're mad for a reason. Here's one of the reasons they're mad.

And by the way, Southern Poverty Law Center, do me a favor.  You talk about hate and everything like that.  Why don't you go talk to your corporatist clients that give you all the money to run these folks down and ask them about the economic hate crimes they've been pulling on the working men and women of the United States of America?  Why don't you answer for them. [applause]

Why don't you answer for all the foundations, all the foundations of all these guys that put that money in and let's look at their economic crimed.  They've gutted this country and you've taken their money and you've called these good people hate crime perpetuators because they try to put forward the best value of a civilization that's been around for thousands of years. That's a hate crime?

We're in the valley of decision.  This is the fourth great turning in American history.  We've had the Revolution, we've had the Civil War, we've had the Great Depression and World War II.  This is the fourth.  And we're going to be one thing.  It's going to take five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years to go through this.  And we're going to be one thing or the other on the other side of it.  We're either going to be the country that was bequeathed to previous generations and to you, or we're going to be something else.  And in that valley of decision, it's not about Mark Meadows, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee and all the great leaders of the conservative movement, Vice President Pence, Laura Ingraham, Steve Bannon, Seb Gorka.  The burden is on you.  The burden is on your shoulders.

On the morning of November 8, right, I knew as I told the president, the entire time as I stepped in there in August when he was you know 16 points down, double digits in every battleground state; 70 on the generic ballot, got to be at 90; no money; not a lot of organization, I said we pull this thing together, you are going to win; 100% metaphysical certitude you're going to win.  On Billy Bush Saturday, everybody's running for the exits, everybody's jumping ship – nobody is making justification for what the president said, including the president of the United States, at that time candidate Trump himself – I told him 100% metaphysical certitude you are going to win. 

'Cause folks are looking for change in this country.  They're looking to take their country back and you are the vehicle and instrument that's going do it.  They don't care about locker room talk.  'Cause we're going to bring to that debate the women that William Jefferson Clinton attacked and his wife covered for him.  And we're going to let the American people decide between your words and his actions.

That's why I'm a street fighter.  I'm all about winning.  You know why.  'Cause we have to win.  This next 15, 20 years, and I would love to tell you we could wave a magic want, I'd love to tell you that President Trump, good a man as he is, that he could snap his fingers and it'd all be better.  But it's not.

Every day is going to be a grind.  Every day is going to test you.  But here's the good news.  I know you wouldn't have it any other way. [applause]

Let's go back to Alabama for a second.  You know since the Associated Press called Judge Moore at I think at 9:00 at night in Montgomery roughly around there that he had won by 10 points, roughly 10 points over big Luther.  Earlier in the day there had been a bigger victory.  Bob Corker. Bob Corker.  You know, a real piece of work.  He had called the president.  This is a guy that had what, $6 million in cash in the bank or thereabouts, had chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the most prestigious on Capitol Hill and the one he raised most money on besides the Banking Committee.  In a state that what President Trump won by 22 points or some outrageous number.  He didn't have an opponent; there was no opponent.  And according to him, now President Trump disagrees with this, according to him, President Trump said he'd endorse him.  Money, prestige, no opponent and endorsement of the President of the United States and he quit. [applause]  Because he just saw, he had called over and talked about the exit polls, right, what was happening And he knew the good men and women in Alabama were holding Mitch McConnell accountable down there and they were going to hold Bob Corker accountable, too. 

Now they've said in the civil war inside the Republican Party, that, why are you going after folks like Barrasso and Deb Fischer and Heller and all these guys that vote the right way?  You know as Bob Corker has trashed the commander in chief of our armed forces, while we have young men and women in harm's way, right;  when he said he is leading them on a path to World War III, that he is not stable, that people have to keep him moderated, that it's an adult, what an adult center and they took the morning shift off by some U.S. Senator in a position of that authority, for the first time in the history of our republic has mocked and ridiculed a commander in chief, when we have kids in the field.  Have I seen Barrasso come to a stick and condemn that?  Have I seen Deb Fischer come to a stick and condemn that?  Have I seen Heller come to a stick and condemn that?  You have not.

And let me give a warning to you.  Nobody can run and hide on this one.  These folks are coming for you.  The day of taking a few nice conservative votes and hiding is over. [applause]

These folks are not rubes, these folks are not morons, these folks are not idiots, okay.  You know I'm a graduate, I'm actually an honors graduate of the Harvard Business School and I worked at Goldman Sachs.  And if you asked me if i would rather be governed by the first hundred people that walked into this conference today or the top hundred partners at Goldman Sachs, I would take the first hundred people every day of the week. [applause]  Because the common sense, decency, intelligence, grit and determination would ensure that our country is safe and prosperous and so would the world.

Now let's look at the elites and the reason we position Hillary Clinton as the guardian or the tribune of a corrupt and incompetent elite.  Look what these geniuses have left for President Trump, where they said oh's this guy's unfit; this guy's unfit to be commander in chief; you know he's unfit to do this, unfit to do that.  Look what they've foisted upon President Trump in the first couple of months of his administration.  You've got the Bay of Pigs down in Venezuela, you have the Cuban missile crisis in Korea, you've got Vietnam in Afghanistan.  That's not his doing. 

This what all these geniuses have been doing for the last 20 or 30 years.  This is the same crowd that said hey if we just let China have Most Favored Nation and let them in the WTO, they're going to be, as they get wealthier, they're going to be a liberal democracy and free-market capitalism. Yeah, that played out well.  China has been a confucian, mercantilist society for four thousand years; they know what they are doing and they're not changing.  They're running the tables on us right now.  They're at full economic war at us right now.  Don't ask me.  Look at the Economist.  Read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, the cultural undertones of the Trump revolt.  Read the studies coming out of M.I.T. and Harvard that says there is a direct correlation between the factories and jobs that leave for China and the opioid crisis.

This populist, nationalist, conservative revolt that's going on, that drove Donald Trump to victory, that drove Judge Moore to victory, that will drive 15 candidates to victory in 2018, and will, and I hate to break the news to Graydon Carter and the good folks at Vanity Fair, but yes, President Trump is not only going to finish this term; he going to win with 400 electoral votes in 2020. [applause]

Now why is this a populist revolt?  It's real simple.  You guys have more common sense, more understanding, of what we need to do, and more decency than the elites.  And the first order of business is to undo all the damage of globalism, right, that allowed Silicon Valley and Wall Street and Hollywood and the imperial capital right here in Washington, DC and London and Beijing and Davos – right, the party of Davos – to undo globalism.  The reason we need populism and we need to get it formed up is there's bigger, more crucial decisions coming down the road in the next 10 or 20 years.  The convergence of biotechnology, artificial intelligence, the computer chip.  There are going to be decisions in front of mankind in the next 20 years that man's never had to face before.
And if you think that the elites, that got the world into the situation that it is today, are going to make the right judgments 20 years from now, you're sadly mistaken.

It's folks like you that have to tell folks this is not a science experiment, this is not an engineering exercise.  You're free men and women in the greatest republic of the history of earth. [applause]

And why are we nationalists?  It's not ethonationalsim.  These guys can run that drill all they want; it's economic nationalism.  It doesn't matter what your race is, your ethnicity, your gender, your religion, your sexual preference; it doesn't matter.  It does not matter.  As long as you're a citizen of this republic, that's what matters. [applause]

Economic nationalism is what binds us together.  Economic nationalism and understanding we're going bring those jobs back.  It's not the second law of thermodynamics why they left.  There's no inexorable law that took those jobs to Asia and those factories to Asia and left us with gutted communities of opioid addicts.  That was human agency; that was decisions of men and women that did that.  And it's decisions of men and women that are going to bring those factories back and bring those jobs back. [applause]

The smart folks in the Democratic Party, and trust me there are a lot of smart folks there, they understand that.  They had the conference six weeks ago, no identity politics, 'cause they know know identity politics is a loser.  I knew it was a loser.  When we took the campaign over, remember Trump was 16 points down, they said oh my God he knows he's going to lose by 25 or 30 points so he brought in the mad bomber and he's going to just destroy his enemies on the way down, right. 

And what you saw was a highly disciplined campaign run on these themes of populism and economic nationalism, right, the rule of law.  And Hillary came out, she was on the beach raising money 'cause you know they were running a four corners offense; she came out, she came out after about a week and she had that thing.  I'm sitting in the war room, we had all these TV sets and all the young men and women there that worked in the rapid response force.  She hadn't given speech in months; she came out.  It was Breitbart, alt-right, ethnonationalism, white supremacist, Bannon.  And I sat there, and I go if that's it, if that's what she's going to bring, we're going to run the tables on her. [applause]

One thing about economic nationalism, it does; and by the way I understand all of us don't agree on everything; I understand that there's plenty of folks over at CATO and AEI and Heritage that we have to convert.  We don't, they don't totally agree that free trade is a radical idea, right, that no vibrant nation's ever really agreed with that.  The Chinese certainly don't, Japanese certainly don't, Koreans certainly don't.  That's why they got the manufacturing jobs by the way.

But economic nationalism, one of the parts is that it's the centerpiece of value voters.  For too long this Austrian school of economics had us thinking that everything is about the economy, that you've got to look at the jobless rate six weeks before the election because that's going to determine who wins the election.  That everything's about the gross domestic product and the rate of growth and the unemployment rate, you know all those stats that are very important.  That's not it at all.  We're a civic society in a culture that has a capitalist, free market system as our economy.  But we're not an economy and you're not just units of production.  You're free men and women in a civic society underpinned by a capitalist system. 

But where other people in the world don't practice capitalism, we have to be saavier than that, we have to be smarter than that, and we will be.  President Trump has seen to that, his whole trade agenda, and that's what won us Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan and Iowa and almost won Minnesota at one point.  That's how you're going to win 400 electoral votes.  Democrats understand this.  They understand that they've got to come back with some sort of economic program, but it'll just be Trump-lite.  It'll just be Trump-lite.  President Trump has had these ideas and believed this for 30 or 40 years.  He's a very saavy businessman.  He didn't come to this party late.  He ran for office–

Let me just tell you about President Trump 'cause I had the honor of seeing him up close.  You know this is a guy that's worth billions of dollars; I don' know if it's 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, at some point you have to quit counting, right?  A beautiful wife, tremendous kids, great grandkids, a loving family, the friends he has are unbelievable.  You see the friends and the love that they have for him of somebody that's hung out with him for decades.  These people love him.  He has a business with the finest hotels in the world, He was buying not just golf courses, but at the age of almost 70 buying championship golf courses, that he'd even make even better and put him in the British Open, or the open championship rota or the U.S. Open, things that could really be legacies for him. 

You know he didn't do this for any kind of ego gratification, 'cause let me tell you, you don't understand how they tried to destroy him and how tough it is every day when they come after you, and they come after your family, and they come after your kids, and they come after your friends, and they come after your business.  They weren't there to debate Donald Trump.  Hillary Clinton just did a 900-page book or whatever, she's going around the country, she still can't tell anybody why she should be president of the United States. [laughter]  She can whine you know about all the bad things that she thinks happened to her, but she can't make a convincing case of why she should be president.  She can't take on any of Donald Trump's ideas, didn't want to do that.  They wanted to use that $2 billion just to destroy him.

But on the morning of the 9th, I think we won at 3 o'clock in the morning – it was called at 3 o'clock in the morning, that coalition with Reince Priebus and the RNC, you know we won, as I always knew we would.  But the key that picked the lock in North Carolina and Florida and Pennsylvania and Ohio and Iowa and Michigan and Wisconsin was you. [applause]

Ask Tony Perkins.  He's got the numbers; he'll walk you through.  The turnout of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics in those key districts – that is the difference in victory. [applause]

I was most nervous about North Carolina.  And it was not the weekend before, but the weekend before that that I was down in North Carolina with the president and Mark Meadows, and Mark Meadows came up to me and said, "we got this."  Said we got this.  I said, "Mark, I don't know; it's pretty tight."  "No," he says, "we got this."  He says the evangelicals are going door to door; they're getting that vote out.  Conservative Catholics going door to door.  The hobbits are going door to door in the shire, and they're getting everybody out.

That's why they fear you.  They understand, trust me, they know all the math.  They know all he math.  They know what you did.  They know what you did in Alabama.  But on November 9th, I will tell you one thing, 'cause I was the CEO of it.  You know we were a little bit the island of misfit toys, right, 'cause it had only come together in 88 days.  But I will tell you, and I had a conversation with Jeff Sessions one time when he was under the most pressure over at DOJ.  And I asked him flat out, I said Senator Sessions, is there any doubt in your mind that the hand of Providence was critical for our victory.  He said absolutely.  Divine Providence, divine Providence worked that victory, just like divine Providence worked on Judge Moore. [applause]

Now the hand of Providence doesn't work as some sort of magic or voodoo,  It's through human agency, and that's you.  Now we're going to have a lot of these conversations 'cause we're going to have a lot of fights ahead, right.  And the first one is before we can get to the progressive Democrats and the Southern Poverty Law Center and all these folks we've got to take on, and we're going to take 'em on and we're going to stand 'em down, okay.  There's no doubt about that. [applause]  There's no doubt about that.  But there's a time and season for everything.  And right now it's a season of war against a GOP establishment. [applause]

It's no longer acceptable to come and pat you on the head and tell you everything's going to be fine, just get these guys in office.  Those days are over.  We need to move with urgency.  The president of the United States deserves respect and deserves their support. [applause]

Of all the insults that Senator Corker threw at the commander in chief in a time of war, the worst thing was, you know it was Phil Rucker, I think, at the Washington Post and I think it was Jonathan Martin, Peter Baker over at the New York Times.  They had the buried lede, the buried lede was about twenty paragraphs down, where Corker said – he gave up the game.  He said there's only one or two Senators up here that have any respect or admiration for President Trump.  The rest of 'em all talk like I do behind closed doors.  So all you folks that are so concerned that you're going to get primaried and defeated, you know there's time for a mea culpa.  You can come to a stick and condemn Senator Corker.  And you can come to a stick, a microphone, and you can say I am not going to vote for Mitch McConnell for majority leader.  And you can come to a stick and you can say I'm going to do away with the fillibuster so the president can implement his program.  Now Sen. Barrasso and Sen. Fischer and Sen. Heller and the other one of you folks, Sen. Hatch, if you do that, these are good folks, they may reconsider.  But until that time, they're coming for you. [applause]

I've gone over my allotted time, so I'm going to wrap up here in a second. [from audience shouts: "Keep going."]  You sound like my colleagues in the White House. [laughter]  Not.  I'm going to come out and give you a hug.

It's the last thing.  The president needs our support.  More than ever.  Look what happened, and here's what happens, when the president knows he has your support.  'Cause you know let's have a partners discussion.  The president had some bad information given to him and some bad advice given to him and you know, had some folks telling him things that just weren't so.  I kind of told him what was going to happen down in Alabama, where I was going to stand with the men and women that got him into office.

But let's look at what's happened since Alabama.  A 70-point program for DACA including 20 deal killers, and just to make sure Durbin and Nancy Pelosi got the joke somebody, a White House official, said, oh, by the way, no pathway to citizenship.  Right, that was the first thing, DACA.  The next thing, you had the religious liberty EO that was gutted back in what, May.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.  A 25-page memo from Attorney General Sessions, the whole, you know, Little Sisters of the Poor thing, everything turned around.  Number two, right.  Got out of UNESCO, number three.  Got, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said, it's going to be a middle-class tax cut, and it's going to have the small business tax cut and there's going to be middle class and for working class people, I guarantee ya.  Then you had Obamacare, not going to make the CSR payments, going to blow that thing up, going to blow those exchanges up, right. [applause]  And lo and behold we're going to decertify and get out of the Iran deal and name the IGRC a terrorist organization. [applause]

Those are not random events folks.  That is victory begets victory.  [applause]  We owe that to Judge Moore and the good men and wormen in Alabama, because that all came from them. [applause]

Every day is like Christmas Day now.  I can't wait to get up, there's going to be a new package, this is the Trump program; this is what we always wanted.  Heck, next week, they're, I hope, I think they're going to announce Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and move our embassy to Jerusalem. [applause]

[inaud. shout from audience]  Oh that's right, Mitch McConnell now is working triple time on getting those judges approved, right.  Funny how that all works.  Victory begets victory.  It's very simple.  We keep winning and good things are going to happen.  We keep winning and your country's going to be saved.  We keep winning and you folks, you, are going to be the folks who saved the Judeo-Christian West. [applause] 

Now we don't have anything to offer you except a lot of work.  And we're going to lose, by the way they're going to be grey skies and we're going to lose.  We're going to lose some; it's not going to be all victories.  We're going to have good days, and we're going to have bad days.  And this is going to take a long time.  And it's not any one election.  It's not November 9th or September 26th 2017; it's going to have to be every day.  It's going to have to be every day.  But if you folks don't do it, and the people that you are proxies for, your organizations, it's not going to happen and we're going to lose this. 

But I can guarantee you one thing.  There are good men and women out there that saw the lesson that Judge Moore and Donald Trump.  Because the lesson that the media, the opposition party and the money on Wall Street and the permanent political class tried to do was to say if you stand up you'll be destroyed.  If you go against what they stand for you will be destroyed.

But folks out there know, if you have their back, you are the key that picks the lock. [applause]

There's a Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, I think 2,500 years ago or 2,000 years ago, that the leader's best that when the main objectives are achieved, the people themselves say look what we accomplished.  That means it's all on you.  It's not Donald Trump.  It's not Mark Meadows.  It's not Ted Cruz.  It's not Laura Ingraham.  It's not Steve Bannon.  It's you.  So tonight, when you pray for your country and the servicemen and President Trump and his family, say a prayer for yourselves.  'Cause a hundred years from now, they're going to look back and they're going to hold you accountable for what you did in the next five, ten, 15, 20 years.  And if we stick together and show the same tenacity, the same grit, the same courage as you showed in Alabama, we're going to win, and they're going to lose. [applause]

ed. note: Bannon served as chief White House strategist until about two months ago; Trump dismissed him on Aug. 18.