Steve Bannon rips Trump official for spouting statistics 'nobody believes'

Prominent MAGA pundit Steve Bannon ripped into a Trump official he previously championed, per The Hill, chastising him for touting statistics that "nobody believes" and demanding he go further.

Bannon previously served as an influential top aide during President Donald Trump's first campaign and the early months of his first term, and remains a major voice in the MAGA movement by way of his "War Room" podcast. One of the second-term appointees that Bannon championed was FBI Director Kash Patel, who also emerged from the world of far-right podcasts.

Now, however, Bannon appears to be growing displeased with Patel's performance in the job, taking him to task for touting statistics about crime levels during a recent "War Room" episode.

"Kash, I love you brother, but I don’t want to hear any more statistics about how crime’s coming down, crime’s coming down, all that," Bannon said, adding that "nobody believes" what he is claiming.

"Nobody believes the crime statistics anyway, I’m sorry," he continued. "They still don’t feel comfortable walking down a street in Memphis [or] these other places, unless they see the National Guard... I don’t want to hear any crime statistics, I just don’t. It’s not going to move the needle, it’s not going to matter in any voting. Let’s have some urgency, let’s light a fire.”

Bannon further urged Patel to start getting "perp walks of the deep state" if he wants to make serious progress at the FBI. The Hill noted that this comment referred to the notion of an "unproven network of operatives within the federal government that supporters of Trump believe has sabotaged him for years."

The outlet also laid out a fuller picture of the crime statistics Bannon dismissed, which other experts have touted as signs of a remarkable nationwide downturn in violent crime, a trend that long preceded Trump's entry into the White House.

"Violent crime in the U.S. was down 9.1 percent in the U.S. from March 2025 to February of this year, according to the FBI," the outlet explained. "That includes robberies dropping by 19.1 percent, murders declining by 18.7 percent, rapes decreasing by 7.2 percent and aggravated assaults dropping by 6.9 percent. Property crime, meanwhile, dropped by 12 percent during the aforementioned time period, the FBI reported. Motor vehicle thefts decreased by 21.6 percent, while burglaries and larcenies dropped by 15.7 percent and 9.5 percent, respectively. Those declines followed a decrease in violent crime by 9.3 percent and in property crimes by 12.4 percent from 2024 to 2025, according to the FBI."