Rick Wilson raises red flag about Steve Bannon 'chaos' as 2024 election looms

According to Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson, former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon will have an outsized influence on a second Trump administration despite no longer being a key architect of his rise.

In a deep dive into Bannon's strong influence on the MAGA movement, Wilson told the Guardian's David Smith that Bannon is a great believer in sowing "chaos" to achieve his goals and his ramping up his rhetoric as the former president makes his third bid for the Oval Office should set off alarms.

With Smith reporting Bannon harped on Trump winning the 2020 presidential election before an enraptured crowd at CPAC recently, he added, "It was a blunt reminder that Bannon, an architect of Trumpism variously compared to Thomas Cromwell, Rasputin and Joseph Goebbels, remains a potent force in American politics as the 2024 US presidential election looms into view and the re-election of Trump looks a clear possibility."

With that in mind, Smith suggested Bannon would cast " a long shadow" over a second Trump administration.

Former GOP strategist Wilson agreed.

“Steve Bannon is a if not the primary spiritual and intellectual force of this nationalist movement that is in control of the Republican party," he explained. "He is a very powerful figure in today’s GOP [Grand Old Party] and it is inescapable in some ways that he will play a central role in whatever Trump administration emerges if Trump wins. He is the architect. As an avowed Leninist, he is a guy who is trying to engineer the revolution in his image.”

Continuing in that vein, he was asked what Bannon likely has in mind for a second Trump go-around.

“Concentration camps," he replied. "This guy keeps saying out loud they’re the enemies of the people, our opponents are deserve what they get, this hyperbolic rhetoric. He believes in power and chaos and will do whatever he can if he gets it. Whatever he could get away with in that circumstance, he will get away with it.”

Fellow anti-Trumper conservative Charlie Sykes agreed, telling the Guardian, "Donald Trump does not look at Steve Bannon and think this guy is unhinged; he’s looking at Steve Bannon and saying this is exactly what I want to hear from my supporters. Steve Bannon knows what he’s doing and he will act as a gravitational pull on the rest of the right because they have to match him.”

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