Live from Virginia Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show –  live weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Live Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed political strategist Steven K. Bannon to weigh on the first presidential debate on Tuesday evening.
Fredericks: Joining us now Steven K. Bannon. Former chief strategist for the President. The first three debates that the president had with Hillary Clinton. Steve Bannon was instrumental in the prep for that. And designing those and how the president would do. And he’s with us now back by popular demand. He’s also the host of the most popular show in history War Room Pandemic. Steve great to have you here today.
Bannon: Thanks for having me, John. I appreciate you having me on.
Fredericks: I want your rundown of last night, please.
Bannon: Well I think that you teed it up. You know Chris Wallace didn’t really have control of the situation. And I think President Trump summed it up pretty early. I’m debating you. I mean he called out Chris Wallace. I think in the first 10 or 15 minutes. And so given the fact that it was kind of two on one, I thought the president did a great job.
I didn’t think Joe Biden looked coherent at all. If the left-wing media thought Biden did a good job they wouldn’t be attacking Trump so viciously last night and this morning. Including immediately CNN calling for no more debates. Joe Scarborough calling for no more debates. It’s because they know that if Joe Biden stands on a stage with Donald Trump and he looks incoherent.
I thought Joe Biden’s performance last night was a total disaster because this guy can’t even answer a question. I didn’t hear a coherent answer. Supposedly they start the debate off with uh his two strongest pieces, healthcare and the COVID response. This is supposed to be where Biden outpolls Trump demonstrably.
And I didn’t hear a coherent answer on his COVID plan. I thought that if the American people want to see differences in policy Biden kind of basically said we’re gonna stay shut down until Dr. Fauci tells us we can come out. And President Trump laid out what I thought was a fairly compelling case about how we have to soldier through this. And open the economy and do it in a prudent way.
On healthcare, I thought President Trump was fairly articulate about what the differences of his policies were and what he’s trying to do now and Joe Biden’s. And I understand the Left went crazy because Trump wouldn’t back off of Biden. But I can tell you I know a lot of very senior and serious Democratic people who were texting each other all last night about how stunned they were of how Joe Biden didn’t look coherent.
And particularly didn’t look presidential. If you’re telling me that that’s the guy you want to put in a room across the table from Xi or Putin or Erdogan, I just don’t see the American people doing that. The president was aggressive. He was not gonna back off. I think you know he might have been talking over Wallace because Chris Wallace had a two-on-one.
And the president wasn’t prepared to back down. Now some of the shots that he was giving Biden when Biden was talking, maybe a few of those you should have dialed down and just let Biden talk. But I thought the president was aggressive. He wasn’t going to back down.
And you can’t tell me he’s sitting there that Joe Biden is with the program. I mean he’s clearly got the beginning of dementia. I think senior Democrats know this. He’s got to be protected and he’s got to be covered. If you had just had a moderator that rolled the ball out there and let him go at it, Biden wouldn’t have gone the entire hour and a half. You would have had a kind of standing eight count. So Chris Wallace had to come in and protect him.
Fredericks: That is what frustrated me.
Bannon: I think that’s great. But you’re getting frustrated with the wrong thing. To me, I think it’s great. I mean, why did CNN come on the very first thing with Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer with the sound bite that this may be the last debate.
It’s because they were all talking internally beforehand and texting Democratic operatives and saying Biden can’t stand this. We can’t do another one. So we’re going to come in here and say Trump is so rude and such a bully and you know so over the top that we don’t want to hear him anymore. And the Biden campaign that had to come it was the Biden campaign who had to come out and stop that.
People can understand what happened, all those people talk to each other and they’re texting each other constantly in group chats and these other things during the debate. I actually did Showtime last night. It’ll be on Sunday with John Heilemann. I like John he’s a very smart guy. He’s a true Trump hater.
And the reason I wanted to do it we went back to Hofstra and we went back to where the first debate was and we did a four hour. It’ll be compressed down to a half-hour show or an hour show or something like this. We did a pregame live to tape during the debate and then it was afterward. And to me, it was very obvious. If Chris Wallace had not jumped in there, and the debate was really between Trump and Wallace.
Fredericks: Yes exactly!
Bannon: Well President Trump said that in the first seven minutes, am I debating you? And the answer was yes. But that’s the point. And that’s the point I think got to be pushed is that these guys, remember the media’s all talking to each other non-stop in there.
And I know senior Democratic people and they’re sitting there going oh my god. First off the twitch is and I don’t say this to be cruel but does Joe Biden have Tourettes? I mean the faces and the weird laughs at the wrong time. The bizarre faces he’s making when he’s getting hammered.
Show me where he represented on anything that was not just the most general happy talk. Here’s the other thing. Joe Biden’s plan was to come out and break up Trump on policy because you know he knows so much more than Trump does. His thing completely crashed. What I liked about Trump was Trump’s correcting him on numbers. No Joe you’re wrong it’s not 100 million.
No Joe you’re wrong. Trump is coming back with granularity. Trump’s going back with detail. And Joe Biden waved off that. But go back and just watch. Joe finds things as it was the happiest thing. It’s not his family or my family it’s your family. These are standard tropes that he had on and note cards. Did you see Trump have any cards up there? Did he have any notes?
Fredericks: No.
Bannon: But Biden’s reading right off of them. If I’m a Democrat I’m thinking to myself, how did we end up with this guy? We could beat Trump. How do we end up with this guy? So that’s where they had to go immediately. National disaster. Terrible. He’s a bully. He’s over the top.
Well, the reason he had to recently had to push back he had the bully is that Chris Wallace was really, the debate was between him and Chris Wallace. Chris Wallace walked in as the cutman for Biden. And then he pivoted and realized his fighter was punched out in the first seven minutes. And it became between him. However, I don’t take that as bad. And the reason I don’t think it is bad is that he took on Chris Wallace and he took on Biden.
And Biden was like the third wheel there. Joe Biden still cannot stand up to Donald Trump. And last night proved that he can’t stand up to him in policy. I still ask people to tell me what Joe Biden said? COVID-19. I still like to know Joe Biden’s policy on COVID-19.
He had 15 minutes last night. He only got through three or four questions. In fact, the most pathetic part of the debate is when he came back to a question that Chris Wallace asked. He’s wondering off into some other direction. And Chris Wallace is trying to rein him back in. Wallace is like sir, I asked you about the masks…
Listen to the full show here:
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