Steve Bannon admits he helped plan 6 January Trump rally to ‘kill the Biden presidency in the crib’

Former White House strategist ‘privately told President Trump to have a reckoning on January 6th,’ Robert Costa says

Trump White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has said that he spoke with Donald Trump ahead of his rally on 6 January, discussing how to “kill the Biden presidency in the crib” before a pro-Trump mob laid siege to the Capitol to stop the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory.

During a broadcast on Real America’s Voice, Mr Bannon played a clip from MSNBC of Washington Post reporters Robert Costa and Bob Woodward speaking about the events that led up to the Capitol riot.

“You look at January 5th, we discovered that Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist, was there at the Willard Hotel blocks from the White House with Rudy Giuliani, having an almost war-room-type meeting with other Trump allies the eve before the January 6th insurrection,” Mr Costa said.

“And Bannon had actually been in close touch with President Trump for days before January 6th. Based on our reporting, he privately told President Trump to have a reckoning on January 6th. And he said to the president, it’s time to kill the Biden presidency in the crib,” he added.

“Yeah, because [of] his legitimacy,” Mr Bannon said about Mr Biden. “Forty-two per cent of the American people think that Biden did not win the presidency legitimately.”

Mr Bannon appeared to be referring to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted 8-10 November 2020, just days after the election, among 1,500 registered voters in the US. There’s no evidence that Mr Biden’s win was fraudulent.

“It killed itself,” Mr Bannon added. “Just look at what this illegitimate regime is doing. It killed itself. Okay? But we told you from the very beginning, just expose it, just expose it, never back down, never give up and this thing will implode.”

Costa told MSNBC on Monday night that “the most striking scene to me is after [Vice President] Pence leaves the Oval Office on January 5th. We have in our book, President Trump opening the door on a freezing night, January 5th with the future rioters outside, his supporters outside in the streets of Washington, and in the frigid air having the gust of air come into the Oval Office, and he wouldn’t close the door”.

“He said to his aides in the Oval Office, ‘Listen to them, these are my supporters. They want us to act tomorrow on January 6th’. And even some of his own aides were shivering in the Oval Office that night. The president wouldn’t close the door. He wanted to hear the cries of his supporters,” Costa added.