Al Drago/AP
On Thursday, Steve Bannon, the former Trump administration official and 2020 election results denier, turned his podcast into a litany of grievances against President Joe Biden, the Clintons, and the other usual targets. Then he called for impeachment and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Any regular listener to Bannon’s War Room podcast has grown used to these kind of rants. Already he has called for Biden to be impeached over his handling of the “southern border” and for his failure to press China more forcefully to reveal the origin of the coronavirus.
On Thursday, Bannon identified the Ukraine crisis as additional grounds for impeachment: the Ukraine crisis. Figuring out the “how” and “why” of it all was a bit harder.
“I don’t care how much Media Matters and Mediaite and MSNBC don’t like to hear it, ok, he’s getting impeached,” Bannon said near the start of his show. “You do understand we’re going to win 40 or 50 or 60 seats? He’s getting impeached. We’re impeaching him.”
And those reasons?
Number one on the southern border, number two on this fiasco right now in the Ukraine. And we’re going to get into every detail of every penny his family stole out of there from the Ukrainian people, from the kleptocrats in Ukraine that were his partners. We’re going to get to every penny—to the fifth decimal place—of everything that the Clintons and Biden and these corrupt Democrats have skimmed off the top.
Ah, ok. So Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine, the impetus for a right-wing conspiracy theory that Joe Biden used his influence as vice president to help Hunter financially, is what Bannon is talking about? Sort of?
At a certain point, Bannon seems to be speaking to Biden directly and just listing out conspiracies, bullet-point style. He even, out of nowhere, name-drops Clinton Cash, an error-ridden book about the Clinton’s (admittedly eyebrow-raising) business dealings:
Putin called your bluff. He says you’ve turned Ukraine into a ‘colony,’ a ‘Clinton colony.’ Clinton Cash. They stole as much money as they could out of Haiti, out of sub-Saharan Africa, and then they’re in Ukraine, stealing it with both hands.
This is the usual shtick. Bannon does this all the time. After commending Putin’s toughness earlier in the week and predicting that the attack on Ukraine will drive up inflation, Bannon has consistently focused on Hunter Biden and the Clintons.
Here’s more of that:
Is Hunter Biden over there with his business partners? Is he sitting there with the Ukrainian flag? Where is Hunter? Is he in his art gallery? Is he with more strippers? Is he smoking more crack?
During the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that is where the level of discourse was on War Room.
