Steve Bannon, a former top adviser to President Donald Trump and a conservative firebrand, is once again looking to use intimidation to keep voters from the polls. During a speech at a recent far-right conference, he called on supporters to show up to polling precincts in November, adding, “if you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are.” Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Colorado clemency board members slam Gov. Jared Polis’ decision to free Tina Peters, and more.
Bannon makes an alarming call to action for ‘every precinct’ ahead of the midterms
Former Trump senior adviser and conservative provocateur Steve Bannon is a bit of a red herring in MAGA world. Bannon’s whole brand is what he dubbed the “muzzle velocity” approach: flooding the zone with extreme positions and inflammatory calls to action just to stoke fear — even though he knows half of what he’s saying isn’t true.
Bannon recently spoke at the far-right “Fraud-Fighter Summit,” where he delivered an alarming call to action ahead of the November midterm elections. Bannon reiterated his belief that Trump will send ICE to certain precincts — even though federal law bars the deployment of federal troops to any polling place — and called on attendees to arm themselves and monitor polling places.
“We need to be at every precinct,” Bannon said. “If you’re armed or not, that depends upon what your state laws are. But I will tell you, ICE has to be there and has to be there to back you up, or we're going to have a situation exactly what happened in LA where they sat there and stole the election from Spencer Pratt, who I believe finished first, but no worse than a close second, and should be on the ballot in November.”
For months, state election chiefs and Democratic lawmakers have been preparing for possible interference from the Trump administration in the midterms. Bannon warned attendees that they need to prepare to counter these efforts by elected officials and lawmakers to ensure a free and fair election.
“These people are arrogant,” Bannon said. “And right now, they're doing very sophisticated war-gaming, very sophisticated, let’s say, association with intelligence agencies, and, I think, rogue law enforcement agencies.”
Is Bannon just fanning the flames or speaking of a broader effort to disrupt the midterms? Either way, it’d be irresponsible to outright dismiss everything he says.
Colorado clemency board members said Gov. Jared Polis’ decision to free Tina Peters was ‘motivated by politics and influence’
Almost everybody who isn’t a MAGA follower agrees that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) made a huge mistake when he commuted the sentence of convicted election denier Tina Peters last month: Fellow elected officials, Colorado Democrats and Republican officials. And even Polis’ own clemency advisory board twice unanimously voted to reject Peters’ request for an early release.
Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, two Denver lawyers on Colorado’s 11-person clemency advisory board, told the New York Times that the board first voted against recommending clemency for Peters in January. A month later, the board — which is appointed by the governor — received an unusual request from Polis’ office to look at Peters’ clemency application again. The board obliged but still voted unanimously to reject her bid for early release.
For months, Trump and an army of election deniers and anti-voting activists pressured Polis to free Peters, a Colorado GOP election official who was convicted for her role in a voting system breach. Trump even threatened funding cuts and punished Colorado in other ways over Polis’s refusal to free Peters.
But Polis eventually caved and granted clemency to Peters. He said his decision wasn’t motivated by politics or pressure, but because he believed Peters — whose actions were motivated by election conspiracy theories — was truly sorry and took responsibility for her crimes. (Spoiler alert: She’s still spouting those same conspiracies!)
“It’s very clear it’s motivated by politics and influence,” Taslimi said of Polis’ decision to buck the board’s recommendation.
“It really was a punch in the gut,” Proff added. “It flies in the face of justice.”
From Maine down to Texas, and from North Carolina out to Arizona — hundreds of Republican election deniers and vote suppressors will be on the ballot this fall. They are running in state-level elections and national ones. Regardless of where they are running, they can help drive anti-voting policies that could disenfranchise millions of voters.
Anti-voting activist Scott Presler says he’s being bullied to stop talking about the doomed SAVE America Act, which still does not have nearly enough support to clear the Senate.
Presler isn’t the only one on the right who just can’t seem to accept the failure of the SAVE America Act. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said she’s opposing all bills and rules until the Senate passes the sweeping anti-voting bill. The grassroots conservative group Tea Party Patriots is also urging supporters to pressure the Senate to attach the SAVE America Act to every must-pass piece of legislation.
On a right-wing podcast, California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton spread false claims that Democrats used hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for solar panels on low-income apartment buildings in California for illegal voter registration and ballot harvesting. The source of Hilton’s claims? An unreliable California-specific DOGE-like database that Hilton’s team created and purports to use AI to identify fraud.
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