Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) Photo: X screenshot
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) held an “off the rails” joint press conference on Monday outside of the Connecticut federal prison alongside Steve Bannon, a former advisor to former President Donald Trump and right-wing broadcaster. Bannon began serving his four-month sentence in the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution today for defying a congressional subpoena investigating his assistance in inciting the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots.
Protestors outside of the prison drowned out Bannon’s words by chanting, “Lock him up!” The chant is a gender-swapped variation of a slogan that followers of former President Donald Trump once popularized in 2016 when he discussed jailing his then-political opponent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Another protestor audibly chanted, “Small d**k,” during Greene and Bannon’s press conference, Raw Story reported.
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As Greene spoke — her words being broadcast over the right-wing Real America News media outlet — one protestor appeared behind her with a sign that read, “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body.” The sign referenced a somewhat homophobic insult to Greene recently issued on May 16 by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) during an argument in the U.S. House. Crockett later said she “meant no harm” to LGBTQ+ people with her insult of Greene.
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“Lock him up! Lock him up!” — Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene are trying to hold a news conference right now and it’s not going well pic.twitter.com/5AvgXGcqxM
“President Trump often describes America as a nation in decline,” Greene said during the press conference. “And this is a nation in decline, where the two political parties are basically at war with one another.”
However, another protestor responded by repeating, “Trump lost! Trump lost!” Others repeatedly yelled, “Traitor!” and rang a cowbell, effectively drowning out her words on Bannon’s behalf.
“Anybody else, or are they enjoying more cowbell?” Greene asked. “That’s all the Democrats have.” The press conference ended soon after her comment, and a priest blessed Bannon before he entered the prison.
The press left-leaning publication referred to the press conference as “off the rails.”
Bannon will have severely limited access to the phone and internet during his prison stay. He has claimed, “I will have a much bigger impact on the [Trump re-election] campaign when I’m in prison than I have now.”
As Marge attempts to rant about Pelosi outside the prison with Bannon, she is drowned out by cowbells and chants of “traitor!” pic.twitter.com/Pahk1aoRFw
This isn’t the first time that Bannon has been convicted of a crime
On the final morning of his presidency, Trump pardoned the former White House Chief Strategist after a federal grand jury indicted him in August 2020 for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering connected to the We Build the Wall campaign, a $25 million GoFundMe crowdfunding which claimed to be raising funds to help Trump construct a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Trump had originally said that the Mexican government would entirely pay for such a wall.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York accused Bannon and three other defendants of using the campaign’s funds to benefit themselves, including taking personal travel and paying off credit card debts, despite promising donors that they would “not take a penny” of the funds for themselves and that “100 percent” of the funds would go toward the project. Bannon himself was alleged to have used over $1 million.
Bannon and the others pleaded not guilty to the charges. He was released on $5 million bail and was required to surrender his passport and his domestic travel. He was set to face trial in May 2021.
Bannon co-founded the right-wing news site Breitbart and was chief executive officer of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. He also served as White House chief strategist and senior counselor to the president from January 2017 until August 18, 2017 when Trump fired him.
In January 2018, Trump and Bannon’s relationship soured after Bannon was quoted in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House as calling the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump “dumb as a brick”, called Trump’s decades of business dealings a “criminal enterprise” and referred to Trump as “a crooked business guy” and a “scumbag.”
Responding to the quotes, Trump released a public statement, saying, “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” adding, “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory.”
Trump claimed Bannon leaked false stories to the media to make himself appear more influential in the White House than he really was. “It is the only thing he does well,” Trump wrote. Trump later referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve” on Twitter and claimed that he “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”
After Bannon was arrested in August 2020, Trump said of the crowdfunding campaign, “I don’t like that project. I thought it was being done for showboating reasons.” One of the campaign’s investors said, “It makes me sick that these funds were laundered for personal use.”
