From “Inside the Hive”: How Steve Bannon’s Prison Sentence Could Help Trump Win
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2024
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
With the New Yorker office closed for the July 4th holiday, The Political Scene brings you a recent episode from Vanity Fair’s “Inside the Hive,” hosted by the special correspondent Brian Stelter. Tina Nguyen, a national correspondent for Puck, and the Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf, a national political reporter, join Stelter to discuss how Steve Bannon helped rehabilitate Donald Trump among Republicans after January 6th. Bannon’s popular “War Room” podcast has been galvanizing the far right at the local and national level, and his four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress could actually burnish his bona fides with the base. “It’s amazing clout,” Nyugen says of Bannon’s prison sentence, “for someone in the MAGA world, in these MAGA times, with a MAGA audience.”
This episode originally aired on June 20th, 2024.
To discover more from “Inside the Hive” and other Vanity Fair podcasts, visit vanityfair.com/podcasts.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey political scene listeners, it's Tyler. |
| 0:04.0 | Steve Bannon reported to prison this week. |
| 0:06.8 | Nearly two years ago, he was convicted for contempt of Congress |
| 0:10.0 | after refusing to cooperate with the January 6th Committee. |
| 0:14.0 | Not too long ago, our friends over at Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair did a deep dive on |
| 0:18.8 | Bannon, from his ongoing legal troubles to the War Room, his influential far right podcast. |
| 0:25.1 | Make sure to follow inside the hive |
| 0:26.9 | wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:28.9 | Have a great 4th of July, |
| 0:30.3 | and I hope you enjoy the show. |
| 0:37.0 | Isaac, can you just remind us why Steve Bannon is about to go to prison? Well, this was for essentially blowing off the subpoena from the House Committee investigating January 6th. |
| 0:44.1 | They were requesting documents and testimony from him and there were some other |
| 0:48.4 | witnesses who went in and took the fifth but he just didn't respond at all. |
| 0:52.4 | And so they referred that to the Department of Justice he was |
| 0:55.9 | prosecuted and convicted the judge stayed that sentence to give him the |
| 1:00.9 | opportunity to appeal and he finally lost that appeal and so the judge |
| 1:05.0 | said it's time to report to prison. |
| 1:08.5 | That is Isaac Arnstorf, national political reporter for the Washington Post. |
| 1:12.8 | His new book, Finish What We Started, is all about the MAGA movement since January 6th, and he |
| 1:18.0 | interviewed Bannin for the book. |
| 1:20.4 | And I'm Brian Stelter. Welcome to Inside the Hive from Vanity Fair. |
| 1:25.0 | This week, we're going inside what Steve Bannon calls the war room. |
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