Former White House strategist Steve Bannon broke ranks with President Donald Trump by supporting Roy Moore in Alabama’s Republican Senate runoff on Monday night, going on an anti-globalist rant.
Stumping for Moore, who is running against Trump’s choice, Rep. Luther Strange, Bannon blasted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Washington politics in general, adding at one point that he felt “divine providence” helped Trump win the presidential election.
Here’s a sample of some of the things Bannon said during his stump speech:
- “Mitch McConnell and this permanent political class is the most corrupt and incompetent group of individuals in this country. They think you’re a pack of morons. They think you’re nothing but rubes. They have no interest at all in what you have to say, what you have to think or what you want to do.”
- “We did something nobody ever thought could be done—a conservative candidate [couldn’t] win the upper Midwest. We won it, and over 300 electoral votes. But I will tell you, on the day of November 8th, I knew it was divine providence that helped us win.”
- “I saw in this campaign, the way we won, was we had a candidate that was the greatest public speaker since William Jennings Bryan—Donald J. Trump.”
- “I’m here as a private citizen today, not as the CEO of the campaign. I haven’t worn this jacket since we were on the campaign. I came to you unshaven, unkempt, in this old bomber jacket–exactly as I was on the campaign.”
- “I apologize to Plutarch and Shakespeare as I do a riff on him. We did not come here to defy Donald Trump. We came here to praise and honor him.”
- “The opposition party right there–the media–they’re nothing but the running dogs of the elites of this world.”
- “They talk about hate speech? Let’s talk about economic hate crimes that have been done on the working men and women of this country. They’ve gutted this country. They’ve gutted the manufacturing jobs and shipped them overseas. You know what for? For profit. You think this opioid crisis just came about? There is a direct correlation between the factories and jobs that were shipped to China and the workers left behind with total despair.”
You can watch all of Bannon’s speech here.