Steve Bannon delivered a fiery tirade on Wednesday aimed directly at Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, wondering out loud “who in the hell” the Israeli prime minister thinks he is to seemingly dictate the United States’ foreign policy decisions as President Donald Trump weighs military action against Iran.
Bannon, the former Trump chief strategist who now hosts the MAGA podcast War Room, has been at the forefront of a growing rift within the MAGA coalition over America’s involvement in Israel's war with Iran.
Along with fellow right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson, Bannon has warned Trump that joining the conflict could lead to the end of his presidency and the fracturing of the “America First” movement.
Prior to Bannon taking to the air on Wednesday, it was reported that the president had already privately approved attack plans on Iran but was still withholding his final order in hopes that Tehran would give up its nuclear program.
The United States is considering using massive bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities amid Israel’s relentless airstrikes, which have struck well over a thousand targets since last week.
While the president has said he “may do it” or he “may not do it” regarding striking Iran, he’s told Netanyahu to “keep going” with Israel’s military operation. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has urged America to support Israel in its war while blasting the president’s MAGA critics, who have said that Trump is going back on his pledge to stop the “forever wars.”
“Today, it's Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it's New York,” Netanyahu told ABC News this week. “Look, I understand ‘America First.’ I don't understand ‘America Dead.’”
During Wednesday’s War Room broadcast, Bannon fumed that the Israeli leader had “mangled” the president’s negotiations with Iran on a nuclear deal so Netanyahu could push for “regime change and regime destruction” in the region.
“That’s what he was pitching the other night,” Bannon seethed. “Who in the hell are you to lecture the American people? Who are you to lecture the American people? The American people are not going to tolerate it. Not going to put up with it.”
Complaining that Israel was trying to “jam” the United States into a situation that it knew it “couldn’t finish,” Bannon called on Netanyahu to “go finish it” himself without America’s help.
“Quit coming to us to finish it,” he groused. “President Trump may come to that conclusion, but it’s not something he would just say… ‘Oh yeah, let’s go bomb ’em and take care of it.’ He’s going to do it because he’s got to weigh the options now that you’ve gotten us into it.”
Bannon added: “That’s reality. That’s the truth. That’s exactly where we are, and people should be truthful with each other, particularly in these tough decisions. That’s what allies do. Allies don’t manipulate and don’t inextricably draw people into situations from which the other party has to get them out of.”
The one-time Trump adviser also took aim at the hawkish commentators and hosts at Fox News who are influencing Trump to join Israel in its conflict, accusing the right-wing network of trying to run Trump out of politics for years.
He also seemed to direct much of his ire – without directly naming him – at weekend Fox News host Mark Levin, who has been one of the loudest pro-war hawks on Fox airwaves and has loudly criticized MAGA isolationists like Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who he dismissed as a “little known politician from Georgia.”
“You’re gonna question her, call her a pipsqueak from Georgia? Who are you?!” Bannon exclaimed. “Anybody who took a paycheck from Fox in 2021 – Murdoch said they were going to make Trump a non-person. You sat there and you ran Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and all of them, that are never gonna be president and never going to win national elections. Ever!”
He went on to claim that the Murdoch-owned conservative cable giant “went all-in” on the “collection of clowns” who ran for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, adding that the network “kneecapped Trump in the very first debate” because they “hated” him.
“And to show how much you hate him, you won’t even deal straight with him now. It’s just propaganda, propaganda, propaganda and Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham, Lindsey Graham,” Bannon concluded, referencing the pro-war senator from South Carolina.
Prior to Israel launching “Operation Rising Lion,” which Netanyahu has said was necessary because Iran was weeks from completing a nuclear bomb despite American intelligence saying otherwise, Bannon urged the prime minister to “read the room” and pull back on his threats to bomb Iran. He also pushed back on Levin, who is a member of the president’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, for demanding at the time that America back an Israeli military campaign.
“It’s gonna drag us into a regional war,” he said. “We just got out of 20 years of it. It can’t happen, and like I tell you, I’m the biggest supporter of Israel, but I tell all the guys, including people very close to Mark, that, hey, if they go it alone, it’s the end of the American relationship with Israel. It’s just the end of it. You can’t because we’re so tied to them.”
