Dick Morris to Newsmax: 'Tragic' for Steve Bannon to Get Jail Time
(Newsmax/"Saturday Report")
By Sandy Fitzgerald | Saturday, 22 October 2022 01:52 PM EDT
It was "tragic" for Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, to be sentenced to four months behind bars for defying the Jan. 6 committee's subpoena, political strategist Dick Morris said on Newsmax Saturday.
"Steve is one of my heroes," Morris, the author of the best-selling "The Return: Trump's Big 2024 Comeback" told Newsmax's "Saturday Report." "He is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met."
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Bannon was behind Trump's winning election strategy in 2016 to focus on voters in the nation's so-called "flyover country," or "what Hillary [Clinton] called the 'deplorables,' the high school graduates, working-class voters, who don't live on the coasts," said Morris.
"Trump discovered these people and said their needs have not been made public, and that 'nobody's focusing on them, but I am,'" Morris continued.
And while those voters were being mocked as "deplorables, clinging to their guns and Bibles," Trump said he'd pay attention to them and put them first, said Morris.
"That strategy came right out of the fertile brain of Steve Bannon," he said. "I once told him he and I belonged to a very exclusive club of about five people who are still alive who ran the successful campaigns of people for president. I've got such respect and admiration for him. It's tragic that he's going to have to go to jail."
The judge sentencing Bannon allowed him to stay free, pending his appeal, and imposed a $6,500 fine against him.
In July, Bannon was convicted of two contempt of Congress charges, one for refusing to sit for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents.
Morris on Saturday said the sentencing, along with Trump's subpoena to testify before the committee, is what he calls "WMDs," or "weapons of mass distraction."
"This is designed to distract everyone from inflation, crime, immigration, [President Joe] Biden's failures," said Morris. "Abortion is fading, so this gives them something to talk about. Jan. 6 gives them some talking points that they can use."
Morris said he had a similar experience back when he was working for President Bill Clinton in 1996.
"When he was approaching Election Day, Ken Starr was investigating him over Monica Lewinsky and subpoenaed me to come before the grand jury; and the subpoena was returnable two weeks before Election Day," Morris recalled, noting that it was an effort to distract voters' attention away from the president and focus it on Lewinsky while Clinton was running for reelection."
But, Morris said, his attorney was able to delay his testimony; and he thinks Trump's deposition will be delayed as well.
Further, he said that the Jan. 6 committee "will go out of existence on Dec. 31 because the Republicans will take control of at least the House and probably the Senate."
"Once the Republicans take control, this committee is done. Goodbye," said Morris. "They won't exist anymore."
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