Donald Trump’s allies have become increasingly emboldened to float their most audacious ideas as Trump prepares to return to office, suggesting he run for an unconstitutional third term in 2028 and accusing the news media of having engaged in a criminal conspiracy with prosecutors against him.
Those suggestions, by Trump’s former strategist Steve Bannon, came at a self-congratulatory gala dinner for conservatives in New York on Sunday. At times the remarks seemed like the product of the euphoria that permeated the audience.
The underlying message was clear: with Trump back in the White House and with Bannon renewing his influence with the president-elect, the most extreme and polarizing proposals at the very least were up for consideration.
“The viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that maybe we do it again in 28?” Bannon said of Trump possibly running again, in his remarks at the New York Young Republican Club gala dinner, which also saw a Trump adviser keel over the lectern and fall off the stage.
Riding the wave of self-congratulatory sentiment in the room, Bannon, who ignored the black-tie dress code with a wax jacket and black – collared shirt, doubled down on pursuing a campaign of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies in the news media and at the justice department.
“We want retribution and we’re going to get retribution. You have to. It’s not personal, it’s not personal,” Bannon said to the raucous room. “They need to learn what populist, nationalist power is on the receiving end.
“I need investigations, trials and then incarceration. And I’m just talking about the media. Should the media be included in the vast criminal conspiracy against President Trump? Should Andrew Weissmann on MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and all of them?
“We want all your emails, all your text messages, everything you did. You colluded in a conspiracy with Merrick Garland, Nancy Pelosi, Lisa Monaco and Jack Smith,” Bannon said, name-checking the attorney general, former Democratic House speaker, the deputy attorney general and the Trump special counsel.
The threatening rhetoric, and especially the concept of using a criminal conspiracy statute against Trump’s political enemies, has been permeating through Bannon’s orbit for some time since the election. But Sunday night’s gala was the first time it was floated outside of the Maga ecosystem.
The remarks also turned at various points as Bannon segued abruptly from politics to how the bond market’s response to the national debt could make or break Trump’s presidency, and questioned whether New York mayor Eric Adams was a QAnon conspiracy adherent.
In a night of unexpected turns, the most dramatic moment came earlier when senior Trump campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz keeled over the lectern and collapsed off the stage in an apparent medical episode. Organizers later said he was treated on site and speculated he had a seizure.
The gala then had a further bizarre twist when Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino took to the stage to fill the moment, but was interrupted when he received a phone call from the president-elect himself, who apparently was asking about Bruesewitz.
Scavino put the call on speakerphone and had Trump address the gala in real time, but Trump mostly ended up delivering praise for Bruesewitz instead. “I guess the show goes on,” one bemused Bannon associate said to his seat neighbor as he watched the situation unfold.
The gala dinner, at Cipriani on Wall Street, drew the same Trumpworld figures as it has for several years, including Trump’s in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn, Nigel Farage, Trump legal adviser Mike Davis, and a cast of Bannon allies including the emcee, Raheem Kassam. Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was invited to attend but did not make an appearance.
Epshteyn, sitting at the table directly in front of the stage and next to Farage, the other guest of honor, was singled out by Bannon for orchestrating Trump’s legal victories, including the dismissal of the criminal cases against him. “Boris, I don’t know how you did it,” Bannon said.
