Ari Melber highlights Steve Bannon's plan to imprison Democrats if Donald Trump is elected
Melber: Bannon “basically says Democrats will be imprisoned in any second Trump term”
Published
Citation From the March 28, 2024, edition of MSNBC's The Beat With Ari Melber
ARI MELBER (HOST): Mr. Bannon is very publicly telling his viewers that he plans, if he can, to be a part of a Trump second term where political prosecutions against Democrats are on the table, where a Putin-style effort at going after opponents not for what they might have done in an honest investigation, but just who they are in a political attack -- meaning, he basically says Democrats will be imprisoned in any second Trump term.
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"They're going to be in prison. Yes, prison." That is a sign to send a message to wake people up, to scare people, to instill fear. It's all in public, right? If it were just a private plan, you might send private messages and write up private blueprints. That's a secretive approach. This is something that looks more like at least an attempt at an aspect of the Putin playbook, where the use and singling out of government power against your opponents doesn't just take them off the table -- or, as it sometimes has been in Russia, worse -- but it also sends a message to everyone else: maybe you don't want to be associated with that, maybe you don't want to be involved in that, maybe you want to go back and just try to live your life and avoid being grouped in with this group of people that Mr. Bannon says are going to be in, "Yes, prison."
Usually, traditionally in American politics, in either party, if people who worked at the White House who are at that level -- I'm not talking about the random, loud gadflies, but the White House-level people -- if you said to them, "Is your boss going to pull a Putin and go after the opponents just for their free speech, just because they're in a different party?" People would say, "No, no, never." And here we have the opposite. "Yes, yes, count on it." A Putin admission by a would-be Putin movement here in America.