Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Peter Hamby.

Tonight, Part I of my spirited conversation with Steve Bannon, the Rasputin of the MAGA movement, who was released from federal prison just days before Trump’s smashing election victory this month. As Trump prepares for round two in the White House, Bannon tells me what really thinks about Elon and Rubio, why Senate Republicans need to think twice if they want to slow the MAGA agenda, why Trump can’t have too many “crazies” running around the the White House, and why planned mass deportations need to be handled “humanely”—and with the threat of tariffs against countries that refuse to take migrants back.

Before diving in, I want to give one final shout-out to the great Stories of the Season event we held in Los Angeles earlier this month, which was presented in partnership with Polestar. If you missed my panel conversation with Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez), Peter Sarsgaard (September 5), and Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice) on their remarkable performances, you can watch the replay by clicking here.

In his first show back, Bannon peppered his Trump cheerleading with some conspiratorial hedging—“they,” meaning the deep state and the Democrats, were going to try to steal the election again—but it turned out he didn’t need to. Trump won easily. It was the kind of victory that Bannon has been dreaming about for a very long time, going back to when I first met him in 2011, when he was palling around with Sarah Palin. Unlike Trump’s first victory eight years ago, his win this month was unambiguous, built on a multiracial coalition of voters rejecting what Bannon calls the “credentialed class.” Trump won by openly promising to deport illegal immigrants, stand up for U.S. workers with tariffs against China, scale down America’s military presence overseas, and root out his political enemies. MAGA in full.

I chatted with Bannon on Monday evening, after one of his War Room tapings, about his expectations for Trump 2.0, what he really thinks about Elon Musk and Trump appointees like Scott Bessent and Marco Rubio, why mass deportations need to be conducted “humanely,” how Democrats fumbled their connection with the working class, and much more. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Steve Bannon: We talked about this back in the first week of February 2017. I got up on the stage at CPAC and Reince Priebus and I were talking, and they asked me the same question. I said, look, it’s three lines of work. You have an America First national security agenda, which is basically, Make sure we don’t get into a third World War. And that, somehow, between Beijing, Iran, and Moscow—this new axis that’s been formed—we can negotiate a meaningful peace, put America first, cut the defense budget, and start to really think through the idea that we’re not an empire. NATO, Western Europe, the Gulf Emirates, Japan, and Korea—they’re not American protectorates. They’re allies in helping us confront—but very smartly, and not get into shooting wars with—our opponents.

Next, on economic nationalism, we have to deal with this crisis we have with federal spending and the national debt. We’re adding $1 trillion every 100 days. We passed $35 trillion in July, when I was in federal prison. Four months later, when I got out of prison, we just hit $36 trillion! It’s an unsustainable system and it has to be dealt with.

The last part: We have to deconstruct the administrative state. This is what DOGE, Vivek and Elon, are going to do with the Office of Management and Budget and the appropriations process. We have to get control of federal spending by deconstructing this massive fourth branch of government we’ve got, and part of that is to get our sovereignty back on the southern border and to make sure that we can humanely and smartly go through this process of deportations.

President Trump’s got the right policies. Clearly, the American people have his back. He’s seen the polling. Now it’s about getting the right people in there and hitting it with muzzle velocity… The thing that’s holding us back on the right is the established order of the donor class Republicans that are manifested in the Senate. What’s going to hold us back is Mitch McConnell. What’s going to hold us back is Paul Ryan on the board of Fox, with Fox being a cheerleader, because the Murdochs are cheerleaders for the neoliberal, neocon established order that exists that we have to shatter. I think President Trump has, right now, a mandate from the American people. And we’ve got to get on with it. I think you’ll start to see that.

Speaking of the McConnell wing of the G.O.P.: It was reported that Republican senators opposed the Matt Gaetz nomination. So there are clearly Republicans willing to push back on Trump a bit this time around. Are you worried they’re going to contest more of his nominees, like Pete Hegseth, and if so, how do you beat them? Is it recess appointments?

Let’s be blunt, Peter. They got a big scalp with Gaetz, for all his imperfections. But this is what I say about Trump: Trump is a blunt force instrument that’s giving the system blunt force trauma. This is the only way you’re going to do it. By playing traditional politics, nothing’s going to change. The American people are demanding change.

They can’t totally articulate it, but they want change and they want fundamental change. Any system that spends $6.5 trillion and has as many vested interests that come with that money, when you have five of the seven richest counties in the country encircling the imperial capital, that’s politics as usual. It’s not going to change anything. This is why the debt keeps increasing, the spending keeps increasing. People think we’re inexorably just drawn to this catastrophe. We’re not. But the system needs blunt force trauma.

I think you put the Senate on notice. If you try to stop the Trump agenda, and you try to do that in confirmation hearings, well, look at Jeff Clark and the Center for Renewing America. We have an alternative. We may need to go to the Supreme Court. They’ve looked at the Constitution. If the House goes into recess, the president’s the tiebreaker, the executive branch is the tiebreaker, according to the Constitution. He can force the Senate to go into recess. If we have to do it, you do recess appointments. In particular for people like Bobby Kennedy. If you have to do it, you have to do it.

But you put the Senate on notice, by saying, Look, we have a mandate from people to implement and execute on this agenda. We’re all about advice and consent. We want to hear your advice, but we need your consent. But if you fail to give it, you’re signing your political death warrant.

My point is like Frankie Pentangeli says in The Godfather, “Let’s hit them now while we’re strong.” I don’t believe in playing nice. I think the only thing these people understand in the Senate is smash mouth. I give credit to Mitch McConnell. We ran him out there as a leader after the Ukraine vote last year, but John Thune is his creation. We lost that battle [for Senate Majority Leader], and then we lost Gaetz. So it’s pretty obvious that McConnell has staying power, and we have to confront that. We have to confront it now, because they’re not going to agree with President Trump’s program going forward. Trust me.

Obviously, you’ve been a big Trump guy for a long time, but how much of this election do you think is Trump’s success versus how much Democrats failed to sell themselves?

Peter, here’s the thing: Populism is the wave of the future. Finally, after over a decade—15 years since the Tea Party—populism on the right is getting traction against the established order of the Republican Party. But if you look at the Democratic Party—Ro Khanna, Sherrod Brown, John Fetterman— you have some tremendous voices there that are very powerful on economic nationalism and populism. Khanna and Fetterman are the future of the Democratic Party. Those guys get it. They really get it. Khanna gets it at a very deep level. But they’re kind of back-benchers. The Democrats have allowed a credentialed class to take over, with the donors funding the credentialed class.

If you just watch MSNBC every night—which we do, we monitor it very closely at the War Room—it’s what I call Seinfeld politics. It’s really about nothing. I mean, President Trump won this, but the Democrat Party got essentially rejected. I think it’s pretty striking that the civil war we’ve had against the Mitch McConnells and Paul Ryans, that’s been going on since really the Tea Party, is now starting to culminate with big victories. The Democrats are going to have a decade in the wilderness until they sort themselves out.

They have been putting off a civil war for 10 years, and they’re paying the price for it now. Peter, you’ve seen what we have been doing since the beginning, the shit we have been through against the establishment. The Democrats have been putting it off. Bernie Sanders has been playing patty cake with everybody. These guys have got years of work before they’re ready to field a team again. They need to get in there with trenching tools. If the Ro Khannas and the Fettermans and the Sherrod Browns get traction and organize, you’ll see a rise of a populist center-left. They’ll be able to compete with us. If not, they’re going to spend a lot more time. What we’re looking at is a 1932 type of realignment.

Neoliberalism, and the neocon movement, started with the rise of the American empire. That happened in 1932, when unfettered capitalism—the robber baron era—crashed with the stock market crash. F.D.R. came in and essentially saved capitalism with the regulatory apparatus. That regulatory apparatus metastasized into the administrative state, and then the deep state. The Democrats are in a tough position. Smart people like Alex Wagner and Chris Hayes talk about this every night on MSNBC—that the Democrats are in the unenviable position of defending the system, of defending the administration of the deep state. It’s not a good place for Democrats to be. They have naturally been anti-big business, anti-government overreach, anti-government secrecy, and really the American empire. They now find themselves defending it.

Look, he’s a great pick. Obviously, we pushed him hard, because right now, with $36 trillion in debt and increasing, you need somebody who understands global capital markets. This guy understands them. President Trump’s program is going to be difficult to get through both houses of Congress—and then you have to execute on it.

I think Scott gets MAGA economics. I think he takes a sophisticated look at tariffs. Remember, Peter Navarro and I back the president 100 percent in the use of tariffs. We are protectionists, and we’re proud to be protectionists. We want to bring high-value jobs back to the United States. I think Scott adds sophistication, with Robert Lighthizer and others, to say, Hey, tariffs are powerful if they’re implemented, but they’re also powerful negotiating tools. People should not lose sight that to do the deportations in a humane way, we’re going to need to work through some economics with some of these countries to take these folks back. That’s the reality. Tariffs are going to be a big part of that. I think Scott looks at tariffs as a negotiating tool and Trump’s a great negotiator.

Tariffs are going to be quite strong because it’s going to be, Hey, we want to work together, but if you’re going to be recalcitrant, guess what? We’re going to put tariffs up and you’re not going to get access to the American market. All tariffs are about is the tolling fee to get access to the greatest consumer market in history. The tariff war against China, which I think will even be more intense, was to kind of break the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on taking high-value-added manufacturing jobs away from us. Tariffs are a central part of President Trump’s economic plan. The reason is bringing back high-value-added manufacturing jobs, that’s central to his program. With deportations, we should work with our friends and allies in the West. You are going to take your people back. But if you don’t get with the program? So we need to do it as some sort of mutual agreement, or we will block access to the American marketplace until you agree to take your folks back.

By the way, remember we have, let’s say, 10 million people that are here under Biden’s watch. There’s never been a mass deportation program of 10 million people in human history.

Not in peacetime!

Well, we’re going to do it because we have to do it. If you don’t do it, the African American and Hispanic working class is never going to be able to thrive. You can’t throw the five or six or seven or eight million low-skilled workers against them. You’re just going to keep wages down forever. You can’t do it. To save the Black and Hispanic working class, deportations have to take place. Now, you’re going to have to work in conjunction with the home countries. That’s just a fact, you just can’t put people on planes and put them in the air and send them back to Central America.

Those relationships can be built. I’ve been a big advocate of having a summit meeting in the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term, in McAllen, Texas, the capital of the Rio Grande Valley. We have the frontline nations of Central America and Mexico, even have Brazil and a couple other countries in Latin America. The reason is that a lot of these people, let’s take Haiti for example, they’re not coming directly from Haiti. They’re going through Brazil or Chile or Peru for a number of years. Then they come in. So we have to get some working agreements with our friends and allies in the western hemisphere. We need to work that through.

Part II of this conversation will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Best & The Brightest.