Bannon says Trump will win 2020 with 400 Electoral College votes


Ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon spoke at the annual Values Voter Summit on Saturday, declaring his conviction that President Trump, who spoke at the summit Friday, will win a second term by a landslide in 2020.
"The populist, nationalist, conservative revolt that's going on, that drove Donald Trump to victory ... that will drive 15 candidates to victory in 2018" will continue unabated, Bannon argued. "I hate to break it Graydon Carter and the good folks at Vanity Fair," he continued, "but yes, President Trump is not only going to finish this term, he's going to win with 400 electoral votes in 2020."
The Vanity Fair reference was an allusion to the magazine's recent report, citing an unnamed source, that "Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term." Carter is Vanity Fair's outgoing editor.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A 400-vote win is not historically inconceivable: 14 presidential elections have seen the winner take 400 or more electoral votes. Ronald Reagan won with 525 electoral votes, the largest count ever, in 1984; and George Washington received all possible votes in both of his elections (though the total number of electors was much lower then because there were fewer states). However, such a win is deeply implausible if Trump's approval ratings remain in the mid-30s.
Watch an excerpt of Bannon's remarks below. Bonnie Kristian
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
How to create a healthy 'germier' home
Under The Radar Exposure to a broad range of microbes can enhance our immune system, especially during childhood
-
George Floyd: Did Black Lives Matter fail?
Feature The momentum for change fades as the Black Lives Matter Plaza is scrubbed clean
-
National debt: Why Congress no longer cares
Feature Rising interest rates, tariffs and Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill could sent the national debt soaring
-
Depleted FEMA struggling as hurricane season begins
speed read FEMA has lost a third of its workforce amid DOGE cuts enforced by President Donald Trump
-
White House tackles fake citations in MAHA report
speed read A federal government public health report spearheaded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was rife with false citations
-
Judge blocks push to bar Harvard foreign students
speed read Judge Allison Burroughs sided with Harvard against the Trump administration's attempt to block the admittance of international students
-
Trump's trade war whipsawed by court rulings
Speed Read A series of court rulings over Trump's tariffs renders the future of US trade policy uncertain
-
Elon Musk departs Trump administration
speed read The former DOGE head says he is ending his government work to spend more time on his companies
-
Trump taps ex-personal lawyer for appeals court
speed read The president has nominated Emil Bove, his former criminal defense lawyer, to be a federal judge
-
US trade court nullifies Trump's biggest tariffs
speed read The US Court of International Trade says Trump exceeded his authority in imposing global tariffs
-
Trump pauses all new foreign student visas
speed read The State Department has stopped scheduling interviews with those seeking student visas in preparation for scrutiny of applicants' social media