Steve Bannon is back on YouTube
Written by Justin Horowitz
Published
Updated
Update (1/28/21): This video has been removed from YouTube following this report from Media Matters. However, Bannon continues to appear in videos on this YouTube channel, pushing debunked claims about Chinese interference in the 2020 election during a January 27 interview and denouncing American politicians who “have turned into running dogs of the Chinese Communist Party.” The host claimed another interview with Bannon will take place next Wednesday, February 3.
After his podcast was suspended from YouTube on January 8, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is back on the platform, spreading the same conspiracy theories and lies that originally got him banned.
Bannon sat down for a virtual interview with the Himalaya London Club UK, one of a number of organizations led and operated by Bannon’s billionaire benefactor Guo Wengui. The interview was livestreamed on Guo’s video platform GTV and subsequently uploaded to the group’s YouTube channel.
During the interview, Bannon pushed some of the same misinformation and conspiracy theories from War Room: Pandemic that violated YouTube’s community guidelines on election and COVID-19 medical misinformation.
Within the first minute of the interview, Bannon falsely claimed, “We think that this election — President Trump won,” and hyped the upcoming impeachment trial as an opportunity to “present his case on how this election was stolen.”
Bannon also pushed lies about mail-in voting. He claimed that the pandemic “allowed the Democrats to use the virus as a pretext for mail-in votes. The mail-in voting is still the central problem we had in both Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia” and “the mail-in vote was the principal part of the problem.” Bannon then promoted former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s baseless report on alleged election fraud.
During Bannon’s appearance he was questioned by multiple interviewers. One falsely suggested that COVID-19 vaccines have killed “50 Americans and 29 Norwegians” and endorsed hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug touted as a silver bullet for COVID by right-wing media despite evidence it is not effective and possibly dangerous.
Bannon agreed, alleging, “I strongly believe that hydroxychloroquine, it can be used as a therapeutic, and I think the evidence is out there,” and he added, “Right now if you say that -- if you’re up on YouTube or Twitter, they will immediately put a warning that you’re giving out fake news.”