Gettin’ the Bannon Back Together

From Jail to the Trail

Most of Trumpworld is laser-focused on Nov. 5. But one MAGA mainstay has had his eye on a different date: Oct. 29.

That’s when one of Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters, Steve Bannon, gets out of prison after serving four months for contempt of Congress.

Bannon is champing at the bit to reconnect with his old pals and get back to his routine of podcasting, politicking and Trump-promoting, NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery reports. Plus, people around Bannon say he’s ready to seek revenge.

“Expect to see a newly invigorated Stephen K. Bannon, more intent than ever to take his fight to the administrative state,” Raheem Kassam, the former London editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, told NOTUS.

“I would not be surprised to see him immediately hitting the campaign trail, as well as hosting his ‘War Room’ show for four hours each day. Every second will count. Every word will matter,” Kassam continued, noting he’s been in touch with Bannon “almost every day.”

Bannon has had months in a suburban Connecticut facility to stew on his post-prison plans. But according to correspondence with Bannon’s fellow inmates, the Trump confidant made the most of his stay.

Fred Carrasco Jr., who is serving more than a decade behind bars for armed drug trafficking, told Jose, “Your boy (B) is in the white car, sits with the Italians, the godfather type,” referencing the racial divide in the prison.

Bannon also regularly fields questions about politics. Some ask whether Trump actually cheated in the election. Others wonder about Trump’s ties to Russia. Carrasco said that Bannon had been questioned about “what sort of classified documents he has had the privilege to read” — and even fielded a question on whether “the government” killed JFK.

Read the story here.

A Disturbing Rally in New York

It’s not just Bannon who is back for the end of this campaign. Madison Square Garden was Trumpalooza on Sunday, with many of Trumpworld names from campaigns past slated to speak, including the New Yorker with the longest and strangest story in Trump’s orbit: Rudy Giuliani.

The scene was celebratory, NOTUS’ Reese Gorman reports, with 20,000 people in attendance. But the rhetoric from the invited guests onstage was intensely dark. A comedian said Latinos “love making babies,” and they “don’t pull out.” (“They come inside, just like they did to our country,” was the punch line there) and called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” A radio host said “the f***ing illegals” get “whatever they want.” A Trump childhood friend called Kamala Harris the “Antichrist,” which Reese notes got huge applause from the crowd.

Top Trump adviser Jason Miller told reporters before the rally that the MSG event was meant to debut a closing argument of “Kamala Harris broke it, President Trump will fix it.” Apparently, the speakers didn’t get that memo, and the campaign found itself again on the defensive before Trump even took the stage.

Read Reese’s coverage here.

Front Page

• Vulnerable Republicans Swear a Personhood Bill Isn’t an Abortion Ban: Some House Republicans say because the word “abortion” is not in the bill granting embryos and fetuses 14th Amendment rights, it is not a ban. The bill’s lead sponsor says it is.
• Trump Brought a Meandering ‘Weave’ to a Three-Hour Joe Rogan Experience: Trump brought his major issues to one of the world’s largest audiences.
• Kamala Harris Went to Texas to Win Voters Everywhere Else: Harris went to the home of some of the strictest abortion bans in the country to tell voters in swing states they could be next if Trump wins.
• Michelle Obama Returns to Ask: Why Is Kamala Harris Being Held to a Different Standard?: Obama shared her fears in Michigan that Americans were looking past Trump’s faults.
• Florida Democrats Say Their Hopes Hinge on Nonparty Voters and Republicans: Republicans are outpacing Democrats 2-to-1 in Florida’s early voting.
• Democrats Hope This New Congressional District Will Help Them Win the House: Alabama’s overlooked 2nd Congressional District could play an outsize role in determining who wins control of the chamber.

Quotable: RF ‘Chaos’

When NOTUS’ Margaret Manto began her reporting on food safety enforcement, she thought RFK Jr. might want to comment. He is, after all, the Trump surrogate most concerned with “making America healthy again.”

But when she reached out to RFK’s team via their general inquiries number, a campaign volunteer told her the camp was “just chaos.”

The volunteer declined to pass on a message because “there’s nobody to pass it on to.”

Read the story here.

Young Voters Only Know the Party of Trump

The students of Penn State University haven’t known a political life that didn’t revolve around Trump or an election that hasn’t been billed as the most important of their lifetime.

For this generation, high-stakes elections and Trump are the norm. And for the first time, they’re now eligible to vote.

“I mean, he’s run in three elections now, that’s over half my life,” Michael Bickruy, a junior studying material engineering, told us at Trump’s campus rally this weekend. “Back then, Trump was just the guy on TV to me, at that point, I didn’t know much about him.”

For all the talk of Trump fatigue and minds made up on the former president, that’s not the case for many of the young male voters Trump is aggressively courting in the final stretch.

“I also wasn’t too into it,” said Liam Spellacy, a senior studying finance, who only recently decided he’d be voting for Trump. “Like, if I don’t know a ton right now, I wasn’t really, like, super informed as a middle schooler, either.”

—Katherine Swartz

Opening Round of the Democratic Blame Game

No one actually knows what will happen in the election, but that has never stopped Democrats from carefully laying the blame for a bad outcome at the feet of other Democrats before, and it’s not stopping them now.

In the past few days, we have seen Bernie Sanders warn that Democrats need to “start talking more to the needs of working-class people,” Third Way warn that the Democratic nominee is underperforming with moderates, Arab Americans warn that the blame shouldn’t fall on them and Martin Luther King III say the same thing about Black men.

Meanwhile, Republicans in North Carolina are starting to feel bullish about their chances there, and Democrats are searching for every last vote in the state they can find. But as NOTUS’ Anna Kramer reports, Hurricane Helene scrambled the GOTV operation in the Democratic stronghold of western North Carolina, leaving volunteers working to make up for lost time.

“For us and for North Carolina, the hurricane was our October surprise,” said a person familiar with the Harris campaign.

—Evan McMorris-Santoro

Week Ahead

It’s a packed week in the battleground states.

• Harris heads to Michigan on Monday and, on Wednesday, will blitz through North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin before heading to Nevada and Arizona on Thursday.
• Harris will also deliver what her campaign is calling her “major closing argument address” in Washington on the Ellipse on Tuesday.
• Trump will hold a rally in Atlanta today, in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Wisconsin on Wednesday and Nevada on Thursday.
• And not battleground states, but Trump will hold rallies in New Mexico on Thursday and Virginia on Saturday.

Not Us

We know NOTUS reporters can’t cover it all. Here’s some other great hits by … not us.

• The ‘Black insurrectionist’ was actually white. The deception did not stop there by the AP’s Brian Slodysko
• ‘It’s almost like sign warfare’: In a heated presidential race, political lawn signs are a flash point in Philadelphia’s collar counties by Beatrice Forman at The Philadelphia Inquirer.
• Ohio GOP candidate in key Senate race uses anti-recording tech to combat ‘trackers’ by Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger

Be Social

Debbie Dingell plays some pong.

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