Bannon and Others on the Right Celebrate European Parliament Elections


Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump who has been ordered to surrender by July 1 to begin serving a prison sentence, celebrated the performance of far-right candidates in the recent European Parliament elections.

Speaking on his “War Room” podcast on Monday, Mr. Bannon proclaimed that “Europe’s on fire with the right,” pointing to strong results for right-wing parties and candidates in France, Germany, Belgium and Ireland.

Other influential figures on the right, including Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate, and Matt Schlapp, the chairman of one of the largest conservative advocacy groups in the United States, praised far-right leaders in Europe on Monday for making serious gains in the elections, and they sought to tie the results to domestic politics.

A far-right wave did not fully materialize, as was feared by many in the European political establishment, and voters largely backed centrists in the parliamentary elections.

“We don’t know what will happen with these elections,” Mr. Schlapp wrote on social media, though he also told Newsmax that “we do know that in all these countries, the center-right party has to try to make allegiances with these new populist parties.” Mr. Schlapp described those parties as “MAGA-type” parties.

Mr. Bannon conceded that voters were not universally enthusiastic about right-of-center movements, citing outcomes in Spain, Italy and Sweden, but he nonetheless highlighted the performance of far-right parties in countries like France and Germany and suggested that the results were a bellwether of the electoral mood in the United States.

“This is laying a predicate for the election like Brexit did” in 2015, Mr. Bannon said, implying that President Biden would lose in November.



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