Former White Home aide Steve Bannon instructed Friday that the GOP may lose dozens of House seats within the 2026 midterms over the Trump administration’s handling of files associated to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are going to lose 10 p.c of the MAGA motion. If we lose 10 p.c of the MAGA motion proper now, we ain’t gonna … we’re gonna lose 40 seats in ’26,” he advised a dwell viewers throughout his “Struggle Room” podcast. “We’re gonna lose the president.”
That shift may set off an upset for Republican lawmakers who managed to obtain a majority in each chambers final November. Democrats have been plotting to retake Home and Senate seats within the subsequent election cycle after their sweeping 2024 losses — and turmoil over the Epstein case and backlash from sweeping cuts within the GOP’s recently-signed “large, lovely” spending package deal may supply the left some fodder for his or her 2026 messaging.
“They don’t even should steal it, which they’re gonna attempt to do in ’28, as a result of they’re gonna sit there they usually go … they’ve disheartened the toughest core populist nation that’s all the time been who governs us,” Bannon added.
His criticism comes after the Justice Division (DOJ) and FBI launched a memo on Monday concluding in its investigation that Epstein didn’t keep a client list and confirming that he died by suicide in his New York Metropolis jail cell in 2019.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi, who defended the findings throughout a Cupboard assembly on Tuesday, has faced backlash over the memo after she beforehand instructed she had a listing of names “sitting on her desk.”
Nonetheless, conspiracy theories have swirled round Epstein’s dying, together with some who’ve instructed he was murdered. A missing minute of footage in a video shared by the DOJ to again up its memo has additionally raised eyebrows.
President Trump and others within the administration have come to her protection, regardless of some calls to remove the attorney general from workplace and after information shops, including CNN and Semafor, reported FBI Director Dan Bongino was livid over the Epstein recordsdata controversy, contemplating resigning and did not show up to work on Friday.
“They f‑‑‑ed up as a result of they trusted her,” podcaster and former Fox Information host Megyn Kelly said of Bondi earlier this week.
Kelly added, “They have been humiliated as a result of she gave all of them these binders that learn ‘Epstein Information,’ , ‘Quantity 1,’ and there was nothing new in there. Nothing. There was no scoop. Why would she do this?”
Trump additionally brushed off questions relating to Epstein throughout Tuesday’s Cupboard assembly.
“Are you continue to speaking about Jeffrey Epstein? This man’s been talked about for years,” he advised a reporter who requested in regards to the disgraced financier.
“You’re asking — we have now Texas, we have now this, we have now all the issues. And are folks nonetheless speaking about this man? This creep? That’s unbelievable,” he added.
Epstein, who pleaded responsible in 2008 to sexual misconduct chargers, was federally indicted in 2019 over allegedly main a intercourse trafficking operation involving underage ladies from 2002 to 2005.