Steve Bannon: I taught cellmates how the ‘system’ really works in prison… and left with a new plan and 12lbs lighter

Steve Bannon has spent the morning broadcasting to supporters and answering reporters’ questions with one key message: prison didn’t break him; it made him stronger.

But after plopping down on a couch in the 5,000-square-foot hotel suite that served as Bannon’s campaign headquarters that day, he admitted that might not have been the case.

The lowest point was going through a thick steel door and realizing this was real.

‘They put the key in a massive steel door. They open the steel door and you walk in and say, “Wow, this is a cell block,” he said Tuesday, describing the low point of his four months.

“But I said, ‘Hey, I did it when I was 20 in the Navy. I’ll do it here.’

‘And that turned out not to be such a problem. I just had to focus and make something positive out of it.”

Bannon spoke to Dailymail.com hours after leaving federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.

He served four months for contempt of Congress. He says the accusations are politically motivated and part of an attempt to silence him in the run-up to Tuesday’s elections.

Now he’s out. And he says he’s full of fresh ideas and plans for the “politics of money,” after the world leaves behind the “politics of race” and the “politics of gender.”

He has advice for Trump on how to win the election and harsh words for his enemies.

But in an exclusive interview, he also talked about what he learned in prison, his weight-loss regimen and how he stayed informed during one of the most exciting elections in history.

But first he can’t resist taking a dig at a high-profile enemy as he chronicles life behind bars.

‘This is not a camp. It’s not where Michael Cohen was going,” he said. ‘This is a prison. If you saw the photo last night when I walked out, I think it has barbed wire and fencing on it.

‘It’s a prison. I was in a cell block. I was in a cell, a very small cell.’

Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and star witness against him, served part of a three-year sentence for lying to Congress and tax fraud at the Otisville Federal Correctional Institute (often named among the top ten most comfortable prisons) and shared in its luxuries apartment due to the COVID pandemic.

Bannon said he was lucky to be housed in a veterans unit, but still had to maintain a “maniacal focus” for his own safety.

He has advice for Trump on how to win the election and harsh words for his enemies. But in an exclusive interview, he also talked about what he learned in prison, his weight loss diet and how he stayed informed during one of the toughest elections in history.

His early life as a naval officer aboard a destroyer helped prepare him for this experience.

“You live in a very tight neighborhood, and you’re cooped up there,” he said.

Violence and drugs, especially synthetic marijuana K2, were the order of the day.

“You have to be very focused,” he said. “But if you’re focused and you come up with some kind of plan, … my plan was to listen, learn and observe, then you can make the time pass quickly.”

Bannon was released just after 3 a.m. Tuesday and traveled to New York, where he was soon back behind the microphone on his “War Room” show.

He was dressed in the signature style, with two black shirts layered on top of each other and a Barbour wax jacket over the top, despite being indoors.

His face was grimmer than usual, the result of a prison diet and time on the training ground. At one point he had lost 20 pounds, he said, although the loss had probably leveled out at around 12 pounds.

Bannon held a press conference in the 5,000-square-foot hotel suite that served as his base after his release

It was interrupted by Robbie Roadsteamer: ‘When’s the next uprising?’

Bannon served his time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut

Combined with the early start, he seemed shattered by his first day of freedom in four months.

He spoke to Dailymail.com after wrapping up a chaotic press conference. Supporters cheered his arrival and applauded the answers.

At times he was pressed by an anti-Trump Republican writer before a man calling himself Robbie Roadsteamer, wearing a red suit, stood up and interrupted the proceedings.

“When is the next uprising and can we storm Burger King,” he asked, before being marched out by a security guard.

Bannon continued to look quizzical until he could resume his attack on Trump’s election opponent Kamala Harris. He ridiculed her “politics of joy” and said she had failed to translate it into a government programme

“She’s failing to connect with minority, Hispanic and African-American men,” he said.

“They understand what the scam is. They understand that this administration has deliberately allowed in millions of illegal aliens to drive down labor costs.”

He explained to DailyMail.com how he had used his spare time to research the views of prisoners.

Bannon said he kept abreast of the news through the Daily Mail during his captivity

‘I “I met some fascinating people, especially young African Americans,” he said.

“I taught a civics and government course there, and I met some fantastic young people there.”

Every Tuesday afternoon, a few dozen inmates filed into a simple classroom as Bannon turned his “War Room” style into lessons on how the world worked, complete with whiteboard and random quizzes.

“What we’re trying to do in the ‘War Room’ is reach a working-class audience and really introduce them to what you would see on Bloomberg TV or reading the Wall Street Journal,” he said.

It included economics, capital markets and macroeconomics. How deficits lead to $36 trillion in debt and the interest payments that follow.

Listeners to his show will know how he connects the dots from the big numbers to the small numbers in America’s wallets.

“I tie it all together, and they can’t get enough of it,” he said. ‘People want to learn how the system works. They want to understand how the system works because right now the news media is doing everything they can to, quite frankly, obscure how it works.”

Bannon was Trump’s chief strategist in the White House before losing a power struggle with other advisers to the president

Thousands of Trump supporters marched on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, as part of an effort to overturn the election results

The result is an oligarchy of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, in cahoots with the political class in Washington, D.C.

“This is what the class was about, to tie it back to the Constitution, to tie it back to the Declaration of Independence, to tie it back to the foundational documents of our great Republic,” he said.

Participants earned certificates signed by Bannon.

He also spent time monitoring the news and supervising the production of “War Room” via email, even though broader computer use was impossible.

“Well, you don’t have access to the internet, but I have staff who give me a rundown of news sites every day, including the Daily Mail,” he said.

From prison, he was able to keep a series of guest presenters focused on the basics of the MAGA movement.

“So the content, I think, remained pretty much the same,” he said

But he said there was no escaping the fact that it was a difficult place

“These are dangerous, difficult places, and that’s one of the reasons I feel empowered,” he said.

‘I came out more focused, in better shape, less weight and, honestly, involved with people. I listened, observed and learned.’