Steve Bannon had some rare kind words for the Democrats who beat his chosen candidate, Roy Moore, in the tumultuous Alabama Senate race.
‘The Democrats hustled, and people have got to understand: You don’t turn out, they’re going to turn out,” he said on Breitbart radio Wednesday morning. “Hat tip to these guys at the DNC. They slipped in here under the radar scope and did a great ground game. Of all the other convergence of forces … just out-hustling and outworking people is a big one.”
Despite his compliment, Democrats didn’t have many warm and fuzzy feelings for Bannon. Neither did some Republicans.
Bannon has pledged to oust establishment Republicans since his exit as a White House adviser and strategist over the summer.
In the September’s Republican primary election, Bannon helped Moore beat Luther Strange, who was appointed to fill Jeff Sessions’ Alabama Senate seat when he became President Trump’s attorney general.
Bannon, an insurgent force on the right, caught plenty of blame for Moore’s general election loss Tuesday night to Doug Jones, who became the first Democrat to win an Alabama Senate seat since 1992.
The man who won that seat was Sen. Richard Shelby, who switched parties to become a Republican soon after. He announced over the weekend that he wouldn’t vote for Moore, and would instead write in another Republican.
Bannon stuck by Moore despite accusations from nine women that he made sexual advances on them in the 1970s when they were under 18 and he was in his 30s. One of the women was 14 at the time. Moore denied ever meeting any of them.
President Trump, who supported Strange in the primary, switched his support to Moore, saying he needed a Republican vote in the Senate. But he tried to distance himself from Moore the morning after his loss.
If Trump succeeds, that will leave Bannon holding the bag.
“Bannon Busted” blared Matt Drudge.
“He looks like some disheveled drunk who wandered onto the national stage,” GOP Rep. Pete King told Chris Cuomo on CNN.
As of this writing, no high-profile Democrats have come forward to thank Bannon for his kind words about their hustle.