Steve Bannon on Friday suggested President Donald Trump is echoing the Obama administration’s foreign policy agenda after the White House voiced support for pro-democracy protesters in Iran.
“Aren’t people teasing that Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton must’ve somehow gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve celebration, because the president coming out saying ‘Hey, we’re locked and loaded’, isn’t that straight out of the Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton playbook?” Bannon said on his WarRoom podcast, referencing former President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State and senior adviser, who advocated intervention to aid Libyan protesters in 2011.
Bannon was a senior adviser to Trump during his first term and has often been viewed as belonging to the more isolationist-leaning faction of the Make America Great Again camp, urging the president not to become involved in foreign conflicts or flex U.S. influence overseas.
Bannon’s public admonition to Trump over the weekend responded to the president’s message of support for anti-government demonstrators in Iran early Friday morning. And his statement marks rising tensions within MAGA centered on the role the United States should play globally, as non-interventionist players aligned with the GOP bicker with colleagues over whether the exercise of U.S. force and influence abroad marks a betrayal of Trump’s signature “America First” agenda.
Aside from Bannon, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) were among other GOP figures who cast Trump’s comments on Iranian protesters in a negative light.
“If Iran shots (sic) and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social on Friday.
Greene said that Trump “threatening war and sending in troops to Iran is everything we voted against in ‘24.”
“The focus should be on tax dollars here at home and defending our God given freedoms and rights,” she added in a post to X.
The anti-government protests in Iran were renewed over the weekend due to worsening economic conditions, with the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights saying that Iranian authorities had detained an estimated 29 demonstrators. At least seven people have been killed during the demonstrations, according to the Associated Press.
Similar to allies in the Middle East, particularly Israel, the U.S. has for years voiced concerns about Iran’s Islamic theocracy, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei holds supreme power.
Over the summer, Trump authorized targeted military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. During a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Trump threatened to renew bombing on Iran if evidence confirms the regime is rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.
On Friday, Bannon called the president’s move this year to bomb the country’s nuclear facilities “brilliant.” But he argued additional action by the U.S. against Iran would be capitulation to an “Israel First” agenda, with his claims coming as the GOP increasingly splits on support for the Jewish state.
“You have Netanyahu, all the guys that fought us on this, you know, the Israel First crowd, right? They wanted to bomb and decapitate, do that decapitation around July, which was a huge, massive mistake. Taking care of the nuclear program that President Trump did, that closed the 12-day war, was obviously brilliant. You know, logistically incredible,” Bannon said.
“But Tel Aviv, [commentator Mark] Levin, and Netanyahu now, they’re beating their chest. This is something we said was going to happen; you just have to let it play out. Let the Persian people [in Iran] take care of this. You can’t intrude on this thing. The more you intrude, the more the Mullahs are gonna dig in and say, ‘This is the great Satan that’s doing this,’ and you’re gonna have a bigger and longer mess than you can have. You’ve got the opportunity right now for the people in Persia to overthrow these demons, right? Let them get on with it. The Persians have been around a long time. They know how to do it, they did it in ’79,” he added.
Bannon’s comments come as his profile has garnered scrutiny recently due to newly released federal documents highlighting his connection to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
And they follow years of support for Trump.
The podcaster has been rumored to be considering a presidential bid in 2028, although Bannon has rebuffed such speculation, even pushing Trump to run for a third term in the next political cycle.
But the president’s former senior adviser this year has become one of many political figures within Republican circles who have begun to question the White House on terms of foreign policy.
Trump has spurned attacks on his involvement in global affairs, framing his emphasis on foreign policy in the Middle East, the Russia-Ukraine war, and other conflicts as a means to promote worldwide peace.
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“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier,” the president said during his inauguration speech in January 2025.
When pressed at the start of 2026 on his resolutions for the new year, Trump replied, “Peace. Peace on Earth.”
