Prior to Alabama's Senate runoff on Tuesday, which pits Sen. Luther Strange against Roy Moore, Steve Bannon made an appearance at a rally Monday to throw his support behind the far-right challenger.
The election has been seen as a referendum on GOP leaders, and Bannon earnestly set the stage as such Monday night, Politico reported.
“They think you’re a pack of morons, they think you’re nothing but rubes,” Bannon told the right-wing Alabaman crowd
“For Mitch McConnell and Ward Baker and Karl Rove and Steven Law — all the instruments that tried to destroy Judge Moore and his family — your day of reckoning is coming,” Bannon said, referring to the Republicans who backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange. “But more important, for the donors who put up the money and the corporatists that put up the money, your day of reckoning is coming, too.”
With polls projecting Moore to win on Tuesday, the election could prove to be damaging for Republicans in Washington. Both Moore and Bannon have accused Strange of being owned by the Senate majority leader.
To prove his Alabaman bona fides, Moore pulled out a handgun during the campaign rally while saying: "I believe in the Second Amendment."
Moore, an ultra conservative, was suspended from his position as chief justice of the Alabaman supreme court for defying orders to honor same-sex marriage licenses. Moore was also removed from the bench in 2003 for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama supreme court building.
President Donald Trump curiously snubbed Bannon, his former campaign chairman, by backing Strange, despite Moore being the type of insurgent candidate that dovetails with the president's politics. Trump showed he was desperate following the rally Monday, tweeting that Strange would never let Alabamans down.
Big election tomorrow in the Great State of Alabama. Vote for Senator Luther Strange, tough on crime & border - will never let you down!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 26, 2017
But even though Bannon and Trump are backing two different candidates, that doesn't mean their relationship is any more strained.
“We did not come here to defy Donald Trump," Bannon said. "We came here to praise and honor him.”
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