Steve Bannon, right-wing media personality and former White House chief strategist under the Trump administration, trashed an event between former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, calling it "meaningless" on social media on Thursday.
Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP presidential nominee, and Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who is a staunch ally to the former president, will meet at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on Friday for an event on election integrity.
Bannon criticized the upcoming event, writing on Gettr, a conservative social media site, on Thursday night: "Johnson is a gutless hack, and a performative 'election integrity' event @ MAL is meaningless if we are serious about not folding to the Deep State..."
Meanwhile, Bannon told Newsweek via telephone on Friday that the House speaker "should have been on Capitol hill today fighting to demand that the deep state has to have a warrant before they go after the American people. Not down to Mar-a-Lago. So, he can run, but he can't hide."
Bannon was referring to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to collect electronic communications of non-American citizens located outside of the United States without a warrant for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence. The House voted 273-147 to renew the law on Friday. A total of 126 Republicans and 147 Democrats supported the legislation.
The bill received pushback with 19 far-right Republicans blocking debate on the legislation Wednesday. However, Johnson managed to somewhat smooth things over on Thursday by agreeing to change the reauthorization period from five to two years.
Meanwhile, Trump posted "KILL FISA" on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Wednesday.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's spokesman and Johnson's office via email for comment.
Johnson has recently been under fire from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and Trump ally.
Last month, Greene filed a motion in the House to vacate Johnson from his seat as House speaker after bashing his $1.2 trillion spending bill to fund major government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through the rest of the 2024 fiscal year.
The congresswoman has also criticized Johnson over plans for the House to take up the issue of providing more aid funding to Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia and has alleged, without providing any evidence, that the House speaker might be being "blackmailed" because his views have supposedly changed so much.
Johnson took over as speaker last October after then-Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, was ousted in an effort by his fellow GOP House members.
When asked by Newsweek if he supports Greene's motion to vacate, Bannon, who is also against additional Ukraine funding, said: "A hundred percent. Johnson has got to go."
He added: "We need to get this right for the American people. We can take some turbulence. There's only going to be more turbulence of this incompetent hack is allowed to be the speaker."
Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Accountability Project, a group of Republicans and conservatives determined to keep Trump out of office, and the publisher of The Bulwark, shared her take on the Johnson-Greene feud on CNN This Morning with Kasie Hunt on Friday morning.
"Mike Johnson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are kind of, they're in a fight with each other and they're running to the ref, Donald Trump, they're running to the big guy to see who he'll back in this dispute over passing a bill to fund Ukraine," Longwell told Hunt.
She continued: "And Marjorie Taylor Greene, she wants to be like Trump's right-hand person just like Kevin McCarthy. She's part of the new MAGA [Make America Great Again] establishment. But Mike Johnson also wants to be chief of the MAGA establishment. He's the speaker of the House, he wants to be able to have Trump back him against Marjorie Taylor Greene who wants to file a motion to vacate if he goes ahead and funds Ukraine.
"And so, this is actually to me sort of interesting from a Trump perspective like is he gonna back them both, is he gonna pick a favorite—what's he gonna do?"
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