Steve Bannon received audible laughs on Thursday when he told a crowd a proposition he supported banning “Sharia law” in Texas.

Bannon spoke with Semafor’s Ben Smith at the outlet’s World Economy Summit, where the former advisor to President Donald Trump spoke about his vision for the future of the MAGA movement. Smith asked Bannon about the dominant role of money in politics, asking him why he believed some parts of the Republican party were stifled by corporate interests.

“It doesn’t always get rolled,” said Bannon. “What I said last time, also, I said ‘Hey, you’re going to have two choices. You’re going to have Mangione or going to have what turned out to be Mamdani.’ Right, you’re going to have Mamdani’s populism on the left– I actually think it’s more of neo-Marxism and jihadism.”

A loud laugh from the crowd interrupted Bannon, who turned to the audience to clarify his remarks.

“But it’s very effective. What they’ve done is copy us on how to get out the vote,” he said.

Smith later asked Bannon about his comparison between alleged murderer Luigi Mangione and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. In his response, Bannon drew laughs from the crowd both intentionally and unintentionally, going so far as to question the audience over their response to a policy he supported.

Read their exchange below:

SMITH: When you know, when you said this a year ago– you’ve got a choice between Steve Bannon and Luigi Mangione– I think people were kind of like pretty freaked out.

BANNON: They didn’t know which one to choose, right?

[LAUGHTER]

SMITH: I think people in Washington right now are much less worried that that’s going to be the choice, and I wonder– and you said, you know, you say you think Republicans are going to take the House. That’s a very, you know, if you bet on that on Kalshi or Polymarket, you’re going to make a lot of money.

BANNON: Well, hold on, when you say that, look at John Cornyn. John Cornyn spent eighty million to a hundred million dollars, the same old playbook to destroy Ken Paxton. We went down to Texas with Geert
Wilders and Glenn Beck in January. We had a proposition on the ballot. We put a proposition on to galvanize people that was to prohibit Sharia law in the state of Texas.

[LAUGHTER]

BANNON: Also to have uh– that’s funny? Is that funny? Ok, fine. You’re going to see how funny it is. We’re prohibiting Sharia law in Texas, and we’re going to shut down a lot of this nonsense that’s going of on. The next thing we’re going to shut down is the H-1B visas. People in the United States, citizens of this country, are not prepared to have this. You may think it’s funny. Folks in Texas don’t think it’s funny. Folks in South Carolina don’t think it’s funny. And this is that seething anger right below the surface because the global elites, you sit there and mock these people like they don’t count, like African Americans don’t count, working class Hispanics don’t count, working class whites don’t count. That is the backbone of this country. And trust me, that is a latent political power that is being turned into a political power. So, no, we’re going to ban Sharia law in this country. We’ve already designated in Texas the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR as terrorist organizations, as has many in the Gulf emirates. So, no, this is very serious. We got two million votes on that proposition and galvanized the Paxton team to actually now lead I think Cornyn by 8% with no money. Cornyn spent eighty million to a hundred million dollars. Lindsey Graham right now, the globalist, is under 50% in South Carolina. So the populist movement, when you look at really victories we can have is more powerful than ever and is only going to get more powerful over time. So laugh all you want, but he who laughs last laughs best. And the people in this country are not going to tolerate what you stand for. You stand for the destruction of this country. The sovereignty of this nation. And you look for the destruction of American citizens. The system that is going to come in place is not simply America first, it’s American citizens first. American citizens have to have a better deal than any foreigners here. They have to have a better deal than any illegal alien, and that day is coming.

Watch above via C-SPAN.

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