Former White House adviser Steve Bannon warned that the 2026 midterm election cycle began with the Democratic victories on Tuesday.
“The midterms start tonight, and the warning signs are flashing,” read the caption for a post on the social platform X late Tuesday sharing video of Bannon on his podcast “War Room.”
“One of the biggest warning signs that we … need to get focused, is the two commissioners in Georgia that [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)] mentioned,” Bannon said on the podcast.
Democratic candidates Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard, who ran for Georgia Public Service commissioner in Districts 2 and 3, respectively, defeated GOP incumbents Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson.
Johnson and Hubbard became the first Democrats to win a Public Service Commission race since 2000, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Bannon said the results are “a warning that this thing is going to cut deeper.”
Speaking later with Politico, Bannon said that there “should be flashing red lights all over” for Republicans, noting New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D) victory.
“This is not [Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass (D),” Bannon told the news outlet. “This is not the guy in Chicago. You’re going to see a whole new group of Mamdanis in these major urban cities because they’re just flooded with immigrants, right? That’s where his vote came from, principally, and the progressive left, these kids have come up through the public school system. This is the flower of what the progressive left has delivered over the last 40 or 50 years. You saw it tonight and people, we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”
Democratic victories, particularly Mamdani’s, “should be a wake up call to the populist nationalist movement under President Trump, that these are very serious people, and they need to be addressed seriously, not dismissed, like so many of the pundits have done,” Bannon told Politico.
Bannon added that the economy “overall,” rather than affordability, will be the theme of the 2026 midterms, saying Republicans need to “put American citizens first.”
As for the president, Bannon said Trump should sue California over voters’ approval of Proposition 50, which redraws the state’s congressional maps, and have federal agencies investigate Mamdani’s citizenship.
“In addition, I think he ought to sit there and listen to Mamdani’s speech again, particularly the part where he challenged President Trump when he said, ‘Turn the volume up,'” Bannon continued. “President Trump’s got a great saying: ‘No games.’ And so if this guy wants to take on President Trump, so be it.”
Trump placed the blame for Republicans’ losses on the government shutdown, which entered its 36th day on Wednesday and became the longest shutdown in modern U.S. history.
“Last night, it was not expected to be a victory. It was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” Trump told Republican senators on Wednesday morning at the White House.
“I’m not sure it was good for anybody,” he added. “But we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot.”
