President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has called for a GOP senator to be arrested.
Bannon said Senator Lindsey Graham, who visited Ukraine over the weekend with Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, is “stirring it up” over there, “this is why I say he should be arrested” for getting involved in foreign affairs.
“Either cut his passport off so he can never come back to the country, or arrest him,” Bannon told Eric Bolling during their show handoff on Real America’s Voice.
“What the hell is Lindsey Graham doing in Ukraine right now?” Bolling had asked. “There’s absolutely zero reason for him to be there. He’s counterproductive, unless he’s lining his pockets.”
Bannon accused Graham, who met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday, of working behind President Trump’s back.
“Lindsey Graham’s over there saying, ‘Hey, forget Trump. I got the House and the Senate. We’re going to pass it. You’re going to see something in a couple of days,’” Bannon said.
Graham is spearheading a bipartisan push to sanction Russia and told a press conference in Ukraine on Friday that he expects the Senate will start moving on the sanctions bill “next week.”
“There are House members that are ready to move in the House and you will see congressional action,” Graham said.
Trump has not yet endorsed the sanctions bill, which includes plans for 500 percent tariffs on any state that purchases energy products from Russia.
Bannon branded Graham’s promise “misleading” and said his words risked Ukrainians believing “that we’re all in on this.”
“Ukrainian people, particularly I know the folks that watch this show and do clips in the Kyiv Post, that’s over us every day, understand the American people don’t support this, and we’re not gonna be there. We want to cut all the money off."
Bannon also claimed that “the American people and the Russian people have no problem,” adding that “we don’t want to fight each other.”
On Monday, Bannon made similar comments on his “War Room” podcast called on the White House “to condemn this immediately and pull all support and tell Lindsey Graham to come home or we are going to put you under arrest when you come home. You’re stirring it up.”
Graham did not immediately responds to requests for comment from The Daily Beast.
The Senate returned on Monday to focus on Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”, a domestic spending bill that passed the House of Representatives after a mammoth session on May 22.
Trump had boasted on the campaign trail that he would end Russia’s war in Ukraine within a single day after taking office but more recently the Republican leader has sought to distance himself—and the U.S.—from the conflict.
Last week, Trump shocked European leaders when he admitted that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not ready to end his war in Ukraine because he believes he is winning, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Trump then told reporters the conflict “is not my war.”
“This is not a war that would have happened if I were president. Something’s going to happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away, and they’re going to have to keep going again,” he said.
“This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation. But because the past administration felt very strongly that we should be involved, we got involved much more than Europe did in terms of the money and all of the things that we gave.”
