(NewsNation) — Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said Friday that President Donald Trump supports raising taxes on the wealthy while fighting for working-class tax cuts, directly contradicting Republican tax policy priorities.
In an interview on NewsNation’s “CUOMO” following a Time magazine profile of Trump, Bannon said Trump favors increasing taxes on Americans earning over $1 million.
“In Time magazine, there’s a buried lead. He said, ‘Hey, I actually support it,'” Bannon said, referring to raising the upper tax bracket to 40%. “This is being fought behind closed doors right now.”
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Bannon, who hosts “War Room,” repeatedly said Trump has “remade the Republican Party into a working-class and middle-class party” and supports eliminating taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits.
“President Trump, I strongly I believe will do it. … Politically, it’s going to help him in his reelect[ion] in 2028,” Bannon said.
The former strategist also revealed merchandise supporting a potential Trump 2028 presidential campaign despite constitutional term limits.
When pressed on this apparent contradiction, Bannon said, “We have many different alternatives to make sure President Trump, on the afternoon of January 20, 2029, is the president of the United States.”
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Bannon argued that America’s economic struggles stem from the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, blaming “sociopathic overlords on Wall Street” and “global corporatists.” He criticized the service economy as “nothing more than a gig economy” where workers lack benefits and retirement security.
“The math only works out if you actually increase taxes on the wealthy,” Bannon said, adding that implementing this policy would “eviscerate the Democratic Party.”
Trump, who was inaugurated for his second term in January, has not officially confirmed plans to seek a third term, which would require constitutional changes.
Trump: I ‘love the concept’ of millionaire tax hike, but ‘may not be acceptable to the public’
Trump, in an interview published Friday, said he loves the “concept” of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for some of his policy proposals in a sweeping piece of legislation but acknowledged it may not be “acceptable to the public.”
Trump sat down on Tuesday for an interview with Time magazine, centered on his first 100 days in office, and was asked about the idea floated by some Republicans to raise taxes on millionaires to offset the cost of extending tax cuts, as well as adding the new cuts the president proposed during the campaign.
His comments were made one day before Trump warned the concept of a higher tax on millionaires would be “disruptive.”
“It doesn’t make that much difference, and yet, I could just see somebody trying to bring that up as a subject, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, he raised taxes.’ Well, I wouldn’t be, really, you know, in the true sense, I wouldn’t. I’d be raising them on wealthy to take care of middle class,” Trump told Time.
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“And that’s — I love that. I actually love the concept, but I don’t want it to be used against me politically, because I’ve seen people lose elections for less, especially with the fake news,” he added.
Trump told reporters Wednesday that a tax increase on millionaires “would be very disruptive, because a lot of the millionaires would leave the country.”
“Now with transportation so quick and so easy, they leave countries,” he added at the time.
Republicans have been kicking around the idea of a roughly 40% top tax bracket on income above $1 million amid talks about the sweeping reconciliation package GOP lawmakers are crafting. The move would be a break with GOP orthodoxy, and not everyone in the party is on board.
Raising the top marginal tax rate to 39.6% from its current level of 37% amounts to almost the same thing as reverting to the pre-2017 tax code — a rate the code would return to at the end of the year if Republicans do not pass an extension of Trump’s previous tax cuts.
The top rate of 37% that’s currently in place applies to households making at least $609,351.
NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.
