• Former Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon called for having ‘4,000 shock troops’ prepared to ‘man the government’
  • He called for ‘landing teams’ that are ready ‘when President Trump wins in 2024 – or before’
  • Trump hasn’t said yet that he is running for president
  • He fired his transition team head Chris Christie days after the election
  • Gaetz said he would ‘go after this administrative state and we’re going to start at the Department of Justice and the FBI. That’s the job I want’ 

Longtime Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon is calling for gathering 4,000 ‘shock troops’ to steer the government in the event of a a 2nd term for Trump – using martial rhetoric to finally bridle forces he and Trump have compared to a swamp.

‘It’s fresh and it’s new. This is Trumpism in power. That’s when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that’s going to man the government. Get them ready now. Right?’ Bannon said on his own ‘War Room Pandemic’ podcast.

He appeared with Gaetz, and called for having the ‘shock troops’ ready to serve in a second Trump term.

‘We’re going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024 — or before,’ he said, without explanation.

Trump famously fired New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as head of his presidential transition days after the 2016 election and essentially ditched his transition playbook.

Landing teams are part of the official lexicon of transition officials who deploy across government agencies before a change in power. Biden officials fumed in 2020 that Trump Administration holdovers weren’t being fully cooperative in transition activities while Trump was refusing to concede and his allies were seeking to overturn the election results in court.

Gaetz, a Florida Republican Trump loyalist who appeared this week with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to complain about treatment of Jan. 6th defendants in D.C. prisons, talked up his own role in what could be a Republican Congress.

‘People didn’t like that Donald Trump raised his voice, but sometimes you gotta raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for her,’ Gaetz said, Insider  reported.

He described a scenario where it would be leading Biden Administration investigatory agencies who would be in the hot seat should Republicans take control of the House in 2022.

‘We’re going to operationalize the performance to go right after the people who are imposing the vaccine mandates, who are enriching themselves, and who are selling out the country,’ Gaetz said, during a week when Senate Republicans got behind a vote to try to defund vaccine mandates.

He vowed to ‘go after this administrative state and we’re going to start at the Department of Justice and the FBI. That’s the job I want. You know, send me over to the Judiciary Committee and their sphincters will tighten because they have been doing a lot of corrupt things over there,’ he said.

Bannon, who is facing a summer trial date after being indicted for contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6th Committee, has long railed against ‘swamp creatures’ in Washington – sometimes applying the term to Republicans and members of Trump’s own government.

Bannon appeared to be calling a play to send in a flood of political appointees to fill key posts – after Trump in his last months in office undertook efforts to convert numerous government positions from career to political ones.

Investigators have sometimes tried to use Bannon’s fiery rhetoric against him. Members of the select committee probing the Capitol riot have called out his comment on a September episode of his podcast, where he discussed what he told Trump before Jan. 6th.

‘We said and told President Trump. ‘you need to kill this administration in the crib early on just by its own incompetence and its illegitimacy,’ Bannon said.

Gaetz is reportedly being investigated by the Justice Department about whether he had a relationship with a 17-year-old girl. He has denied wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.