Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said on Saturday that when it comes to establishment Republicans not publicly distancing themselves from Sen. Bob Corker's criticism of the president "nobody can run and hide on this one." Bannon promises 'season of war' against McConnell, GOP establishment

Steve Bannon taunted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday and vowed to challenge any Senate Republican who doesn’t publicly condemn attacks on President Donald Trump.

“Yeah, Mitch, the donors are not happy. They’ve all left you. We’ve cut your oxygen off,” Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said during a speech to religious conservatives at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.


Referencing Shakespeare, Bannon compared McConnell to Julius Caesar, adding that lawmakers are wondering who will emerge as Brutus, the character who reluctantly joins in on the assassination of Caesar for the benefit of Rome.

Bannon, now the executive chairman of Breitbart News, bashed Senate Republicans by name for not publicly distancing themselves from Sen. Bob Corker’s criticism of Trump, reserving particular animus for Sens. John Barrasso (Wyo.), Dean Heller (Nev.) and Deb Fischer (Neb.).

“Nobody can run and hide on this one,” he said. “These folks are coming for you. The days of taking a few nice conservative votes and hiding are over.”

Corker, who announced last month that he will not seek reelection, has infuriated Trump and his allies in recent weeks with a series of public rebukes of the president, including raising fears that the president is setting the United States "on the path to World War III." Trump, in turn, has trashed Corker on Twitter.

But Bannon offered his Senate targets an opportunity to redeem themselves, in his eyes. “There’s time for a mea culpa,” Bannon declared. “You can come to a stick and condemn Sen. Corker and you can come to a stick, a microphone, and say I’m not going to vote for Mitch McConnell as majority leader.”

Bannon said Trump's decision to not continue funding Obamacare subsidies, announced Thursday, was designed to "blow up" the health care law and insurance marketplaces.

"Gonna blow those exchanges up, right?" Bannon said.

In a statement to reporters, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday night the administration concluded that Congress had not appropriated money for the subsidies and thus they were "unlawful payments" to "bail out insurance companies."

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Bannon has said he is plotting challenges to every incumbent Senate Republican up for reelection next year except Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas). He has called on the candidates he backs to oppose McConnell as majority leader and to support ending the Senate filibuster process.

“There’s a time and season for everything, and right now it’s a season of war against a GOP establishment,” Bannon said. “It’s no longer acceptable to come and pat you on the head and tell you everything is going to be fine just to get those people in office.”

Bannon also predicted Trump would win in a landslide in 2020, securing 400 Electoral College votes. Trump won 304 electoral votes in 2016.

He basked in Roy Moore’s victory in the Alabama Senate runoff last month. Bannon was one of Moore’s most vocal backers and he made the case that the win wasn’t the result of high-dollar fundraising, but of grass-roots organizing.

"Money doesn’t matter anymore,” he told attendees at the summit, adding later, “You took Mitch McConnell’s money and you took it from his biggest asset to his biggest liability. The more money they spend, the fewer votes they get.”

The former top White House official also appeared to hint that the administration was planning to soon declare that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization and move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, perhaps as soon as next week.

But a senior administration official disputed that such an announcement was in the works for next week.