“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory, right?” Bannon told associates. “He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner. He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.” Bannon added: “As it sits here today, at 10 or 11 o’clock, Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.' ” On the tape, Bannon acknowledged something emphasized in the Axios story and elsewhere: that it was quite possible that Trump would be ahead on election night because his voters were more likely to vote in person, and more Democratic-heavy mail ballots are often counted later — something dubbed the “red mirage.” He came out and admitted that Trump would seek to exploit this misleading setup.“More of our people vote early, that count; theirs vote in mail,” Bannon said. “And so they’re going to have a natural disadvantage. And Trump’s going to take advantage of that. That’s our strategy. He’s going to declare himself a winner.”
Bannon then predicted with apparent glee that this would set off a “firestorm.”
“We’re going to have antifa crazy, the media crazy, the courts are crazy,” he said. “And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting s--- out. ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’ ” Bannon added: “Also, if Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock at night, it’s gonna be even crazier.”
