Steve Bannon and Mark Mitchell lay out why Republicans are losing an entire generation.
Watch the clip below.
This clip aired on WarRoom’s morning show on November 13, 2025. Transcript begins below (lightly edited for clarity; may contain minor errors).
STEVE BANNON (HOST): I don’t want to say the state, but your people are reaching out to you now, particularly to look through what happened at the big states in the mid Atlantic, New Jersey, in Virginia. And their question is, because people, you know, the Republic, particularly the operatives, they really want to understand what went on. And that’s a question they asked you, right? Because like, tell us what happened. That’s kind of the starting point, correct?
RICH BARIS (GUEST): It is. And my response first to them all the time is let me see what you did. Because honestly, what I see is a lot of waste of money. It is. There is an important part, I was listening to Andrew Kolvet on before as well. Anyone who’s done this, has been in this side of the game, Steve knows that one of the biggest problems in Republican politics is that the Republican donors don’t want to pay for the stuff that’s not sexy, the stuff you were just talking about with Andrew. It’s very difficult to raise that kind of money. They were in a state like both Virginia and New Jersey. They were grossly outspent. The organizations from the top to bottom, whether they’re congressmen or state members of the House of Delegates or a state legislature or whatever it may be, and they’re helping their candidates up and down the ballot any way they can, right. They get the Rolodex out and no matter what, you know, whether or not it gets them a seat at a party later, you know, Republican donors love to give to places like Heritage so they can put on their suits and go rub elbows and talk and be cool and think they’re important. That doesn’t win elections. That wins zero votes.
And Democrats get out their big checkbook and they say, what do you need. There’s job listings as far as the eye can see on Indeed and Craigslist to go out there and chase ballots. It’s almost an endless supply of money. And what I see every time I ask these people to open the books is a waste of money. I mean, that’s just like, I can break it down as simple as that.
STEVE BANNON (HOST): The consulting class, it’s called Points on the Buy. They convince the donors that it’s all about TV and that’s not how you get to lower propensity, lower information voters, which is kind of the key. This is in New York City. This is how President Trump has won three times. This is how we’re continuing to win if you focus. And the Republican Party and people freak out if Trump’s name is not exactly on the ballot, and you have to recreate that. You have to put; you have to put Trump on the ballot without him being technically on the ballot. And the donors, in particular the consulting class, because they don’t get paid. Charlie Kirk and Turning Point team didn’t set up the ground game and all the canvassing and everything like that to make money. It was the exact opposite. It was hard grueling work. The Precinct Strategy knows that. The WarRoom Posse knows that. The Ralph Reed’s group knows that. That’s where the consultants always divert your attention. You saw in New Jersey. They were running on a campaign from the 1990s on tax cuts and the size of government in the in the Commonwealth in New Jersey. But there are many more issues. I mean, to have in the Commonwealth, in New Jersey, the energy issue and the electricity issue that we’ve been talking about here for a couple of years predicated upon Biden and the left’s green new scam, to have that really go to the Democrats as that’s affordability and they’re focused on you. They caused it, right? And the people that caused it were able to weaponize it, Richard.
RICH BARIS (GUEST): I mean, Steve, I’ve lived in Jersey for years and I don’t anymore, but for many years. They’re over there talking about property taxes, wondering why the young voter is not coming out when the young voter can’t afford a home to live in New Jersey. You’re talking about something that isn’t even part of their world’s problem right now. And that is another big problem that I see. They get this money and they blanket spend it across the board. Right. So if you’re going to send out mailers to a twenty five year old voter, don’t be surprised that they take it, shred it, and throw it in the garbage, right? The lack of, I mean, basic micro targeting is disgusting.
But also there’s simple, but to take the bird’s eye view here first. And I think Andrew actually brought this up. But every time there’s a failure, Republicans regress and they start attacking people who have actually tried to put together the ground games, the ballot chasing operations, and then they put these unreasonable expectations on them and think just because they’re doing it, that’s going to carry the day. Meanwhile, they ignore all of the warnings about their message, about the agenda, about what’s working, what’s failing. Don’t do this, this is not a good idea. You’re going to turn off young voters. They thought that they could ignore all of that and, oh, don’t worry, people are going to go out there and ballot chase. You know, I’ll just call up Elon Musk and he’ll throw some millions behind it. I mean, it doesn’t work that way. You need both signal, you need a message, and you need to have infrastructure on the ground that can then take care and harness the energy that that message has created. And people aren’t understanding. It can’t be one or the other. And it really has to be both.
I remember, and we actually showcased this guy on the show, I remember before 24, we were late October and we were polling Pennsylvania, which we were tracking into the end, and a voter in Philadelphia, this black man in Philadelphia, voted for Biden. It was telling us the story. They had been like the Obama game was on loan over there, Steve. Harris had a ground game. I think a lot of people think this isn’t true because she lost. She still had a better ground game. Her problem was that her message, her signal was trash. This guy had us cracking up. They knocked on his door three times including weekend before the election. He would not fill his ballot in and he was yelling at them too. Don’t you dare fill it in for me because I’m going to know. We have a tracker in the state. I’m going to look. And he wouldn’t do it. So no matter how many times Jim Messina and David Pluff and all their organization knocked on his door, her signal was trash. So the ground game could not take advantage of that. So that’s what happened.
And I think, you know, there’s again, and I want to say there’s a turning point’s going to be there. But you know, Charlie really did understand that and you had to build on that. And I just want to press that on people because I don’t want them to forget. You can’t have one and not the other. You have to have both. And it has to be much more sophisticated than what it is now.
I got to tell you, you know, I’m going to make some people angry over the RNC. I really don’t care. When there was all of these beautiful AI tools that are being designed, especially for texting campaigns and peer to peer reach out, MMS. Hilariously, Steve, the AI, the RNC basically thought that the cool thing about the AI is that they wouldn’t have to have live agents all the time texting all those people. They had no idea of the harness, the true power of what that AI could do, which was real time augmenting of your database, which they suffer from latency issues badly, right? They just didn’t grasp it. And it was a joke. It was an inside joke. That’s the truth. And people laughed at them behind their backs.
STEVE BANNON (HOST): What do you think? You know, Mark Mitchell’s been a little bit of Cassandra over the last couple of days. Your thoughts on overarching themes that he’s saying. The hour’s late unless we take dramatic action. And he’s saying between now, like when the CR, to really not just roll out a messaging bill, but to get some of Charlie’s punch list done. Your thoughts.
RICH BARIS (GUEST): I agree with Mark 100 percent. And I got to tell you guys, if Trump turns the corner here and really course corrects, the issue with that alone is that I don’t see how that benefits the Republican Party. The Republican Party is, if you think some voters are angry or disappointed with the president, you do not want to see what they’re saying about the Republican Party. To these young voters particularly who weren’t even flirting with them. I mean, dating them. They were more like flirting with them in 24. They have, in their minds, showed them what their priorities are and their priority was not them.
So the Republican Party itself, as far as legislation, in the form of legislation, has got to take action too. Otherwise, whatever benefit the president sees is going, you’re going to be hard pressed to get it to trickle down ballot and benefit Republican candidates. They need dramatic reforms and they need to do it in a historic way because we know how this goes. Holidays are coming. Once we get past Thanksgiving and Christmas will be, nobody will be doing anything. The new year comes and then when we come back after the new year, Congress, they’re professional feet draggers, their professional stall agents. They do nothing that they view to be controversial or risky during an election season. That has to change. That mentality, that is always in D.C. At the end of the president’s first nine months in office, that has got to change. Otherwise, Mark’s right. They’re done.
If I could just give you, two weeks ago, the generic ballot was only a few points in favor of Democrats in our polling. Steve, it’s Democrat plus eight right now. They have to do something. A plus eight environment with this redistricting disaster that is going on for them, they will be wiped out.
Follow Rich Baris on X at @Peoples_Pundit
