Five years after Steve Bannon said he’d put government officials’ “heads on pikes,” his podcast “WarRoom” is no longer suspended at Spotify.
Bannon tells the New York Post that his content hasn’t changed much in the years since, and described it as “the same” in a June interview. Previously, Bannon had served as the White House’s Chief Strategist during President Donald Trump’s first term, though he left in 2017 after clashing with other aides. He’s since remained an influential voice in the MAGA sphere, including via the WarRoom podcast, which publishes a number of times a week and has been dubbed a “far-right ‘Meet the Press’” by The Washington Post.
A Spotify spokesperson told JS that the decision to host Bannon’s new WarRoom episodes follows a “temporary suspension and constructive dialogue with the show’s team.” The spokesperson did not specify what that dialogue addressed and if any changes had been made to the show that led to its reinstatement, however.
Spotify removed an episode of WarRoom in November 2020 after Bannon suggested beheading government officials, including then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and then-FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“I’d actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I’d put the heads on pikes, right, I’d put them [Fauci and Wray] at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats,” Bannon said in the episode.
“You either get with the program or you’re gone – time to stop playing games,” he added.
“Spotify won’t tolerate content on our platform that promotes, advocates or incites hatred or violence,” a Spotify spokesperson told Gizmodo in November 2020 about removing the WarRoom episode. “The content in question has been removed due to multiple violations of our policy.”
Spotify went on to temporarily suspend the show altogether, according to the company spokesperson, because several episodes published in 2020 broke its Platform Rules, which urge creators to avoid content that promotes violence.
Bannon, meanwhile, claimed in the New York Post interview that his remarks in that episode were metaphorical and not literal threats of violence. “I made a comment two days before about Thomas More in ‘A Man for All Seasons,’ where they put his head on a pike, and we said it metaphorically about Christopher Wray and Dr. Fauci,” he said.
After the November 2020 episode, accounts associated with Bannon were also suspended from Twitter and YouTube. WarRoom was still hosted by Apple Podcasts during that time, however, and continued to reach numerous listeners via that platform.
The show’s return to Spotify comes as multiple tech platforms have reversed past suspensions of President Donald Trump and his allies in recent years, and as a number of Silicon Valley executives have sought to build cozier relationships with the White House. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) also drew fierce criticism from Democrats earlier this year for giving Bannon a platform on his own podcast, a move he defended by stating that he wanted to “engage” with different ideas.
“I can give a punch and I can take a punch — the MAGA movement prides itself in being resilient,” Bannon told the New York Post about his return.
