Steve Bannon appears in The Bob Zadek Show only in passing, as a figure named by guests in discussions whose subjects lie elsewhere. No excerpt treats him as the topic of an episode. The references fall into three areas: the funding of anti-union litigation, the writing of a presidential inauguration speech, and the regulation of online speech.
Union litigation funding
In an episode on Janus v. AFSCME, the guest described a well-funded campaign behind a series of cases challenging fair-share fees. The guest said that behind the plaintiffs’ presentation of a grassroots uprising of individual workers stood anti-union billionaire sons, the Scaife Foundation, and other names familiar in right-wing circles, and named people who funded Steve Bannon and a circle of those people as funders of the cases. The guest attributed the funding to animus toward unions rather than to questions of fairness or free speech, and said the funders’ mission was to destroy the labor movement. The guest cited a study by the Economic Policy Institute laying out who was behind the series of cases The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
The same excerpt sets out the legal background the guest treated as relevant. Unions are required under the law to provide what is known as Duty of Fair Representation, and the guest said Duty of Fair Representation cases are among the largest categories of cases for union-side labor lawyers. A worker covered by a union contract—whether a member or someone who has paid an agency fee—can sue saying the union did not represent him and his grievance was not handled well. The guest framed the fair-share fee as payment for a service that brings the benefit of collective bargaining, and traced the arrangement to Abood, a precedent the guest described as 40 years old and as the fairest and most reasonable approach The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018).
The 2017 inauguration speech
In an episode on progressive conservatism, Frank H. Buckley described working on the 2016 Trump campaign as its pitchman. He said he pitched Jared Kushner the idea that the big issue was the rise of aristocracy and the decline of economic mobility, and that this became a great theme of the campaign. He said other issues he pushed went nowhere with Trump. Buckley said Trump disgraced himself on January 6th and was even before then a failure as president by virtue of an inability to cut deals, that domestic policy in the first two years was run by the Paul Ryans, and that the two years after that brought the madness of the Russian collusion, which he said prevented a deal with Putin Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022).
Buckley said he was asked to write an inauguration speech, bought a book of presidential inauguration speeches beforehand, and drafted a speech he described as Kennedy-esque and in the vein of coming together. He said he happened to be at the Canadian embassy looking down when he heard the speech, that it was obviously not his, and that it was written by Steve Bannon. Buckley said he realized at that point that this was nuts, and that it was anything but what Dwight Eisenhower would have done. He added that Trump thereafter surrounded himself with incompetence, cronies who catered to his ego, sycophants, and a sleazy group of people, many of them distinctly illiberal Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022).
Buckley’s argument in the same episode was that Trump had discovered the sweet spot in American politics, which Buckley called progressive conservatism: a middle-of-the-road movement, not Ted Cruz and not simply the social conservatives of the religious right, last best expressed by Dwight Eisenhower. He said the Republican Party should cut its ties with Trump as an individual while attracting the 74 million people who voted for him, many of them new GOP voters. He also said that a nationalist must adopt the values of the Founders, and cited a Lincoln speech on July 4th, 1858, in which Lincoln said that even without a direct blood tie to the Founders it is enough to subscribe to their values, and that the electric cord of the words of the Declaration unites all Americans. Buckley concluded that nationalists who are illiberal are not American Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022).
Jawboning and the Fauci remark
In an episode on jawboning against speech, Will Duffield described forms of government pressure on platforms. He said some officials say they are just asking questions but demand a response, asking what action a platform has taken about a problematic speaker and why it has not taken that action. He contrasted this with the absurdity of hauling a newsroom into Congress to ask why it did or did not run a particular op-ed. He noted that platforms have a right to refrain from hosting speech, and that jawboning can take the form of must-carry demands, in which a platform is punished for not continuing to host a speech or speaker. He called outright allegations of illegality one of the most pernicious forms of jawboning, even when the underlying speech would be protected by any court ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023).
Duffield’s example was Steve Bannon’s hyperbolic statements about Anthony Fauci, in which Bannon said that if he were a Tudor-style king he would put Fauci’s head on a pike. Duffield said Senator Richard Blumenthal claimed this was a death threat and that Bannon should be banned from YouTube for threatening Fauci’s life in an illegal way. Duffield said the speech was clearly hyperbolic and protected as opinion, and that no one anticipates Bannon actually trying to lop Fauci’s head off. He said Blumenthal claimed the speech was unlawful when it was not, in an attempt to jawbone or bully YouTube into silencing and censoring Bannon ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023).
The same exchange includes Bob Zadek’s discussion of Section 230. Zadek described Section 230(c)(1) as part of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and repeated the phrase that it is the twenty-six words that created the internet. He said social media would not exist today without Section 230, and that the statute was enacted to encourage in the broadest possible way that anybody’s opinion has an outlet. Duffield described it as an intermediary liability protection that prevents platforms, or any website that hosts user speech, from being treated or held liable as the publisher of that user speech, so that responsibility rests with the speaker rather than the platform. Duffield said that in a world without Section 230, where platforms are liable for what their users say, jawboning would be even more threatening, because a platform that ignored a government takedown request would risk the government later citing its warning in court ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023).
Zadek said government contacts social media directly and tells platforms that it created the oxygen they live off and can as easily amend or repeal Section 230 if they make it unhappy, and that the threat is taken seriously especially under non-divided government. He said a call from a senator such as Hawley or Rubio does not get blocked but gets listened to, and that government asks platforms to make it far more difficult for customers to find content it disapproves of, without using the word censor ‘Jawboning against Speech’ with Will Duffield (2023).
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Steve Bannon. He is named once in the Janus episode as a recipient of funding from the circles behind anti-union litigation, twice in the progressive conservatism episode as the writer of the 2017 inauguration speech, and once in the jawboning episode as the speaker whose Fauci remark drew Senator Blumenthal’s allegation of illegality. The three references are unrelated to one another, and no guest returns to a question about Bannon across episodes.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Bannon’s title, role, or affiliation at any point, nor do they describe his career, his relationship to the Trump campaign or administration beyond the inauguration speech, or any legal proceeding involving him. They do not say when or where he was born, what he has written, or what became of him after the events described. Nothing in the excerpts indicates that The Bob Zadek Show ever devoted an episode to him.