Steve Bannon to Matt Schlapp Ahead of CPAC Kick-Off: This Year is About ‘Destroying the Democratic Party as We Know It’

Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, joined Steve Bannon on Thursday ahead of his organization beginning its marquee event the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Schlapp was a guest on Bannon’s War Room podcast where the two discussed a host of topics from Ukraine to the 2022 midterm elections to vaccine mandates.

Bannon, the former senior adviser to Donald Trump, began the interview by talking about Schlapp’s book, “The Desecrators,” and CPAC’s theme for the year, “awake not woke.”

“Put Ukraine into the context of your book, your thesis of the book, and also your underlying theme at CPAC this year, Matt Schlapp,” Bannon asked.

“Well, you know the thesis of the book came from basically my heart being broken, all of our hearts are being broken with the fact that our institutions, which we fund with our donations and our taxpayer money, is teaching our kids to hate America, to think our founders were racists, to think that the whole idea of America is like a criminal operation, corrupt,” Schlapp answered, invoking the right’s battle against critical race theory.

“And part of the reason why they want to destroy America is because they have this global idea of reordering things. And it sounded conspiratorial years ago to say this, but it’s all bearing fruit,” Schlapp added.

Schlapp continued, bringing up the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. “What is America’s foreign policy and we have a commander in chief who is clearly senile, addled, not up to the job. We have sent so many confusing messages.”

“We have been kicking people out of the Marine Corps for not taking a vaccine at the… and and we’re having General Milley and others saying our number one goal is to combat climate change and to end white rage. If you’re Vladimir Putin or you’re Xi, you can hear that. You know what that message is,” Schallp added. “We’re focused on some kind of a community kumbaya project and it’s very dangerous and these are the consequences.”

Bannon moved the conversation to the 2022 midterm election. Bannon explained that the right is “kicking off into an election year, where we’re talking about the possibility of actually ending, destroying the Democratic Party as we know it, as an institution if we can pull it together.” He asked Schlapp how CPAC and its theme this year fits into that goal.

“Well, I think a lot of Republicans like to talk about capital gains tax cuts and the economy and deficit spending and all those things are really important, but they’re missing the boat,” Schlapp responded.

He went on to say that the Democratic Party has abandoned “ working men and women” and “people of faith” and that the GOP is now ready to embrace those Democrats.

Schlapp concluded:

So what I see here is a great opportunity for us to grab a whole bunch of new people and put it as a part of this coalition. Now that would – that coalition would be much less Republican than it ever was. It’ll be much more diverse ideologically. It’ll be diverse even on questions like what should we do with our power and might overseas. But I’m comfortable with that because I think that’s where we have to go.

“That’s why we’ve invited Tulsi Gabbard. I probably disagree with Tulsi Gabbard on a whole bunch of issues. But you know what? She’s not woke. And she’s taking on woke,” Schlapp concluded, referencing the Hawaii congresswoman who has 7 percent out of a 100 voting record rating according to Schlapp’s group.

Watch the full clip below: