Steve Bannon was permanently banned from Twitter after he called for Dr. Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray's heads to be displayed 'on pikes' outside the White House.- Bannon, Trump's former senior adviser, made the comments on Thursday during an episode of 'War Room Pandemic,' a podcast he co-hosts.
- He later insisted the comments were a metaphor.
- The episode was also removed from YouTube and Facebook.
Steve Bannon, President Trump's former senior adviser, has been banned from Twitter after saying he would put the heads of Dr. Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray "on pikes" outside the White House.
Bannon made the comments on Thursday during an episode of "War Room Pandemic," a podcast he co-hosts.
After falsely claiming that Trump had already won the election, Bannon discussed how Trump should behave in a hypothetical second term towards Wray and Fauci.
"Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci," Bannon responded, in comments which were reported on Thursday by Media Matters.
"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 at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone — time to stop playing games. Blow it all up, put [Trump aide] Ric Grenell today as the interim head of the FBI, that'll light them up, right."
Jack Maxey, the podcast's co-host, responded: "Just yesterday there was the anniversary of the hanging of two Tories in Philadelphia. These were Quaker businessmen who had cohabitated, if you will, with the British while they were occupying Philadelphia. These people were hung. This is what we used to do to traitors."
To this Bannon replied: "That's how you won the revolution. No one wants to talk about it. The revolution wasn't some sort of garden party, right? It was a civil war. It was a civil war."
After Bannon made the comments, Twitter suspended the account linked to the podcast — "WarRoomPandemic" — and YouTube removed the video from its site.
A spokesperson for Twitter told Business Insider on Thursday that Bannon's @WarRoomPandemic account had been permanently removed for violating Twitter rules against the glorification of violence. A YouTube spokesperson told Business Insider that the video had been removed from its site because it incited violence.
Facebook on Friday said it had also removed the video from its platform. "We removed these videos for violating our policy against violence and incitement," said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement to Business Insider.
Towards the end of the podcast, which is live-streamed on YouTube, Bannon insisted that his comments had been a metaphor.
"Our YouTube has been taken down," Bannon said in the YouTube broadcast of the episode on the website which has now been removed.
"It's been taken down because of my comment today about Fauci and Wray getting fired and [how] what they should do afterwards is put their heads on pikes. That was obviously a metaphor."
Both Fauci and Wray have angered Trump in recent months. Dr. Fauci has offered stark assessments of the threat coronavirus presents to the US, prompting Trump to speculate at a rally last week that he may fire him.
Trump is also considering firing Wray as FBI director because he failed to open an investigation into Joe Biden, which Trump believed could give his election campaign a last-minute boost, according to a Washington Post report.