The elegant Capitol Hill building, located behind the Supreme Court, dates back to 1805. In the basement, which has been converted into a podcast recording studio, all the cameras were off. There were engravings of Christ, a thermos labeled Moms for Liberty, and a book on China's ambitions to deindustrialize the West. Steve Bannon, the mastermind behind Donald Trump's first campaign and the architect of his "national populist revolution," turned host of the podcast War Room after being ousted from the White House in August 2017, described himself as "joyous." The representative of the rightmost wing of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, who served time in prison after he defied a subpoena from a congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, spoke with Le Monde over Easter weekend to break down the first 100 days of Trump's second term.

Trump 2.0 "can't compare" to his first term, said the former strategist, who still wields significant influence within the MAGA world. "It was providential we won in '16, we kind of came from behind, we didn't have a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of organization." The November 2020 defeat – which he still calls "the stolen election" – was beneficial, he said. "It was divine providence. (...) We needed these four years. The four years allowed us to plot and to plan everything which is done right now."

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