Bannon compared Trump escalator ride to Leni Riefenstahl Nazi film, book says

In Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, the New York Times reporter Jeremy W Peters shows the former campaign chair, White House strategist and close Trump ally repeatedly invoking Hitler when discussing the 45th president.

Bannon has frequently been a source for books about Trump, often to his own detriment as well as that of his sometime boss.

Bannon has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress, a criminal charge arising from his refusal to cooperate with the January 6 committee which could result in jail time.

The sometime documentary maker makes the comparison to Riefenstahl when discussing how Trump kicked off his takeover of the Republican party with his campaign announcement in June 2015.

The crowd which greeted Trump for his maiden speech as a 2016 presidential candidate was largely made up of actors, paid to pretend to support him.

Trump has been linked to Hitler and the Nazis before.

In his book, Peters also quotes Bannon on the danger Trump posed to US democracy by 2020, when he advanced his lie about voter fraud well in advance of election day, and into 2022, as he promises pardons for January 6 rioters and threatens prosecutors with mob justice.