Former White House adviser Steve Bannon on Friday slammed President Trump's threat to intervene if Iran cracks down on anti-government protests as something resembling threats made by former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential opponent Hillary Clinton.
"Aren't people teasing right now that [former United Nations Ambassador] Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton must somehow have gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year's Eve celebration because the president coming out today saying, 'Hey, we're locked and loaded,' isn't that straight from the Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton playbook?" Bannon said on his show "War Room Podcast" with CDM.press editor-in-chief Todd Wood.
Power served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017, then served as the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2021 to 2025.
Bannon also said the Trump administration should continue to enforce sanctions on Iran and "let the mullahs try to run the economy as they're running it because they don't know what they're doing."
"The economy will crash, and the Persian people will overthrow these guys just like they overthrew the shah," Bannon told Wood.
Earlier on Friday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the U.S. will "rescue" demonstrators if "Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters."
Iran saw some of its largest demonstrations since 2022 in recent days. On Thursday, the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights said at least 29 demonstrators had been detained, and the semiofficial Fars News Agency reported that three protesters were killed and 17 others hurt during an attack on a police station.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) criticized Trump's threat, calling it "everything we voted against" in 2024.
"The focus should be on tax dollars here at home and defending our God given freedoms and rights," the Georgia Republican, who will leave Congress after a falling out with Trump, said.
Clinton previously threatened during her 2008 presidential campaign to "totally obliterate" Iran if it launched a nuclear strike on Israel, The Guardian reported.
"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," she told supporters in Pennsylvania. "That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic."
Then-candidate Barack Obama told The Guardian that Americans have "a bunch of talk using words like 'obliterate.'"
"It doesn't actually produce good results," Obama continued. "And so I'm not interested in saber-rattling."
Clinton reiterated her warning seven years later during her last presidential run. At a Brookings Institution address, she said she would "not hesitate to take military action if Iran tries to obtain a nuclear weapon," Politico reported.
"Should it become necessary in the future, having exhausted peaceful alternatives, to turn to military force, we will have preserved and in some cases enhanced our capacity to act," she said.