“We want retribution,” Stephen K. Bannon told the cheering crowd on Sunday night at the Young Republicans’ gala.
Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times

Young Republicans Gather, Ready to Make America Vengeful Again

by · NY Times

Late Sunday night, in a banquet hall inside the grand old Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street, the Republican operative Stephen K. Bannon was putting on one of his over-the-top, apocalyptic performances.

It was the annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club — prom for pro-Trump provocateurs — and Mr. Bannon, 71, was the keynote speaker. Standing onstage, beneath soaring Corinthian columns and a vaulted ceiling, he looked out upon a sea of baby-faced acolytes in black tie and outlined the way forward for them and for the Trump restoration.

Donald J. Trump “is a leader of all the people,” Mr. Bannon said. “He’s got a kind heart and big soul. But that’s not us, right? We want retribution. And we’re going to get retribution.” The Young Republicans cheered.

Mr. Bannon added: “I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28. Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28? Come on, man!” And they all roared some more.

Asked later if he thought Mr. Bannon was being serious about Mr. Trump making an unconstitutional run for a third term in 2028, the club’s 30-year-old leader, Gavin Wax, waved it off. “I think that was more of a light-handed remark to make fun and be a little jovial, but let’s focus on these four years and making the best of it,” he said.

That’s often how it goes with this crowd of Trump true believers. Like the man himself, they say outrageous things, and nobody knows how seriously to take them. They often don’t even seem to know how seriously to take themselves.

The Young Republicans at their annual gala on Sunday night at the Merchants’ Exchange building on Wall Street in Manhattan.
Credit...Andres Kudacki for The New York Times

At last year’s gala, in this same room, Mr. Trump made a particularly fiery speech, promising to go after journalists and Democratic politicians and government workers if he returned to power. This year, he didn’t show up. He literally phoned it in.

His longtime aide Dan Scavino held a phone up to the mic onstage so the president-elect could speak into it. He thanked the Young Republicans for all they had done for him (Mr. Wax said the club provided 200 volunteers to work Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, and helped to organize the one in the South Bronx). Mr. Trump told them how tremendous the next four years would be. But he was short on specifics.

This club’s members are, by and large, a terminally online, trollish, far-right collective who would consider any sort of tack toward the center by Mr. Trump or those guiding him to be an act of betrayal. They are the prime audience for retribution rattling. And yet, on Sunday, many seemed at odds about just how much retribution they could expect, or who precisely should be targeted, or how. Even among this radical crowd, there was a split about whether it was a wise way for Mr. Trump to spend his final four years in office (assuming Mr. Bannon really was being flip about 2028).

“Move on — retribution doesn’t do any good, it’s a negative emotion,” said Nigel Farage, the British politician behind Brexit. He was padding around the V.I.P. balcony in velvet evening slippers monogrammed with his initials. “It would be madness to waste time going back over previous battles,” he said.

Mr. Farage has long been a faithful supporter of Mr. Trump and said he would do well to remember that old Churchill saw about being magnanimous in victory. “Everything I can see about Trump this time, he’s very positive,” he said. “He’s looking forward.”

Not many people seemed to agree with Mr. Farage, though.

“He’s from England, so they have a little bit of a lighter approach to things, but we’re blunt here in America, and he doesn’t speak for us,” said Preston Parra, a 22-year-old conservative influencer and budding political operative. He said he wanted and expected retribution from Mr. Trump’s government.

“We want to throw the book at them because they deserve it, they’re godless demoniacs,” said Mr. Parra. Who are the “them,” exactly? “The leftist, elitist cabal, whatever you want to call it,” he said. Anyone specific? “Nancy Pelosi,” he shrugged. “Mitch McConnell.”

A few feet away, Mr. Trump’s old campaign hand Corey Lewandowski was chatting up Monica Crowley, the former Fox News contributor who was just picked for a plum gig at the State Department. Matt Gaetz, who is viewed by this crowd as something of a martyr figure, wandered by while a cluster of Young Republicans lined up to take selfies with Jack Posobiec. A conspiracy theorist best known for spreading PizzaGate, the hoax that held that Democrats were running a satanic child-abuse ring beneath a Washington pizza parlor, Mr. Posobiec said he wished for “reciprocity” to be carried out against “everyone who had anything to do with censorship.”

Asked if he intended to go into the new administration, he said, “I don’t have any plans to right now.” But does he want to? “I love what I do,” he said, rather curtly.

Mr. Wax hasn’t been tapped for a role in the administration yet, either. “It’d be an honor to serve the president and his administration, if there was something for me and there was interest,” he said. “I’d make any adjustments in my life to make that work and head down to D.C. if needed.”

Now that Mr. Trump is back on top, all sorts of newcomers are waving résumés around. Some of the people at the gala, who pride themselves as having stuck by Mr. Trump when he was down and out, expressed suspicion about the MAGA-come-latelies in their midst.

Raheem Kassam, who has worked for both Mr. Farage and Mr. Bannon and now runs the website National Pulse, sipped a Glenlivet on the rocks and looked around the V.I.P. balcony (ticket prices for the evening varied, though some went as high as $4,700, “in honor of our 47th president,” Mr. Wax explained).

“Last year was more of the true MAGA loyalists,” Mr. Kassam said, “because you still weren’t sure — well, we were sure — but a lot of the people who were out there, DeSantisworld and all of that, were not sure how this was going to shake out.” He added that, “Tonight, I think we’re starting to see people who are trying to work themselves back into the fold, or really into the fold for the first time.”

Mr. Farage said he was familiar with these sorts of growing pains from his time expanding the United Kingdom Independence Party that he led. “When small companies become big companies, a lot of the original staff almost resent the success,” he said. “When I led UKIP, as we grew into a major party, a lot of our members hated it. They wanted us to be grenade chuckers. They didn’t want us to get anywhere near power or influence.”

And yet, the evening’s keynote speaker was very much there to chuck said grenades.

When Mr. Bannon spoke, he implored this room of far-right politicians and influencers and media figures and activists, who speak directly to and for Mr. Trump’s base, not to let the president-elect go all wobbly once he gets into office.

There should be “no mercy” for their perceived enemies, Mr. Bannon said in his speech. “Everybody around President Trump, what do they always say when they get around him? ‘You’ve got to moderate, you’ve got to be nicer and get the mythical suburban woman.’ Right, right?” he asked.

“You’re not going to get her,” he said, as the room jeered, “and we don’t care!”

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