Steve Bannon, the right-wing media personality and former White House chief strategist during the beginning of the Trump administration who has ignored a subpoena to testify in front of a Congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, is outraged by Minnesota’s new state flag.
The design of the new flag, which was revealed this week, features two blue fields and white eight-point star.
As seen in the clip below, Bannon voiced his disapproval of the flag with fellow MAGA supporter and 2020 election-denier Mike Lindell, CEO of the Minnesota-based company MyPillow, about the flag, which Bannon called, “Islamist.”
Lindell launched into a diatribe about the number of Somalis in the state of Minnesota and Somalian-born U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar. “What they’ve done with the flag is catastrophic.” Lindell added, “It’s an atrocity. Everybody’s going, ‘What is this? What is this, a takeover? This is like a Trojan Horse, Steve. They don’t love our country.”
Lindell claimed: “Islamists come here and they get to have this flag. It’s like we’re getting attacked from every direction.”
Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell freak out over the new Minnesota state flag, with Bannon saying it’s “an Islamist, Sharia supremacist flag” and Lindell huffing that it’s “an atrocity” and “trojan horse”
“This ought to flip all of Minnesota for President Trump,” Bannon adds pic.twitter.com/RIxcZQErRn
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 17, 2024
The design of the new flag was created a white young male from Minnesota, Andrew Prekker. His design was chosen by a bipartisan committee from more than 2,500 entries in a state-wide design contest, and had been discussed at several public meetings.
On Instagram, Prekker explained that the star symbolizes the North Star — the state motto is “L’étoile du Nord.” The dark blue field represents the night sky, and the bright blue field represents water — Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes.
Prekker noted: “…this star is seen in Dakota, Ojibwe, and other indigenous art; it’s seen in the architecture of the state capitol’s rotunda and the Minnesota Historical Society’s dome, it’s featured in Minnesotan barn quilts both past and present, featured in the selburose commonly seen on winter clothing, and also vaguely resembles a snowflake! There are some other lesser symbolisms as well, but these are the main points.”