Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon is an American political strategist, media executive, former White House chief strategist and senior counselor to President Donald Trump, and a key architect behind the former president’s ascension to power. Bannon, who was pardoned by President Trump in January 2021 for federal charges related to the We Build the Wall campaign, is currently serving time in prison for his 2024 conviction on separate charges of contempt of Congress related to his refusal to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 Committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. He faces additional pending charges in New York state following his August 2022 indictment for money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy. Steve Bannon is an extreme nationalist, self-identified “Christian zionist,” ally to white nationalists and the alt-right, and one of Donald Trump’s closest and most dangerous allies.

Bannon first joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in August 2016 when he took over for Paul Manafort as executive chairman. Bannon changed the trajectory of Trump’s campaign by infusing populist and nationalist messaging, and embracing the ideology and audience of alt-right circles, especially those of Breitbart News, the far-right news and commentary website that Bannon helped found and subsequently ran up until joining the campaign.

Bannon has long touted his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, nationalistic views, as well as his opposition to international institutions and “anti-globalist” stance, which is often viewed as a dogwhistle for anti-Semitism. He once described Islam as “not a religion of peace,” and in a 2016 interview for SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily, he decried even legal immigration as “overwhelm[ing] the country.”

Following his November 2016 victory, President-elect Trump appointed Bannon Chief Strategist and Counselor to the President, a newly created position that did not require Senate confirmation. Bannon’s appointment prompted massive backlash from groups and individuals citing his ties to white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Despite those ties, Trump kept Bannon in his tight inner circle, entrusting him with leading the presidential transition. Immediately upon taking office, Trump invited Bannon to join Principal Committee meetings of the National Security Council, a sharp departure from past administrations. Bannon allegedly threatened to quit when he was removed shortly thereafter, but Trump megadonor Rebekah Mercer, who also co-owns and funds Breitbart, where Bannon worked before and after his White House stint, urged him to stay.

While part of the Trump administration, Bannon was behind some of the White House’s most extreme policies, including xenophobic and draconian immigration measures. In addition to crowdsourcing private funding for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, for which he was indicted for siphoning money, Bannon is credited with crafting and successfully executing the White House’s 2017 “Muslim ban,” which prevented travel and refugee resettlement to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries, in which he overrode Department of Homeland Security objections to the ban. American Oversight documents reveal that Bannon also worked closely to with Stephen Miller on White House policy attacking sanctuary cities, pressuring these cities into working with the White House to enforce its extreme immigration laws. Beyond immigration, Bannon reportedly helped persuade Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement. He held other extreme positions, such as opposing the NATO treaty and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, which he seemingly did not succeed in undermining.

Bannon was forced out of the Trump White House after his statements criticizing Trump’s children were made public in the book Fire and Fury, though Bannon had continued to support and maintain ties with Trump.

Bannon is perhaps best known for his long history and leadership of Breitbart News, founded by Andrew Breitbart, a major Tea Party thinker and media mogul who popularized the idea that “politics is downstream from culture.” Andrew Breitbart sought to use the platform to expose and reverse the supposed liberal bias in U.S. cultural institutions: Hollywood, journalism, academia, and government. After Breitbart’s death in 2012, Bannon, a founding board member, became executive chairman of its parent company. Under Bannon’s watch, Breitbart became “the platform of the alt-right,” “a loose confederation of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and anti-Semites,” and also an unapologetic pro-Trump outlet. The outlet has published bigoted and extremist claims for “every dangerous impulse lurking in the mind of the angry white man,” as Rolling Stone wrote. It has published inflammatory stories from scapegoating immigrants on multiple continents, arguing the LGBTQ community should pretend to be straight to pass along their artistic genes, writing articles used to promote the Obama birther conspiracy, claiming that being Black is an “advantage,” arguing that Confederate flags are not racist, alleging that birth control “makes women unattractive and crazy,” and more.

Other right-wing media figures denounced Bannon for this transformation, claiming Bannon created a “monster.” Right-wing media personality Ben Shapiro, who was a Breitbart editor under Bannon, called Bannon a “bully” who “sold out Andrew [Breitbart]’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump.” After being ousted from the Trump administration, Bannon returned to Breitbart News as executive chairman, where he hosted a podcast that advised Trump and allies on how to deal with the Trump impeachment inquiry and more.

The Mercer family, major Trump and GOP donors who co-own Breitbart’s umbrella company, forced Bannon out shortly after he returned from the White House, allegedly for his attention seeking antics, breaking with Trump, and unfettered spending.

Bannon has also dedicated himself to building relationships with and promoting the international far-right. After being pushed out of both the White House and Breitbart News, he announced his intention to build “the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.” He founded the Movement, which supports groups that oppose the European Union governing and political system. Bannon has been a close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has called on European and U.S. Christian nationalists to “unite forces” and under whom Hungary has seen curtailed press freedom and other democratic backsliding. Bannon has visited far-right parties across Central and Western Europe, and authoritarian leaders and groups elsewhere.

Bannon associates were convicted of defrauding donors who contributed to a crowdsourced campaign to raise money for the construction of Trump’s border wall. However, Trump issued Bannon a pardon for federal crimes, which resulted in a federal judge dismissing the case. In 2022, Bannon was convicted and sentenced to a fine and four months of prison, which he is currently serving, for defying a January 6 committee subpoena. Bannon has also been indicted for state crimes connected to the Build the Wall crowdfunding endeavor.

Bannon was an investment banker in the 1980s and into the 1990s, when he began dabbling in media and entertainment, even producing Hollywood films. Bannon’s former screenwriting partner explained that Bannon specifically admired Nazi filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl for her use of fear. Andrew Breitbart likened Bannon to the Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement.

He later served as vice president of Cambridge Analytica, a Mercer family-owned data-analytics company that allegedly engaged in illegal tactics to sway U.S. voters in 2016. According to a former employee, Bannon was specifically in charge of collecting Facebook data to target voters. He also held $1 to $5 million in Cambridge Analytica stock until he sold it to join the Trump administration.

Bannon was also the executive chair and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute, an organization dedicated to investigating the alleged corruption and improprieties of Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, before he left it to join the Trump administration.

Bannon remains one of Trump’s biggest advocates, and the two reportedly remain in sporadic contact. Through his podcast War Room, Bannon has maintained outsized influence in U.S. politics, even working to oust Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker, successfully push out Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, and especially to influence Donald Trump. In a recent speech just before his contempt-of-Congress prison sentence was set to begin, Bannon vowed “revenge” against Trump’s enemies, including criminal prosecution, if the former president is reelected in November.