Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon in 2018

Stephen Kevin "Steve" Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker, who served as the White House's chief strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News, and previously served on the board of the now-defunct data-analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

Quotes

• Second term kicks off with firing Wray, firing Fauci. Now, I actually want to go a step farther, but I realize the president is a kind-hearted man and a good man. I'd actually like to go back to the old times of Tudor England, I'd put the heads on pikes, right. I'd put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you're gone.
  • Steve Bannon Calls for the Beheading of Dr. Fauci on Podcast (November 5, 2020)

• There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home, and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Tex., to London, England...We look at London and Texas as two fronts in our current cultural and political war.
  • Breitbart News Network Plans Global Expansion by Leslie Kaufman (February 16, 2014)

• We should just go buck wild...Let the grassroots turn on the hate because that’s the ONLY thing that will make them do their duty.
  • Daily Beast (August 19, 2016)

• We don’t like to try to guess what’s going to happen in the future, but I’ve got to tell you, I think people were very engaged in this election, and I think will be very engaged as time goes forward. The key is to hold people accountable. The hobbits, or the deplorables, had a great run in ’16. Everybody mocked them and ridiculed them, and now they’ve spoken. I think ’17 is going to be a very exciting year,
  • Steve Bannon: ‘Hobbits and Deplorables Had a Great Run in 2016,’ but It’s Only ‘Top of the First Inning’ (December 30, 2016)

• The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while...I want you to quote this, the media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States... The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong. [The 2016 election was] a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there...You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.
  • Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should ‘Keep Its Mouth Shut’ by Michael M. Grynbaum New York Times (January 26, 2017)

• [Re Spicer loss of credibility] Are you kidding me? We think that's a badge of honor. 'Questioning his integrity' are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.
  • Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should 'Keep Its Mouth Shut' (January 26, 2017)

• We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy. We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation. We hire people who are freaks. They don’t have social lives. They’re junkies about news and information.
  • How Breitbart has become a dominant voice in conservative media by Paul Farhi. The Washington Post (January 27, 2017)

• When two-thirds or three-quarters of the C.E.O.s in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think . . . A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.
  • Breitbart News Daily - Donald Trump - November 5, 2015

• And we’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, the people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs, but to fight for our beliefs against this new barbarity that’s starting, that will completely eradicate everything that we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000, 2,500 years. ... Now that call converges with something we have to face, and it’s a very unpleasant topic, but we are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.
  • Third International Conference on Human Dignity (2014)

• Until we have the black working class and the Hispanic working class getting high-value-added jobs, we've failed as a society. To me: citizens first. And we don't need a million immigrants in this country. Particularly, we don't need a million immigrants that don't come with a real set of skills.
  • As quoted in Bannon: Always the Rebel (2017) by Keith Koffler

• If Bernie Sanders had an ounce of [Michael] Avenatti’s fearlessness, he would’ve been the Democratic nominee, and we would have had a much tougher time beating him. Now, I don’t believe a professional politician is going to be there at the end of the day. I’ve always said it’s going to be someone like Oprah, or Avenatti, or somebody that’s more media-savvy that’s going to be there.
  • Steve Bannon (in an interview with Bill Maher) as quoted by Langois, Shawn (September 30, 2018). "Michael Avenatti, a legitimate candidate in 2020? Steve Bannon seems to think so". MarketWatch. Retrieved on September 30, 2018. 

• The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.
  • According to "“Has Anyone Seen the President? by Michael Lewis, Bloomberg" (2018)

• [He's a] whiner...I don’t think that the alt-right is anti-Semitic at all...Are there anti-Semitic people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely. But I don’t believe that the movement overall is anti-Semitic.
  • Steve Bannon referring to former Breitbart editor turned critic Ben Shapiro's address of anti-semitism and the alt-right “How Steve Bannon Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists. Mother Jones”" (2016)

Disputed

• I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.
  • Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State’ The Daily Beast (August 21, 2016)

War Room: Pandemic

Quotes from Bannon's War Room podcast, which began the War Room Pandemic series with Episode 1 on Jan. 25, 2020.
Citation convention: cite the podcast (edited) time, e.g. "Ep. 1 at 30min," or the live Eastern Standard Time time e.g. "Feb. 1 at 10:30AM."

2020

• We're going to federal court to look for radical transparency... What the Democrats are doing are generating — you got the printing press going — they're generating ballots everywhere. You got ballots coming out of — you got new votes in Georgia, got new votes in Pennsylvania...
  • War Room Pandemic Ep. 476, Nov. 5 2020, at 2min 5sec

• Everybody take a deep breath. Not only do we got this, we already own this. Okay: He's President of the United States; He won a resounding victory on votes that matter. Right? You have Black Lives Matter, you have All Lives Matter — we have Votes That Matter. Votes that matter are: certifiable, verifiable, legal votes that were voted on the third of November, the year of our Lord 2020.
  • War Room Pandemic Ep. 476, Nov. 5 2020, at 2min 30sec

• There is no day of infamy yesterday. Everybody take a deep breath, say a prayer, commit yourself, trust the process... Because we've won, not "We're going to win, ..." The President has won... We're not going to play these games, 50,000 ballots here, no postmark... Burke's dictum: We owe as much to those who came before us.. Everybody says it's all for the kids, for the grandkids, yes... But Burke told us... we have a moral obligation to take that, and make it better and pass it on... and doing that, you respect your obligations to those that came before you... Jack Maxey: the men at Normandy, tell us about them... Twenty years of age.. Everybody that voted on the third: Pres. Trump took an oath to God.. You have a moral obligation, direct connection, to those kids that died at Normandy, that couldn't even vote. Did they whine? Did they cry? And they knew they were going to certain death... You're going into that.. The only way we're going to get through is to push ourselves through... Stop with your friends, "I'm so worried. I'm so nervous " STOP IT. We've got this. The only way they can take it is if we give it to them... If you allow that to happen... I want you to explain it to the twenty year old kid in the first wave on D-Day...
  • War Room Pandemic Ep. 477, Nov. 5 2020, at 1min

• Here in the Judeo-Christian West we believe in eternal life. In Philadelphia they'll say they believe in eternal voting.
  • War Room Pandemic, Ep. 485 Nov. 9 2020 at at 22:30 min.

• The dead will rise again — at least in Pennsylvania, to vote.
  • War Room Pandemic, Ep. 485 Nov. 9 2020 at 40:50

• Pennsylvania, if you don't win this now, not only will you never win again — you don't deserve to win again.
  • War Room Pandemic, ep. 533 Nov. 24 2020 at 25min.

• The Hard Drive From Hell: you come for the porn, but you stay for the compromise.
  • War Room Pandemic, ep. 536 Nov. 24 2020 at 22min.

2021

• Mike Lindell: "'The Big Lie' is the big lie."
  Steve: [Laughter] Is that like a Zen koan? Like "the sound of one hand clapping in the forest"?!
  • War Room Pandemic, ep. 747 Feb. 22 2021 at 18min. Regarding news of Dominion's lawsuit vs. Lindell which accused him of pushing "the Big Lie" starting on its fourth line and a total of 31 times.

Quotes about Steve Bannon

• If Andrew [Breitbart] were still around, I bet he'd tell Bannon to stay in Europe — and not just because his tendency to wear several shirts seems more consistent with European fashion. Bannon's understanding of conservatism is entirely European... Conservatism in America has always been deeply traditionalist, sometimes too much so. But at the core of the modern conservative movement has been the effort to protect, defend and conserve the traditions of a liberal revolution, grounded in the best arguments of the enlightenment (slavery notwithstanding). Bannon's potted blood and soil nationalism and racially tinged populism runs counter to that project and the best and highest ideals of conservatism and America itself. He turned Andrew's Breitbart.com into a "platform" (his word) for the alt-right seeking to inject European swill into the American body politic. Let him stay in Europe and hand out torches for the marchers. His un-American schtick has no place here. I'm sure Andrew would agree.
  • Jonah Goldberg, "Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe" (14 March 2018), The Los Angeles Times

• Donald J. Trump today announced that Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon has been appointed CEO, temporarily stepping down from his role with Breitbart News to work full-time on Mr. Trump’s campaign in a new position designed to bolster the business-like approach of Mr. Trump’s campaign.
• "I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years. They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win," said Mr. Trump.
• Mr. Bannon, once recognized by Bloomberg Politics as the “most dangerous political operative in America,” will oversee the campaign staff and operations in addition to strategic oversight of major campaign initiatives in addition to working with Mr. Manafort.
  • "Donald J. Trump Announces Major Campaign Hires" Trump campaign press release, since deleted from the official web site (17 August 2016)

• Trump (and Bannon and other right-wing authoritarian leaders around the world) is often referred to as a "populist" because he displays faux concern for the working class and a resentment of science and education, but his policies are in fact grotesquely elitist. If by "populist" we mean whipping up resentment against immigrants and people of color, then we should say that. Otherwise, "populism" is just a lazy euphemism for racism.
  • Jen Sorensen Greetings from the Wasteland (2020)

• I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S
  • Tweet by @realDonaldTrump (19 August 2017)

• Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.
• Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination.
• Steve had very little to do with our historic victory.
• Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue.
  • Statement released to the press by Donald Trump's press secretary, not listed on the White House web site (3 January 2018)

• No sane person would hire Steven Bannon for a job that included making the trains run on time.
  • Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (2018), p. 32

• Other than Trump himself, Bannon was certainly the oldest inexperienced person ever to work in the White House. It was a flaky career that got him here. Catholic school in Richmond, Virginia. Then a local college, Virginia Tech. Then seven years in the Navy, a lieutenant on a ship duty and then in the Pentagon. While on active duty, he got a master's degree at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, but then he washed out of his naval career. Then an MBA from Harvard Business School. Then four years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs- his final two years focusing on the media industry in Los Angeles- but not rising above a midlevel position. In 1990, at the age of thirty-seven, Bannon entered peripatetic entrepreneurhood under the auspices of Bannon & Co., a financial advisory firm to the entertainment industry. This was something of a hustler's shell company, hanging out a shingle in an industry of a small center of success and concentric rings radiating out of rising, aspiring, falling, and failing strivers. Bannon & Co., skirting falling and failing, made it to aspiring by raising small amounts of money for independent film projects- none a hit. Bannon was rather a movie figure himself. A type. Alcohol. Bad marriages. Cash-strapped in a business where the measure of success is excesses of riches. Ever scheming. Ever disappointed. For a man with a strong sense of his own destiny, he tended to be hardly noticed.
  • Michael Wolff, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (2018), p. 55

• Chinese media is taking aim at Steve Bannon, with one broadcaster calling the former White House adviser a “shameless anti-Chinese pioneer” over the weekend.
  • Chinese State Media Aims at Steve Bannon: ‘Most Stubborn of the Anti-Chinese People’, Rudy Takala, mediaite.com, May 4th, 2020

• Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, has used tough rhetoric on China’s ruling Communist Party since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, accusing the regime of “premeditated murder” and estimating the country owes the world “north of $5 trillion” for economic devastation wrought by the virus.
  • Chinese State Media Aims at Steve Bannon: ‘Most Stubborn of the Anti-Chinese People’, Rudy Takala, mediaite.com, May 4th, 2020

• Something true most people won’t say: Steve Bannon sacrificed his whole life for his country. His life will never be the same again. He was called a white supremacist and neo-Nazi by the press because they recognized what a formidable adversary he was.
  • Milo Yiannopoulos, Milo Yiannopoulos on Steve Bannon The Wrap (2018)

See also

• Category:Steve Bannon films