Stephen K. Bannon

Stephen Kevin Bannon (born November 27, 1953) is an American media executive, political figure, strategist, former investment banker, and the former executive chairman of Breitbart News. He served as White House Chief Strategist in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump during the first seven months of Trump's term. Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy for seven years in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After his military service, he worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker, and left as vice president. In 1993, he became acting director of the research project Biosphere 2. In the 1990s, he became an executive producer in Hollywood, and produced 18 films between 1991 and 2016. In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News, a far-right website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right". In August 2016, Bannon was named the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential bid. Appointed Chief Strategist in the Trump administration, he left this position on August 18, 2017 and rejoined Breitbart. After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the establishment Republican Party and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primaries. After Roy Moore, supported by Bannon, lost the 2017 United States Senate election in Alabama, Bannon's reputation as a political strategist was questioned. In January 2018, Bannon was disavowed by Trump for critical comments reported in the book Fire and Fury and left Breitbart. After leaving the White House, Bannon declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement." Accordingly, he has supported various national populist conservative political movements around the world. These include France's National Front, Hungary's Fidesz, the Italian League, the Brothers of Italy, Alternative for Germany, the Sweden Democrats, the Dutch Party for Freedom, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Swiss People's Party, the UK Independence Party, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, the Belgian People's Party, Spain’s Vox, the Finns Party, the pan-European identitarian movement, Republika Srpska's Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the Brazilian 2018 Jair Bolsonaro presidential campaign, and the Israeli Likud. Bannon believes that the aforementioned movements – along with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman, China's Xi Jinping, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and America's Donald Trump, as well as similar leaders in Egypt, the Philippines, Poland, and South Korea – are part of a global shift towards nationalism. A self-described economic nationalist, Bannon advocates for reductions in immigration, restrictions on free trade with China and Mexico, and an increased federal income tax for those earning incomes of over $5 million a year. Bannon is a skeptic of military intervention abroad and has opposed proposals for the expansion of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, Syria, and Venezuela. He has been described by some as a white nationalist but rejects the description. According to conservative commentator David French, Bannon has "done more than any other person to introduce the ... alt-right into mainstream American life".