Steve Bannon: A Brief History
Steve Bannon at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File)
President-Elect Donald J. Trump appointed, Breitbart CEO, Steve Bannon as his Senior Adviser, arguably the second most powerful position in Washington, on Sunday. For those who are interested (hopefully every single person in this country), I’ve put together a quick briefing on the white nationalist:
Early Life:
Stephen K Bannon graduated from Virgina Tech in 1976, and went on to receive a masters in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. At age 29, Bannon attended Harvard Business School where he earned his M.B.A., with honors. Steve Bannon is also a former naval officer who served aboard the destroyer the USS Paul F. Foster as a Surface War Officer in the Pacific Fleet, and took a position as a special assistant to the Chief of Naval Operations at the Pentagon.
Career in Business & Media:
Shortly after earning his MBA, Bannon landed a job at the investment firm Goldman Sachs. In 1990, with several colleagues from Goldman’s, he started his own investment firm that specialized in media, called Bannon & Co. Bannon & Co. was purchased in 1998 by Société Générale. The sale of Bannon & Co. led to Steve’s career as an executive producer in Hollywood, who worked on films such as Julie Taymor’s Titus.
In 2004 Bannon had his directorial debut with In the Face of Evil, a documentary about Ronald Reagan. It was during the making of this film that Steve Bannon was introduced to, then publisher, Andrew Breitbart. And, after a brief stunt as CEO and Chairman of Affinity Media, in March of 2012 Bannon took a position as Executive Chairman of Breitbart News LLC. Under Steve Bannon Brietbart News branded themselves as less of a traditional conservative media organization, and took an alt-right and nationalistic position. Ben Shapiro, a previous editor of Breitbart News, once said, “Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart openly embraced the white supremacist alt-right.” Here’s one of Bannon’s more famous quotes that lend to that sentiment:
“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.”
Present Day
On August 17th Donald Trump selected Steve Bannon to be the chief executive of his 2016 campaign. Last Sunday it was announced that he will be serving as Donald Trump’s Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor to the President-Elect.
