161 Facts About Steve Bannon

Stephen Kevin Bannon was born on November 27,1953 and is an American media executive, political strategist, and former investment banker.

Steve Bannon served as the White House's chief strategist for the first seven months of president Donald Trump's first administration, before Trump discharged him.

Steve Bannon is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News.

Steve Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy between 1977 and 1983, then worked for two years at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker.

Steve Bannon was an executive producer on 18 Hollywood films from 1991 to 2016.

In 2016, Steve Bannon became the chief executive officer of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and was appointed chief strategist and senior counselor to the president following Trump's election.

Steve Bannon had declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement".

Trump pardoned Steve Bannon, sparing him from a federal trial, but did not pardon his codefendants.

Federal pardons do not cover state offenses, and in 2022, Steve Bannon was charged in New York state court with fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy in connection with the campaign.

In February 2025, Steve Bannon plead guilty to fraud and was sentenced to three years of conditional discharge.

Steve Bannon grew up in a working-class family that was pro-Kennedy and pro-union Democrat.

Steve Bannon graduated from Benedictine College Preparatory, a private, Catholic, military high school in Richmond, Virginia, in 1971, and then attended Virginia Tech, where he served as the president of the student government association.

In 1985, Steve Bannon earned a Master of Business Administration degree with honors from Harvard Business School.

In 1980, Steve Bannon was deployed to the Persian Gulf to assist with Operation Eagle Claw during the Iran hostage crisis.

Steve Bannon stayed at this position with Goldman in Los Angeles for two years, and left with the title of vice president.

Steve Bannon negotiated a sale of Castle Rock to Turner Broadcasting System, which was owned by Ted Turner at the time.

Steve Bannon still receives cash residuals each time Seinfeld is aired.

Steve Bannon produced 18 films, including Sean Penn's drama The Indian Runner, and Julie Taymor's film Titus.

Steve Bannon became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at film and television management company The Firm, Inc.

In 2004, Steve Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan, In the Face of Evil.

In 2006, Steve Bannon persuaded Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment.

From 2007 through 2011, Steve Bannon was the chair and CEO of Affinity Media.

In 2007, Steve Bannon wrote an eight-page treatment for another documentary, Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Facism in America.

In 2007, Steve Bannon was a founding board member of Breitbart News, a far-right news, opinion and commentary website.

Steve Bannon said that Breitbart's ideological mix included libertarians, Zionists, the conservative gay community, same-sex marriage opponents, economic nationalists, populists, as well as the alt-right, with the alt-right comprising a very small proportion overall.

In March 2012, following the death of Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart, Steve Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company of Breitbart News.

In 2016, Steve Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right".

Steve Bannon hosted a radio show, Breitbart News Daily, on the SiriusXM Patriot satellite radio channel.

In 2005, Steve Bannon secured $60 million in funding from Goldman Sachs and other investors for Internet Gaming Entertainment, a company based in Hong Kong that employed "low-wage Chinese workers" to play World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, to earn gold in-game that could be traded for virtual items, which could then be sold to players of the video game for real money.

Since 2019, Bannon has hosted Bannon's War Room on Robert J Sigg's Real America's Voice television network, podcast platforms, and radio.

Steve Bannon was executive chair and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute, a tax-exempt 501 organization where he helped orchestrate the publication of Breitbart News senior Editor-at-large Peter Schweizer's book Clinton Cash, from its founding in 2012 until his departure in August 2016.

Steve Bannon served as vice president of the board of Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics firm owned largely by the Mercer family, who co-owns Breitbart News; the firm allegedly used illegal tactics to target American voters in the 2016 election.

Steve Bannon was paid more than $125,000 for his work at Cambridge Analytica.

In 2017, Steve Bannon founded the Movement, a populist organization which frequently promotes right wing populist groups in Europe which are against the EU government and political system in Europe.

The group is known for its opposition to George Soros's Open Society Foundations, Steve Bannon has referred to Soros as "evil but brilliant".

Steve Bannon left Breitbart, the Government Accountability Institute and Cambridge Analytica, to take the job.

Alan Dershowitz at first defended Steve Bannon, saying there was no evidence he was antisemitic, but then in a later piece stated that Steve Bannon had made bigoted statements against Muslims, women, and others.

The letter stated that appointing Steve Bannon "sends a disturbing message about what kind of president Donald Trump wants to be", because his "ties to the White Nationalist movement have been well documented"; it went on to present several examples of Breitbart Newss alleged xenophobia.

Steve Bannon denied being a white nationalist and said, rather, that he was an "economic nationalist".

In 2018, Michael Lewis published a quote ascribed to Steve Bannon, made while the transition team for Trump was supposed to be preparing for the next administration, and The Guardian used it twice in the title of an excerpt from the 2018 Lewis book The Fifth Risk.

In February 2017, Steve Bannon appeared on the cover of Time, on which he was labeled "the Great Manipulator".

Steve Bannon allegedly did this by leaking information to the alternative media, including alt-right writer Mike Cernovich.

Steve Bannon reportedly opposed his removal from the council and threatened to quit if President Trump went forward with it, although Republican megadonor Rebekah Mercer urged him to stay.

The White House said Steve Bannon had not attempted to leave, and Steve Bannon said any indication that he threatened resignation was "total nonsense".

Steve Bannon was interviewed multiple times by Robert Mueller as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election.

Steve Bannon was reportedly interviewed about Roger Stone's contact with WikiLeaks.

In November 2019, Steve Bannon gave evidence in the federal criminal trial of Roger Stone.

Steve Bannon did not voluntarily testify; rather, he was compelled to give evidence under subpoena.

Steve Bannon testified that Stone was WikiLeaks' access point for the Trump campaign; the testimony helped establish that Stone lied to Congress.

The book quoted Steve Bannon as saying that Ivanka Trump was "as dumb as a brick"; that the meeting among Donald Trump Jr.

Steve Bannon warned that investigators would likely uncover money laundering involving Jared Kushner and his family business loans from Deutsche Bank.

In January 2018, after excerpts from Fire and Fury were published, Trump promptly disavowed Steve Bannon, saying that Steve Bannon "lost his mind" when he left the White House, and attacking him in multiple angry statements.

Trump asserted in a tweet that Bannon had "cried when he got fired and begged for his job" and publicly referred to Bannon with an unflattering nickname in reference to Bannon's usually disheveled appearance.

On January 7,2018, Steve Bannon expressed regret over his delayed response, declared his "unwavering" support for Trump and his agenda, and praised Donald Trump Jr.

Steve Bannon said his remarks about the campaign meeting were aimed at Manafort instead of Trump Jr.

In 2018, Steve Bannon released a pro-Trump documentary, Trump @War through his production company, Victory Films; the film aimed to galvanize Trump supporters ahead of the 2018 elections in a bid to keep a Republican majority in the House.

In October 2019, Steve Bannon began co-hosting War Room: Impeachment, a daily radio show and podcast in which he offered advice to the Trump administration and its allies on how to counter the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump.

In 2020, Steve Bannon began a podcast War Room: Pandemic, broadcast from his Capitol Hill townhouse; Steve Bannon told friends that Trump had "told others that he watches the program and that the president was familiar enough with it to cite specific interviews he had seen when the two men spoke this summer".

Steve Bannon stated he was not fired but rather submitted his two-week resignation notice on August 4,2017.

Steve Bannon reminded The Weekly Standard that he had joined then-presidential candidate Trump's campaign on August 14,2016, and said he'd "always planned on spending one year", but that he stayed a few more days due to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Several weeks after his departure it was reported that Trump still called Steve Bannon using his personal cell phone and was only calling when chief of staff Kelly was not around.

The Washington Post reported in October 2017 that Trump and Steve Bannon remained in regular contact.

Steve Bannon has made efforts to unseat incumbent Republican members of Congress he deemed to be insufficiently supportive of Trump's agenda.

In October 2017, Steve Bannon said he planned to sponsor primary challenges against six of the seven incumbent Republican senators in the 2018 elections.

Steve Bannon said he had two requirements for a candidate to earn his support: they must pledge to vote against Mitch McConnell as Senate majority leader and to end the Senate filibuster.

Steve Bannon used his group Citizens of the American Republic to aide him in his efforts to help keep Republican control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 election.

The group is a dark money organization; Steve Bannon declined to "describe his donors or how much money the group has raised".

Steve Bannon received credit for helping Roy Moore defeat incumbent senator Luther Strange in the September Republican primary for the 2017 special Alabama Senate election, despite Trump's having endorsed Strange.

Steve Bannon toured Europe to speak at events with various far-right political parties there, in a bid to build a network of right-wing populist-nationalist parties aspiring to government.

The Atlantic cited a number of factors inhibiting Steve Bannon's project, including differing national and ideological views among the European far right and US-skeptical views held by some parties of the European extreme right.

In 2018, Steve Bannon announced that he planned to establish a right-wing academy on the site, with the support of Benjamin Harnwell, a British associate of Steve Bannon's who underwrote the project and aimed to create a "gladiator school for culture warriors".

In March 2019, Steve Bannon met with both Bolsonaros in Washington, DC.

In October 2017, after leaving the White House, Steve Bannon met exiled Chinese billionaire businessman Guo Wengui, and the pair cultivated a friendship, frequently meeting in Dallas, at Guo's apartment at the Sherry-Netherland in New York, and on Guo's yacht.

Steve Bannon made the flights under the auspices of his dark money group, Citizens of the American Republic.

Shapiro recalled Steve Bannon yelling and cursing at people at Breitbart News.

Those who worked with Steve Bannon have described him as "egomaniacal" and "purely Machiavellian".

Several employees who left Breitbart alleged that when they attempted to find employment outside of Breitbart, Steve Bannon attempted to sabotage them.

However, other employees praised Steve Bannon's leadership describing him as a generous, loyal, caring, and supportive.

Steve Bannon probably leaked and lied about me more than everyone else combined.

Steve Bannon worked with Ehud Barak and attorney Reid Weingarten to attempt to reform Epstein's public image.

Later reports showed Steve Bannon reportedly prepped Epstein for an interview with 60 Minutes that ultimately never occurred.

Steve Bannon confirmed that he did tape 15 hours of interviews with Epstein but denied that he was coaching him for further interviews and that the footage was for an unannounced documentary on Epstein.

Steve Bannon was charged with misdemeanor domestic violence, battery, and dissuading a witness in early January 1996 after his then-wife, Mary Piccard, accused Steve Bannon of domestic abuse.

Federal prosecutors of the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York allege that Steve Bannon, United States Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage and the two other defendants used funds received from the We Build the Wall fundraising campaign, marketed to support the building of a border wall between the US and Mexico, in a way which was "inconsistent" with how they were advertised for use to the public.

Steve Bannon promoted the project until the day before the indictment, saying "You've been the leader of this, assisting President Trump in building this wall in these tough areas" in his War Room: Pandemic podcast.

Prosecutors alleged that Steve Bannon received more than $1 million in connection with the plan, some of which was paid to Kolfage in secret and some of which Steve Bannon and two other defendants allegedly used for personal expenses ranging from paying off credit cards to personal travel.

Steve Bannon was arrested by US postal inspectors on Long Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut, on board People's Republic of China expatriate Guo Wengui's luxury yacht.

Later that day, Steve Bannon pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Steve Bannon was released pending trial on a $5 million bond, of which Steve Bannon was required to put up $1.7 million.

Steve Bannon was required to surrender his passport and his domestic travel was restricted.

In February, 2025, Steve Bannon pleaded guilty to one state felony count of a scheme to defraud in the first degree and was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge, without any prison time or restitution.

Federal pardons only cover federal offenses, so Trump's pardon of Steve Bannon did not preclude state charges against him.

Steve Bannon said that he and Trump would not "stop fighting" and "they will have to kill me first".

On September 23,2021, the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack subpoenaed Steve Bannon, ordering him to appear on October 14.

Steve Bannon's lawyers gave the committee advance notice that he would not comply.

Steve Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury on November 12,2021, on two criminal contempt charges: one count of not providing documents, and one count of not testifying.

Steve Bannon was represented by criminal defense attorney David Schoen.

Steve Bannon was released pending trial, without bail, but on conditions, including keeping authorities informed of his whereabouts, and not leaving the country.

Steve Bannon declined to call witnesses or testify in his own defense.

On October 21,2022, Judge Nichols sentenced Steve Bannon to serve four months in prison and pay a $6,500 fine.

On November 4,2022, Steve Bannon appealed his conviction and sentence; he remained free pending appeal, with his sentence put on hold.

Steve Bannon did not attend the hearing; his attorney David Schoen did.

On May 10,2024, the appellate court unanimously upheld the conviction and on May 14, the DOJ filed a motion to lift Steve Bannon's stay of sentence and have him report to prison.

Steve Bannon reported to the low-level security Federal Correctional Institution, Danbury in Danbury, Connecticut on July 1,2024, where he lived in a special veterans housing unit according to his federal prison consultant Sam Mangel.

Steve Bannon was released from Bureau of Prisons custody on October 29,2024.

Steve Bannon said that if it were up to him, after beheading Fauci and Wray, "I'd put the heads on pikes" and display them outside the White House "as a warning to bureaucrats" who dared oppose Trump.

The next day, Steve Bannon was dropped by a lawyer who had been defending him against federal charges of fraud.

Steve Bannon is a Reaganite and has described himself as a populist.

Steve Bannon has referred to himself as a "proud Christian Zionist" in reference to his support of Israel.

Steve Bannon has been described as a white nationalist but rejects the description.

Steve Bannon generally believes in reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy, declaring at the Conservative Political Action Conference he favored the "deconstruction of the administrative state".

Steve Bannon was a strong opponent of the Paris climate agreement.

Steve Bannon favors reducing immigration, both legal and illegal immigration, to the US and asserts that immigration threatens national sovereignty.

Steve Bannon has suggested that too many Silicon Valley chief executives are Asian or South Asian, and that this undermines "civic society".

On his podcast, Steve Bannon emphasized the need for "MAGA shock troops" to actively support Donald Trump's plans for mass deportations.

Steve Bannon envisions these loyalists not only participating in street-level actions but embedding within the Trump administration to ensure the comprehensive removal of undocumented immigrants.

Steve Bannon often describes himself as an economic nationalist, criticizing crony capitalism, Austrian economics, and the objectivist capitalism of Ayn Rand.

Steve Bannon favors raising federal income taxes to 44 percent for those earning incomes over $5 million a year as a way to pay for middle class tax cuts.

In 2014, during a conference at the Vatican, Steve Bannon criticized Wall Street for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.

Steve Bannon has criticized bail outs for big banks and is angered by the fact that Wall Street banks have not been held accountable for the financial crisis, which he says fueled populist fury and groups such as the Tea Party.

Steve Bannon has praised Democratic politicians Ro Khanna, Sherrod Brown, and John Fetterman for their economically populist views, particularly regarding corporate offshoring.

Amid ongoing national debates on gun violence and gun control, Steve Bannon has been vocal in advocating for broader access to firearms, emphasizing the importance of the Second Amendment.

Steve Bannon has been vocal in warning Trump against any shifts towards gun control, emphasizing the potential for intense backlash from the president's base.

Steve Bannon is generally skeptical of military intervention abroad, opposing proposals for the expansion of US involvement in the War in Afghanistan, the Syrian Civil War, and the crisis in Venezuela.

Steve Bannon believes "there is no military solution" to the 2017 North Korea crisis.

Steve Bannon has referred to himself as a "proud Christian Zionist" in reference to his support of Israel.

Steve Bannon reportedly spoke often with Trump donor Sheldon Adelson, and was alarmed at a push for a renewed Middle East peace process.

Steve Bannon has described Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as a "terrorist".

Steve Bannon has advocated giving the land in the West Bank to Jordan and in Gaza to Egypt.

Steve Bannon believes the US is not merely in a Cold War but already in a "hot war" with China, especially in the domains of information and economics.

Steve Bannon expressed concerns about China's growing influence in Asia, viewing the nation as expansionist and anticipating a global culture clash.

Steve Bannon holds the view that the Chinese Communist Party must be confronted and suggests that the ongoing informational and economic confrontations will escalate into a "kinetic war".

Steve Bannon believes a military confrontation between the US and China in the South China Sea will occur within the next decade.

Steve Bannon highlighted China's construction of artificial islands, equating them to stationary aircraft carriers with missiles, as a primary concern.

Steve Bannon has defended Trump's ties to and praise for Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Steve Bannon expressed a belief that traditionalists see Russia as an ally.

In 2018, Steve Bannon announced plans to launch a new political operation beginning with an attempt to unite populist parties across Europe before the 2019 European Parliament election.

Later that year, Steve Bannon formed a foundation called The Movement to connect far-right groups throughout Europe.

Steve Bannon is supportive of European right-wing populist national conservative movements such as the Hungarian Fidesz, the French National Front, the Spanish Vox, the Dutch Party for Freedom, Alternative for Germany, the Italian Northern League, the Freedom Party of Austria, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People's Party, the Flemish Vlaams Belang and the New Flemish Alliance, the Polish Law and Justice, and the Swiss People's Party.

In 2007, Steve Bannon proposed and developed a script for a documentary titled Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Fascism in America.

Steve Bannon criticized George W Bush for calling Islam a religion of peace.

Steve Bannon has said that Islam today is "something much darker" than Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

Steve Bannon is reputed to believe Putin's Russia and Trump's America are Christian allies against the Islamic State and "radical Islamic terrorism".

Steve Bannon sees transhumanism as a dangerous and radical religion of "the technocratic elite".

Steve Bannon accuses tech entrepreneurs of using "transhumanistic science" to control humanity and eradicate religion through advanced gene editing, robotics, and forced microscopic implants.

Steve Bannon has accused transhumanists of wanting eternal life at the expense of disregarding people's religious beliefs.

On his podcast, Steve Bannon said he was proud to be a Luddite and expressed concern that Homo sapiens could be replaced in the near future.

Steve Bannon rejects allegations that he is a white nationalist.

At a party congress in March 2018, Steve Bannon gave members of the French right-wing populist National Front what has been described as a "populist pep talk".

Steve Bannon was influenced by Fourth Turning theory, outlined in Neil Howe's and William Strauss's The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, one of Steve Bannon's favorite books.

Steve Bannon has cited the Russian neo-fascist Alexander Dugin, who promotes a Russian nationalist variant of traditionalism called Eurasianism, and described himself as a fan of Dugin's book, The Fourth Political Theory.

However, Steve Bannon has urged Dugin to abandon his anti-American and Sinophile views.

Steve Bannon has described Brazilian traditionalist thinker Olavo de Carvalho as "one of the great conservative intellectuals in the world".

In March 2016, Steve Bannon stated he appreciates "any piece that mentions Evola".

Steve Bannon has repeatedly referenced the controversial French novel The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, which depicts Third World immigration destroying Western civilization.

Steve Bannon has embraced what BBC News describes as Savitri Devi's "account of history as a cyclical battle between good and evil".

Steve Bannon had amazing fashion sense, right, that whole thing with the uniforms.

Steve Bannon has expressed admiration for German Conservative Revolutionary philosopher Martin Heidegger, praising his "ideas on the subject of being".

Steve Bannon has expressed interest in Henri Bergson's concept of elan vital and Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction.

Steve Bannon's spokesperson denied the accusation, noting that he had chosen to send both his children to the Archer School.

Steve Bannon has been a producer, writer, director or actor on the following films and documentaries:.