Bannon Dismisses ‘Alt-Right’ As ‘Losers’ In Off-The-Script Interview
Following Anthony Scaramucci’s accidental interviewonversation with the New Yorker, one might think Trump administration staffers would have set rules of engagement with reporters. But Steve Bannon sounded off to the American Prospect without asking to go off the record.
In the most surprising twist from the interview, Bannon appeared to distance himself from the “alt-right,” which he bragged about creating a platform for while the head of Breitbart News.
“Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers. It’s a fringe element,” he said. “I think the media plays it up too much.”
He also discussed his plans to stack the State Department with allies, replacing traditional diplomatic types with “hawks.” Bannon, coming off the November victory, mocked the Democrats and their embrace of “identity politics.” “The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
The story crashed the site of the American Prospect, a small politics and policy magazine based in the Washington, D.C. Read a cached version here.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
