Steve Bannon
Stephen Kevin Bannon is an American media executive, political strategist, pundit and former investment banker. He served as the White House's chief strategist for the first seven months of President Donald Trump's first administration before Trump fired him. He is a former executive chairman of Breitbart News. Since 2019, Bannon has hosted the War Room podcast.
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. In 1993, he became acting director of the research project Biosphere 2. He was an executive producer on 18 Hollywood films from 1991 to 2016. In 2007, he co-founded Breitbart News, a website which he described in 2016 as "the platform for the alt-right". In the mid-2010s, Bannon was a vice president of Cambridge Analytica, a firm that collected data on millions of Facebook users, without their informed consent, for use in Trump’s campaign and Brexit, in some cases spreading fake news. Later knowledge of this data breach prompted the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
In 2016, 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. As chief strategist, Bannon urged Trump toward an anti-establishment platform and clashed frequently with other Republicans as well as fellow staff members Reince Priebus and Jared Kushner. He left eight months later and rejoined Breitbart. In 2018, after his criticism of Trump's children was reported in Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury, he was disavowed by Trump and left Breitbart. After leaving the White House, Bannon opposed the Republican Party establishment and supported insurgent candidates in Republican primary elections. Bannon's reputation as a strategist was questioned when former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice Roy Moore, despite Bannon's support, lost the 2017 United States Senate election in Alabama. Bannon had declared his intention to become "the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement". Accordingly, he has supported national populist conservative political movements around the world, including creating a network of far-right groups in Europe. Bannon advised Jeffrey Epstein, the financer and convicted child sex offender, on media relations just prior to his arrest on sex trafficking charges and death in prison in 2019.
In 2020, Bannon and others were arrested on federal charges of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering connected to the We Build the Wall fundraising campaign. According to the indictment, the defendants promised contributions would go to building a U.S.–Mexico border wall, but instead enriched themselves. Bannon pleaded not guilty. Trump pardoned Bannon, sparing him from a federal trial, but did not pardon his codefendants. Federal pardons do not cover state offenses, and in 2022, Bannon was charged in New York state court with fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy in connection with the campaign. In February 2025, Bannon pleaded guilty to fraud and was sentenced to three years of conditional discharge. Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 House select committee, so was indicted by a federal grand jury on criminal charges of contempt of Congress. In July 2022, he was convicted and sentenced to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine. After losing his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Bannon surrendered to a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, where he was imprisoned from July to October 2024.
Early life and education
Stephen Kevin Bannon was born November 27, 1953, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Doris, a homemaker, and Martin J. Bannon Jr., who worked as an AT&T telephone lineman and as a middle manager. He grew up in a working-class family that was pro-Kennedy and pro-union Democrat. He is of Irish and German descent. Much of his mother's side of the family settled in the Baltimore area. 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. During the summers he worked at a local junkyard.In 1976, he graduated from Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies with a bachelor's degree in urban planning. While serving in the navy, he earned a master's degree in national security studies in 1983 from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. In 1985, Bannon earned a Master of Business Administration degree with honors from Harvard Business School.
Career
U.S. Navy
Bannon was an officer in the United States Navy from 1977 to 1983; he served on the destroyer as a surface warfare officer in the Pacific Fleet, and afterwards as a special assistant to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon. Bannon's job at the Pentagon was, among other things, handling messages between senior officers and writing reports about the state of the Navy fleet worldwide. While at the Pentagon, Bannon attended Georgetown University at night and obtained his master's degree in national security studies.In 1980, Bannon was deployed to the Persian Gulf to assist with Operation Eagle Claw during the Iran hostage crisis. In a 2015 interview, Bannon said that the mission's failure marked a turning point in his political worldview from largely apolitical to strongly Reaganite, which was further reinforced by the September 11 attacks. He recounted,
"I wasn't political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter fucked things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that George W. Bush| Bush had fucked up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster."
Investment banking
After his military service, Bannon worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department. In 1987, he relocated from New York to Los Angeles, to assist Goldman in expanding their presence in the entertainment industry. He stayed in this position with Goldman in Los Angeles for two years, and left with the title of vice president.Media and investing
In 1990, Bannon and several colleagues from Goldman Sachs launched their own company Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. In one of Bannon & Co.'s transactions, the firm represented Westinghouse Electric, which wanted to sell Castle Rock Entertainment. Bannon negotiated a sale of Castle Rock to Turner Broadcasting System, which was owned by Ted Turner at the time. Instead of a full adviser's fee, Bannon & Co. accepted a financial stake in five television shows, including Seinfeld, which was in its third season. Bannon still receives cash residuals each time Seinfeld is aired. In 1998, Société Générale purchased Bannon & Co.Earth science
In 1993, while still managing Bannon & Co., Bannon became acting director of the earth science research project Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona. Under Bannon, the closed-system experiment project shifted emphasis from researching human space exploration and colonization toward the scientific study of earth's environment, pollution, and climate change. He left the project in 1995.Entertainment and media
In the 1990s, Bannon ventured into entertainment and media and became a Hollywood film and media executive producer. Bannon produced 18 films, including Sean Penn's drama The Indian Runner, and Julie Taymor's film Titus. Bannon became a partner with entertainment industry executive Jeff Kwatinetz at film and television management company The Firm, Inc., where he served in 2002 and 2003.In 2004, Bannon made a documentary about Ronald Reagan, In the Face of Evil. While making and screening the film, Bannon met Reagan's War author Peter Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart, who described him as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement. Other films Bannon financed and produced include Fire from the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman, The Undefeated, and Occupy Unmasked.
In 2006, Bannon persuaded Goldman Sachs to invest in a company known as Internet Gaming Entertainment. Following a lawsuit, the company rebranded as Affinity Media, and Bannon took over as CEO. From 2007 through 2011, Bannon was the chair and CEO of Affinity Media.
In 2007, Bannon wrote an eight-page treatment for another documentary, Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Fascism ''in America. The outline states, "although driven by the 'best intentions,' institutions such as the media, the Jewish community and government agencies were appeasing jihadists aiming to create an Islamic republic." In 2011, Bannon spoke at the Liberty Restoration Foundation in Orlando, Florida, about the 2008 financial crisis, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and their impact in the origins of the Tea Party movement, and his films Generation Zero and The Undefeated''.
''Breitbart News''
In 2007, Bannon was a founding board member of Breitbart News, a far-right news, opinion and commentary website. Philip Elliott and Zeke J. Miller of Time have said that the site has "pushed racist, sexist, xenophobic and antisemitic material into the vein of the alternative right". Bannon said that BreitbartIn March 2012, following the death of Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart, Bannon became executive chairman of Breitbart News LLC, the parent company of Breitbart News. Under his leadership, Breitbarts editorial tone became more nationalistic, and also became increasingly friendly to the alt-right. In 2016, Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right". Speaking about his role at Breitbart, Bannon said, "We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class." Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor and colleague of Bannon, called Bannon a "'bully' who 'sold out Andrew's mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump.'"
On August 18, 2017, Breitbart announced that Bannon would return as executive chairman following his period of employment at the White House. Because of the break with Trump, Bannon's position as head of Breitbart News was called into question by Breitbarts owners. On January 9, 2018, five months after his appointment, he stepped down as executive chairman. The billionaire funders of Breitbart, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, reportedly decided to push Bannon out from Breitbart, in part because of his break with Trump and in part because they had become weary of Bannon's "impulsive and attention-seeking antics" and Bannon's expenditures on "travel and private security".
Bannon hosted a radio show, Breitbart News Daily, on the SiriusXM Patriot satellite radio channel.