[griojw id=”vZwPkjlH” playerid=”GqX43ZoG”]
Former White House advisor Steve Bannon had a mighty fall last year. And now he’s attempting to bounce back with some help from another down-and-out comrade.
Currently on a European tour spreading his vitriol— Bannon stopped in Germany and Italy this weekend to address the National Front, an alt-right-adjacent party known for its far-right politics.
Last year, its party leader, Marine Le Pen, lost the French presidency to Emmanuel Macron in May. Seemingly, the two spent their time in front of an audience seeking to boost each other from their falls and shared with the crowd their rigor and impetus for an anti-establishment government.
“Let them call you racists,” Bannon said. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor,” he said, warmed by a crowd of applause.
“And what I’ve learned is you are part of a worldwide movement that is bigger than France, bigger than Italy, bigger than Hungary, bigger than all of it,” he said, speaking to the troubling rise in Europe’s right-wing parties. “History is on our side.”
“The opposition media — the running dogs of the global corporate elite called Trump and Bannon white supremacists,” he continued referring to Trump’s claim of “fake news.” “But, President Trump’s economic nationalism does not care about your race, your religion, your ethnicity. … It cares about one thing: Are you a citizen of the United States of America?”
Friends to the end
Bannon surprisingly only had great things to say about the current President, although the two had a major falling out at the time of his ousting.
After acting as a devout and loyal accomplice to President Trump’s destructive ways in the White House, the former Chief Strategist later found himself on the opposite end of his Commander-In-Chief with reports of treason and breeches of contract.
The alt-right official reached his pitch fever in the White House following the racial siege that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia last year. Twitter erupted with calls for justice, which included the ousting of Bannon who has long been identified as a white supremacist but actually calls himself a nationalist.
After being ousted, Bannon went on a tirade claiming what we’ve all come to know— that the Republican administration is responsible for the divide in the country and in Trump’s administration. In January, Bannon even agreed to be interviewed by FBI special counsel spearheaded by Robert Mueller in the Russian probe, instead of testifying in front of a grand jury. Bannon infamously called out Trump, Jr. for a “treasonous” meeting he once held at the Trump Tower.
Bannon done “lost his mind”
In a book excerpt reported by The Guardian, author Michael Wolff dished about Bannon’s reaction to the news that Donald Trump Jr. met with Russians in Trump Tower.
“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” said Bannon at the time.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad sh**, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” he added.
And that was too much for Trump.
In a written statement, the President distanced himself from Bannon and downplayed any role that he had in his election.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency,” Trump said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
Trump also blasted Bannon for losing the Alabama Senate seat, which saw the election of Democrat Doug Jones. According to Trump, Bannon is “only in it for himself.”
“Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was,” said Trump.
“It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.”