Bannon, Steve

Bannon, Steve (Stephen Kevin Bannon), 1953–, American political strategist, financier, and media executive, b. Norfolk, Va. After serving as an officer in the U.S. navy (1976–83), he worked as an investment banker, then as a film executive, producing several conservative documentaries. A founding board member (2007) of Breitbart News, a stridently conservative website, he was named its chairman in 2012, and it subsequently became more populist and nationalist. Bannon also cofounded (2012) the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative research organization. In 2016 he left Breitbart to head Donald Trump's presidential campaign. After Trump's election, he served as White House chief strategist until Aug., 2017; he then returned to Breitbart, but left it in Jan., 2018. In 2018 he formed The Movement, a right-wing populist organization based in Brussels, with a goal of influencing the 2019 European Parliament elections, but national campaign finance laws and resistance from some right-wing European parties limited the group.

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