Who is Steve Bannon? White House Chief Strategist and America’s real president

He holds the newly created office of Chief Strategist at the White House.

Steve Bannon should ordinarily function as a political adviser for President Donald Trump but now, it is no longer an exaggeration to say he is the man who’s actually in charge of running the country.

As he has forced his way to becoming the object of media attention across the world in the last one week, Steve Bannon has being named on social media as President Bannon and he’s even got a hashtag to go. Time Magazine has also weighed in by putting Bannon on their cover with the tag, ‘The Great Manipulator’. Most telling are the viral cartoons of a little Trump sitting in the laps of a much bigger Bannon while the latter sees him through his work like a father would his child.

These cartoons are not figments of the imaginations of the artists. It has been said that Bannon is largely instrumental in the signing of the Executive Order banning nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the US for 90 days. An American newspaper reported that he was in charge of drafting the ban. And this is only one of the many Executive Orders Bannon has influenced since Trump resumed at the White House.

President Trump seeing how his own staff has now overtaken the news, took to Twitter to lash out at the press. He tweeted on Monday, “I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it. Some FAKE NEWS media, in order to marginalize, lies!”

Let’s properly introduce you to America’s other president!

Steve Bannon is the Executive Chairman of Breitbart News, a media platform Bannon described as an outlet for the alt-right. He has worked with the site for over a decade and didn’t assume the top position until the death of Andrew Breitbart, the original owner of the site, in 2o12. He helped grow the site from a mere news aggregator into the divisive right-wing opinion outlet it is now. He told Bloomberg that his vision was to: “build a global, center-right, populist, anti-establishment news site“.

Before becoming the Breitbart dictator that he is, Steve Bannon had been in several disjointed careers, from the Navy to banking and even filmmaking.

Just after college, Bannon signed up to serve in the Navy. He spent four years at sea and was described as “a good sailor and naval officer”. After leaving the Navy, he earned a Master’s degree in National Security Studies at Georgetown University after which he proceeded to Harvard Business School. His degree from the business school landed him a job in one of the New York offices of global investment banking company, Goldman Sachs. He left the company in 1990 and started Bannon&Co., a boutique investment bank that specialised in media. Through this company, Bannon invested in films and directed movies like In the Face of Evil and The Undefeated, a documentary about failed vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.  The company also worked on MGM’s studio financing, and handed the acquisitions when Polygram Records moved into the film business. Bannon&Co was later bought leaving Bannon with no affiliations.

Bannon may have had seamless career changes but he has faced a number of challenges in his personal life. In 1996, charges of battery, misdemeanor domestic violence and dissuading of witness was brought against him by his ex-wife, Marie-Louise Piccard. She accused Bannon of physically assaulting her, pulling her by the neck and wrist and smashing her phone when she tried to call for help. The case was later dismissed as the woman refused to show up in court and Bannon pleaded “not guilty”. The same woman also accused Bannon of being an anti-Semite and a far-right extremist in court documents filed in 2007. At the time, he allegedly said he didn’t want his children going to school with Jews because “he didn’t like the way they raised their kids to be whiny brats“. Bannon denied the allegations. He has been divorced thrice but has three adult daughters, one of whom serves as a lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division.

Steve Bannon, 63 was born in Norfolk, Virginia into a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union, family of Democrats.

In an interview in January 2017 just after Trump was sworn in, Bannon attacked the mainstream media and called it the “opposition party”. He said, ‘The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while. I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.” He added that the media has zero integrity, zero intelligence and no hard work.

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