Meet Steve Bannon, Trump's highly controversial pick for White House chief strategist

AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday made good on his promise to shake up Washington by selecting one of the most controversial figures in recent memory to serve as his top political aide.

Steve Bannon, the 62-year-old former CEO of Trump's campaign, will serve as the future president's chief strategist, a job similar to the post formerly occupied by operatives like Karl Rove and Valerie Jarrett.

But unlike Rove and Jarrett, longtime party operatives with deep political ties, Bannon hails from the alt-right political sphere that operated mostly on the fringe of mainstream political discourse before Trump embraced the movement during his presidential campaign.

Since 2011, Bannon has helmed Breitbart News, the far-right website that eschewed traditional Republican Party orthodoxy for antiestablishment white-nationalist positions on issues such as immigration and trade. Under Bannon's leadership, the site frequently assailed Republicans using incendiary rhetoric, labeling Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol a "renegade Jew" and targeting Republicans like former House Speaker John Boehner.

The new chief strategist's appointment quickly set off a firestorm of controversy, as many noted Bannon's apparent sympathies for ethnonationalist arguments and rhetoric.

Many critics from members of both parties including Sen. Harry Reid's spokesman, Adam Jentleson, pointed out that Bannon's ex-wife claimed in court that the new chief strategist "doesn't like Jews" and allowed Breitbart to post anti-Semitic articles.

"President-elect Trump's choice of Steve Bannon as his top aide signals that white supremacists will be represented at the highest levels in Trump's White House," Jentleson said in a statement. "It is easy to see why the KKK views Trump as their champion when Trump appoints one of the foremost peddlers of white-supremacist themes and rhetoric as his top aide."

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League were among groups condemning Bannon's selection, criticizing his self-professed commitment to providing a platform for the conspiracy theories and racial stereotypes about immigrants on which the alt-right has predicated its movement.

Bannon is in many ways a strange messenger to execute Trump's populist economic message.

He has frequently attacked Republicans and Democrats alike, scheming with other right-wing media figures about how to oust House Speaker Paul Ryan for what Bannon perceived as globalist views on trade and immigration.

But the former Breitbart chief also holds a degree from Harvard Business School, and he made much of his fortune as a banker at Goldman Sachs and as a longtime entertainment producer with Hollywood connections and stakes in shows like "Seinfeld."

Still, many of Breitbart's former employees who worked with Bannon pointed out that he had successfully brought his formerly fringe nativist ideas into the mainstream and favored an unforgiving take-no-prisoners political style that appeals to Trump's aggressive sensibilities.

Former Breitbart spokesman Kurt Bardella, who quit the site this year, described the organization as "completely devoid of reality and facts" and said the site speaks to Americans' "worst divisions and worst fears."

"Breitbart's gone from being the propaganda arm of the Trump campaign to now being the propaganda arm of the federal government," Bardella told CNN on Monday. "That should be very concerning to all Americans."

Bardella speculated that Bannon could use the power of the White House to exact revenge on enemies.

"Steve is a very aggressive, attack-oriented, never-back-down, never show any sign of weakness," Bardella said. "That's his entire modus operandi."

AP Photo/ Evan Vucci

For its part, Breitbart frequently denies charges of racially and ethnically tinged coverage, characterizing its work as populist.

Matthew Boyle, the site's Washington political editor, told Business Insider earlier this year that his news organization did not seek to inflame tensions but to "hold the global permanent political class in contempt."

"We are doing what journalists throughout said mainstream media are supposed to do: Challenge the conventional wisdom, hold politicians' feet to the fire, ask tough questions, report facts that are in many cases inconvenient truths for career politicians, and give a voice to the millions of people worldwide who have had theirs taken away from them by world elites who consider the ordinary person beneath them," Boyle said.

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