WASHINGTON
— Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s chief White House strategist,
laced into the American press during an interview on Wednesday evening,
arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by an election
outcome few anticipated, and repeatedly describing the media as “the
opposition party” of the current administration.
“The
media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and
just listen for awhile,” Mr. Bannon said during a telephone call.
“I
want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “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.”
The
scathing assessment — delivered by one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted and
influential advisers, in the first days of his presidency — comes at a
moment of high tension between the news media and the administration,
with skirmishes over the size of Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd and the
president’s false claims that millions of illegal votes by undocumented
immigrants swayed the popular vote against him.
Mr.
Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of
Breitbart News, the provocative right-wing website he ran until last
August, was echoing comments by Mr. Trump
this weekend, when the president said he was in “a running war” with
the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on
earth.”
During
a call to discuss Sean M. Spicer, the president’s press secretary, Mr.
Bannon ratcheted up the criticism, offering a broad indictment of the
news media as biased against Mr. Trump and out of touch with the
American public. That’s an argument familiar to readers of Breitbart and
followers of Trump-friendly personalities like Sean Hannity.
“The
elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said
of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never
wash away, that will always be there.”
“The
mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with
following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of
those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He
did not name specific reporters or editors.)
“That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”
Of all of Mr. Trump’s advisers in the White House, Mr. Bannon is the one tasked with implementing the nationalist vision
that Mr. Trump channeled during the later months of the campaign, one
that stemmed from Mr. Bannon himself. And in many ways Mr. Trump’s first
week has put into action that vision — from the description of
“American Carnage’’ Mr. Trump laid out in his inauguration speech, to a
series of executive actions outlining policy on trade agreements,
immigration, the building of a border wall and the demands that Mexico
pay for it.
He
is one of the strongest forces in a White House with competing power
centers. A savvy manipulator of the press, and a proud provocateur, Mr.
Bannon was among the few advisers in Mr. Trump’s circle who was said to
have urged on Mr. Spicer’s confrontational, emotional statement to a
shocked White House briefing room on Saturday, when the White House
disputed press reports on the inauguration crowd size. He mostly shares
Mr. Trump’s view that the news media has misunderstood the movement that
the president rode into office.
On
the telephone, Mr. Bannon spoke in blunt but calm tones, peppered with a
dose of profanities, and humorously referred to himself at one point as
“Darth Vader.” He said, with ironic relish, that Mr. Trump was elected
by a surge of support from “the working class hobbits and deplorables.”
The
conversation was initiated by Mr. Bannon to offer praise for Mr.
Spicer, who has been criticized this week for making false claims at the
White House podium about the attendance of Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd;
for calling reporters dishonest and lecturing them about what stories
to write; and for failing to disavow Mr. Trump’s lie about widespread
voter fraud in the election.
Asked
if he was concerned that Mr. Spicer had lost credibility with the
press, Mr. Bannon chortled. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “We think
that’s a badge of honor. ‘Questioning his integrity’ — are you kidding
me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.”
“You’re
the opposition party,” Mr. Bannon said. “Not the Democratic Party.
You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.”
While
Mr. Bannon mostly referred to the “elite” or “mainstream” media, he
cited The New York Times and The Washington Post by name.
“The
paper of record for our beloved republic, The New York Times, should be
absolutely ashamed and humiliated,” Mr. Bannon said. “They got it 100
percent wrong.”
He added that he has been a reader of The Times for most of his adult life.
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