White House chief strategist Steve Bannon mocked the media for how it “portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition and now they’re portraying the administration,” saying, “it’s “always wrong,” during a speaking engagement at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday.
Bannon, who rarely speaks publicly, joined White House chief of staff Reince Priebus at CPAC for a panel discussion and called President Trump “the greatest public speaker” since William Jennings Bryan, who was Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson from 1913-1915.
Bannon pointed to the press assembled in the room and referred to them as the “opposition party,” which is nothing new for President Trump’s top adviser, who also said Thursday the media was “cry and weeping” on Election Day.
“This is another thing that the mainstream media or the opposition party never caught. If you want to see the Trump agenda, it’s very simple. It was all in the speeches,” Bannon said, explaining that Trump’s campaign promises were laid out during campaign speeches.
Bannon called Trump “maniacally focused” and said the media was “dead wrong” on the chaos on the campaign and the transition, before explaining that the media will continue to fail when it comes to Trump coverage.
“They are absolutely dead wrong about what is going on today,” Bannon said. “The mainstream media better understand something, all of those promises are gonna be implemented.”
Bannon, who ran right-wing media organization Breitbart News until joining Trump’s team, is often credited for shaping Trump rhetoric — especially when things the president says get called into question by the mainstream media.
“They’re corporatists, globalists media. They’re adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has,” Bannon said when the media was brought up later during the panel discussion by Priebus.
Last month, Bannon told the New York Times, “The media here is the opposition party,” adding, “They don’t understand this country.” The former Breitbart executive and other Donald Trump surrogates have been combative with the media, often calling CNN “fake news.”
Trump recently shocked the media industry when a “Mainstream Media Accountability Survey” was posted on the GOP’s website, as well as President Trump’s own site.
MSNBC, CNN and Fox News were each singled out in questions, with the survey asking if the organizations are trusted when it comes to Trump. The survey, which refers to Trump’s administration as a “movement,” starts by asking: “Do you believe that the mainstream media has reported unfairly on our movement?”
Check out the video above.