Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has tapped Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the conservative website Breitbart News, to run his campaign. That site’s founder, however, once criticized Trump’s politics.
Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012, said the businessman wasn’t actually conservative.
“Of course he’s not a conservative. He was for Nancy Pelosi before he was against Nancy Pelosi,” Breitbart said during a 2011 appearance on Fox News.
“Celebrity is everything in this country, and if these guys don’t learn how to play the media the way that Barack Obama played the media last election cycle and the way that Donald Trump is playing the election cycle, we’re going to probably get a celebrity candidate,” he added.
Breitbart News has unabashedly supported Trump’s presidential campaign. The site even sells shirts that say “Border Wall Construction Co.” ― a reference to Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the United States and Mexico.
The site was in the middle of a controversy in April, when Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager at the time, grabbed Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at a rally. Lewandowski faced a battery charge that was ultimately dropped, but Fields resigned from the company because she said it did not stand by her during the incident. (She is now a contributing reporter for The Huffington Post.)
Many people think Trump hired Bannon, who has no experience running a campaign, because he will be more permissive of the candidate’s nasty, off-the-cuff verbal attacks and pugilistic instincts.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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