Steve Bannon's 8 most outrageous quotes

Impact

Of all of President Trump’s entourage, senior adviser Steve Bannon is perhaps the most influential, and certainly the most controversial. Bannon, a Harvard Business School MBA and right-wing documentarian, came to Trump’s team from Breitbart, a hard-right news/opinion site that frequently draws the ire of liberals, centrists and anyone with a well-developed sense of decency. Under Bannon’s stewardship, Breitbart published articles with offensive, often slur-laden headlines like, "WHO Report: Trannies 49 Xs Higher HIV Rate," "There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews" and "Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy."

But the nonsense doesn’t stop at the front door to Breitbart. Bannon is a self-proclaimed Leninist who has said he wants to topple America’s political elites and bring its political establishment crashing down. He’s known for his frank, often incendiary quotes. Here are some of his most outrageous statements.

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On Women

In a 2011 radio interview unearthed by BuzzFeed News, Bannon described progressive women as “a bunch of dykes” and said the sight of successful conservative women like Michele Bachmann, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin “drives the left insane.”

In 1994, Bannon called Abigail Alling, an employee of his Biosphere II project (imagine the biodome from Biodome) a “29-year-old bimbo” and threatened to “kick her ass,” according to recordings discovered by BuzzFeed News.

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On the Republican Party

In a 2010 interview with radio show Political Vindication Radio, shared in October by the Atlantic, Bannon said of the Republican party, “What we need to do is bitch-slap the GOP.”

Bannon called Republican leadership “cunts” in a 2014 email exchange with a Breitbart reporter obtained by the Daily Beast.

In a 2016 interview with the Washington Post, Bannon said Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan "was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.”

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On the alt-right

In a 2016 interview with Mother Jones, Bannon said of Breitbart: “We’re the platform for the alt-right.”

In the same interview, Bannon allowed that the alt-right might contain some racists. "Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely,” he said. “Look, are there some people that are white nationalists that are attracted to some of the philosophies of the alt-right? Maybe. Are there some people that are anti-Semitic that are attracted? Maybe. Right? Maybe some people are attracted to the alt-right that are homophobes, right? But that's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements."

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On Occupy Wall Street

In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, Bannon described Occupy Wall Street protesters as “the greasiest, dirtiest people you will ever see”; Bannon made a documentary about the 2012 protests.