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Things haven’t been going so well for Bannon lately-while it was great seeing him blab to Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury that way, this left him as persona non grata to Herr Trump and the Right wing. Indeed, Bannon was the one Trump associate the Devin Nunes and friends held in contempt for refusing to answer Congress’ questions.
Adam Schiff referred to him as ‘a man without a country’
And indeed, Bannon has shown up in France recently making speeches on behalf of France’s cryptofascist Popular Front.
Meanwhile even Breitbart disowned him after what Bannon told Wolff. Then again, Breitbart itself is now seeing its readership plunge in the post Bannon era.
Ben Shapiro, a former Breitbart editor who is now editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, said that the site is at a crossroads. “They hitched their wagon to Trump, but more importantly, they hitched their wagon to Bannon,” he said. “And when Bannon left, what was the character of the site going to be? That was always a serious question.”
For his part, Bannon is back in the news again and not in good way. The Mercers-like almost everyone else on the Right-disowned him after his disloyal words about Trump and his family. But now the Mercers and Bannon are on the same bus again with Cambridge Analytica’s unethical and even illegal practices in the news.
A recent whistleblower who left CA revealed that Corey Lewandowski spoke to the company in 2015 on behalf of the Trump campaign.
Now there is a new report that Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s collection of Facebook data. This is particularly not a good look for Bannon as CA gathered the data under false pretenses.
“Conservative strategist Stephen K. Bannon oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s early efforts to collect troves of Facebook data as part of an ambitious program to build detailed profiles of millions of American voters, a former employee of the data-science firm said Tuesday.”
“The 2014 effort was part of a high-tech form of voter persuasion touted by the company, which under Bannon identified and tested the power of anti-establishment messages that later would emerge as central themes in President Trump’s campaign speeches, according to Chris Wylie, who left the company at the end of that year.”
Among the messages tested were “drain the swamp” and “deep state,” he said.
“Cambridge Analytica, which worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, is now facing questions about alleged unethical practices, including charges that the firm improperly handled the data of tens of millions of Facebook users. On Tuesday, the company’s board announced that it was suspending its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after British television released secret recordings that appeared to show him talking about entrapping political opponents.”
“More than three years before he served as Trump’s chief political strategist, Bannon helped launch Cambridge Analytica with the financial backing of the wealthy Mercer family as part of a broader effort to create a populist power base. Earlier this year, the Mercers cut ties with Bannon after he was quoted making incendiary comments about Trump and his family.”
As for Alexander Nix-and the recent scandalous video where he talked merrily about political entrapment-in 2014 Steve Bannon was his boss.
I”n an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post at his lawyer’s London office, Wylie said that Bannon — while he was a top executive at Cambridge Analytica and head of Breitbart News — was deeply involved in the company’s strategy and approved spending nearly $1 million to acquire data, including Facebook profiles, in 2014.”
“We had to get Bannon to approve everything at this point. Bannon was Alexander Nix’s boss,” said Wylie, who was Cambridge Analytica’s research director. “Alexander Nix didn’t have the authority to spend that much money without approval.”
“Bannon, who served on the company’s board, did not respond to a request for comment. He served as vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica from June 2014 to August 2016, when he became chief executive of Trump’s campaign, according to his publicly filed financial disclosure. In 2017, he joined Trump in the White House as his chief strategist.”
An important question for Bannon is if he knew how CA was obtaining the data-through misrepresentation.
“It is unclear whether Bannon knew how Cambridge Analytica was obtaining the data, which allegedly was collected through an app that was portrayed as a tool for psychological research but was then transferred to the company.”
“Facebook has said that information was improperly shared and that it requested the deletion of the data in 2015. Cambridge Analytica officials said that they had done so, but Facebook said it received reports several days ago that the data was not deleted.”
“Wylie said that both Bannon and Rebekah Mercer, whose father, Robert Mercer, financed the company, participated in conference calls in 2014 in which plans to collect Facebook data were discussed, although Wylie acknowledged that it was not clear they knew the details of how the collection took place.”
Bannon “approved the data-collection scheme we were proposing,” Wylie said.
CA saw that Trumpism-before Trump became a thing-had a real constituency.
:The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm already had found a high level of alienation among young, white Americans with a conservative bent.”
In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intended the “drain the swamp” of Washington’s entrenched political community and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called “race realism,” he recounted.
Interestingly-for some reason-the firm also tested views of Vladimir Putin. So who put Putin on their agenda? That’d be interesting to know.
UPDATE: The question of Bannon and his relationship to CA is yet another question for Mueller when he testifies-presuming he will in the not too distant future.