Breitbart News plans to speed up efforts to expand globally after its former executive chairman Stephen Bannon left his role as White House chief strategist and immediately returned to the conservative media outlet.
During a weekly radio show Saturday on SiriusXM, Breitbart Washington editor Matt Boyle likened Bannon’s return to that of a captain coming back to a pirate ship.
The outlet plans “much more aggressive reporting’’ and putting “establishment Republicans’’ on notice, Boyle said, according to Politico.
President Donald Trump weighed in on Bannon’s return to the media world. “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews…maybe even better than ever before,’’ the president tweeted on Saturday. “Fake News needs the competition!’’
Bannon led a Breitbart editorial meeting Friday evening, hours after his departure from the White House was announced. Company leaders hailed his return.
“The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,’’ Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said Friday, according to an article on the Breitbart website. “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”
‘Sky’s The Limit’
Breitbart News chief executive officer Larry Solov said the company’s “pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back’’ and that “the sky’s the limit.’’
In comments to Bloomberg News on Friday, Bannon said he felt liberated and ready for battle. “I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” he said.
Bannon, 63, the chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign and an architect of his election victory, was the leading champion of conservative populism within the administration.
On Saturday, Axios reported that friends of Bannon, whom it didn’t name, are speculating that he may start a television network or an online streaming news service.
According to a person close to Bannon, he had an hours-long meeting on Wednesday with conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, co-chief executive of Renaissance Technologies and a major financial supporter of both Trump and Bannon’s efforts.
