Bloomberg Businessweek: Breitbart News the Center of the
‘Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’
by Breitbart News 8 Oct 2015
From Joshua Green writing at Bloomberg:
It’s nearing midnight as Steve Bannon pushes past the
bluegrass band in his living room and through a crowd of Republican
congressmen, political operatives, and a few stray Duck Dynasty cast
members. He’s trying to make his way back to the SiriusXM Patriot radio
show, broadcasting live from a cramped corner of the 14-room townhouse he
occupies a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court. It’s late February, the annual
Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing, and Bannon, as
usual, is the whirlwind at the center of the action.
Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News,
the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge
Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with
Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and
restrained. He’d spent the day at CPAC among the conservative faithful, zipping
back and forth between his SiriusXM booth and an unlikely pair of guests he was
squiring around: Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing UKIP party,
and Phil Robertson, the bandanna’d, ayatollah-bearded Duck Dynasty
patriarch who was accepting a free-speech award. CPAC is a beauty contest for
Republican presidential hopefuls. But Robertson, a novelty adornment invited
after A&E suspended him for denouncing gays, delivered a wild rant about
“beatniks” and sexually transmitted diseases that upstaged them all, to
Bannon’s evident delight. “If there’s an explosion or a fire somewhere,” says
Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington political editor, “Steve’s probably nearby
with some matches.” Afterward, everyone piled into party buses and headed for
the townhouse.
As befits someone with his peripatetic background, Bannon is
a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde figure in the complicated ecosystem of the right—he’s
two things at once. And he’s devised a method to influence politics that
marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive
out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the
nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that builds rigorous, fact-based
indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media
outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the
broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is the project Bannon was
so excited about at CPAC: the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s
president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why
Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.
Published in May by HarperCollins, the book dominated the political landscape
for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton
than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors.
Jeb Bush is about to come in for the same treatment. On Oct.
19, GAI will publish Schweizer’s e-book, Bush Bucks: How Public Service and
Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich, that examines how Bush enriched himself
after leaving the Florida governor’s mansion in 2007. A copy obtained by Bloomberg
Businessweek examines Bush’s Florida land deals, corporate board
sinecures, and seven-figure salary with Lehman Brothers, whose 2008 bankruptcy
touched off the financial crisis. “It’s not as cinematic as the Clintons, with
their warlords and Russian gangsters and that whole cast of bad guys,” says
Bannon. “Bush is more prosaic. It’s really just grimy, low-energy crony
capitalism.”
While attacking the favored candidates in both parties at
once may seem odd, Bannon says he’s motivated by the same populist disgust with
Washington that’s animating candidates from Trump to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
16%. Like both, Bannon is
having a bigger influence than anyone could have reasonably expected. But in
the Year of the Outsider, it’s perhaps fitting that a figure like Bannon, whom
nobody saw coming, would roil the national political debate.
Most days, Bannon can be found in his Hyde persona, in the
Washington offices of Breitbart News. Operating from the basement of his
townhouse—known to all as the Breitbart Embassy—Breitbart’s pirate crew
became tribunes of the rising Tea Party movement after Barack Obama’s election,
bedeviling GOP leaders and helping to foment the 2013 government shutdown. The
site has also made life hell for Democrats by, for example, orchestrating the
career-ending genital tweeting misfortune that cost New York Representative
Anthony Weiner his seat in Congress in 2011. Tipped to Weiner’s proclivity for
sexting with female admirers, Bannon says, the site paid trackers to follow his
Twitter account 24 hours a day and eventually intercepted a crotch shot Weiner
inadvertently made public. The ensuing scandal culminated in the surreal scene,
carried live on television, of Andrew Breitbart hijacking Weiner’s press
conference and fielding questions from astonished reporters.
On occasion, this partisan zeal has led to egregious errors.
Just before our lunch in January, a Breitbart reporter published an
article assailing Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch—but went
after the wrong woman. She wasn’t, as the site reported, the Loretta Lynch who
was once part of Bill Clinton’s defense team. The embarrassed reporter asked
for time off. Bannon, allergic to any hint of concession, refused: “I told him,
‘No. In fact, you’re going to write a story every day this week.’ ” He shrugs.
“We’re honey badgers,” he explains. “We don’t give a s—.”
But Bannon realizes that politics is sometimes more
effective when it’s subtle. So he’s nurtured a Dr. Jekyll side: In 2012 he
became founding chairman of GAI, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization
staffed with lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators. “What Peter
and I noticed is that it’s facts, not rumors, that resonate with the best
investigative reporters,” Bannon says, referring to GAI’s president.
Established in Tallahassee to study crony capitalism and governmental
malfeasance, GAI has collaborated with such mainstream news outlets as Newsweek,ABC
News, and CBS’s 60 Minutes on stories ranging from insider trading
in Congress to credit card fraud among presidential campaigns. It’s essentially
a mining operation for political scoops that now churns out books like Clinton
Cash and Bush Bucks.
Read the rest of the story at Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg
LP acquired BusinessWeek.
Note: Michael R.
Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg
LP, the founder of Everytown for Gun
Safety, a co-chair for the Mayors
Against Illegal Guns, was a contributor for Americans for Responsible Solutions, the New York (NY) mayor, was a benefactor for the Harlem Children's Zone, and a donor for the Robin Hood Foundation.
George
Soros was a benefactor for the Harlem
Children's Zone, the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society,
a contributor for the American Bridge
21st Century, a member of the Democracy
Alliance, and William D. Zabel was
his divorce lawyer.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Harlem Children's Zone, the Robin
Hood Foundation, and Human Rights
First.
Everytown
for Gun Safety is a “gun safety”
group for guns.
Mayors
Against Illegal Guns is a “gun
safety” group for guns.
Americans
for Responsible Solutions is a “gun
safety” PAC for guns.
Robert
McKay was a contributor for the American
Bridge 21st Century, the chairman for the Democracy Alliance, and a director at the Foundation for National Progress.
Richard Melcher
is a director at the Foundation for
National Progress, and was the bureau chief for BusinessWeek.
Bloomberg
LP acquired BusinessWeek.
Stephen J. Adler
was an editor for BusinessWeek, and
is a director at the Committee to
Protect Journalists.
Norman Pearlstine
is a director at the Committee to
Protect Journalists, and was the chief content officer for Bloomberg LP.
Daniel L.
Doctoroff was the president & CEO for Bloomberg LP, and is a director at Human Rights First.
William
D. Zabel is the chair for Human
Rights First, was George Soros’s
divorce lawyer, and a trustee at the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for Human Rights First, the Harlem
Children's Zone, and the Robin Hood
Foundation.
Michael R.
Bloomberg was a benefactor for the Harlem
Children's Zone, a donor for the Robin
Hood Foundation, a contributor for Americans
for Responsible Solutions, the New
York (NY) mayor, is the founder of Everytown
for Gun Safety, a co-chair for the Mayors
Against Illegal Guns, and the founder of Bloomberg LP.
Bloomberg
LP acquired BusinessWeek.
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