Steve Bannon Rips Facebook, CNN

Steve Bannon

Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on Thursday took aim at CNN and Facebook, defended his dishing in the White House tell-all “Fire and Fury,” and deflected questions about his involvement with the Cambridge Analytica firm at the center of the data breach controversy that has enveloped Facebook.

According to Variety, Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, said he was looking around for a possible next act in media but didn’t get specific. “A lot of people have been talking to me about different media things,” Bannon said. “This is a very difficult time in news. It’s a tough time in media.”

Later in the 40-minute conversation, Bannon expressed interest in “mobilizing a digital grassroots army in the United States –a think tank or something to weaponize ideas.”

Bannon painted Facebook as a menacing force and slammed CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has apologized for not taking steps to enforce privacy standards that allowed Cambridge Analytica to siphon up so much information about prospective voters.


Zuckerberg’s “entire business model is built on taking that data for free and monetizing it, and then writing algorithms on a wall that treat you like a hamster on a wheel,” Bannon said.

Earlier in the day, CNN Worldwide chief Jeff Zucker spoke at the conference and slammed Fox News for being too cozy with the Trump administration, calling it “a pure propaganda machine.”

Bannon responded: “You can’t name a more propaganda outfit than CNN. Did anybody at CNN get fired for the awful mess they made of the 2016 campaign, which was a disgrace to journalism? No. That is a propaganda outfit. Every night it’s hate Trump.”