Lunch with Steve Bannon

Gabriel Sherman: “Bannon has a canny ability to cultivate mainstream journalists… In August 2015, I received an e-mail from Kurt Bardella, who at the time handled Breitbart’s public relations… For the previous three years, Bannon had tried to destroy my professional reputation.”

“A few days after Bardella e-mailed, I met Bannon for lunch at the Bryant Park Grill in Midtown Manhattan. … Bannon shook my hand graciously. He told me he enjoyed my book on Ailes. What about all the hit pieces he published? ‘Ha! Those were love taps, dude. Just business.’ We proceeded to have a highly entertaining lunch swapping media and political gossip.”