# Steve Bannon — "the platform for the alt-right" > [!quote] "We're the platform for the alt-right." > — Steve Bannon, to Mother Jones, July 2016 ## Context [[Steve Bannon]], then executive chairman of [[Breitbart News]], said this to Mother Jones reporter Sarah Posner in July 2016 — the same summer he took over Trump's campaign. He was describing, approvingly and in his own words, the editorial identity he had built at the site. After the [[Alt-Right]] became synonymous with white nationalism in the public mind, Bannon and his defenders tried to recast the remark as a reference to a broader "younger, edgier" conservatism rather than the racialist movement. ## Why this matters This is the single most direct on-the-record link between a major political-media operation, the man about to run a winning presidential campaign, and the [[Alt-Right]]. It documents Breitbart's self-conscious role as the bridge carrying online far-right politics into the mainstream conservative coalition — the media counterpart to Bannon's later European organizing. The subsequent walk-back is itself instructive: it shows how the movement's enablers managed the term once its meaning became politically toxic. A foundational receipt for the Breitbart-as-bridge thesis. ## Verification - **Reporting:** [Mother Jones (Sarah Posner), August 2016](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news/); [TIME](https://time.com/4569895/donald-trump-stephen-bannon-alt-right/). - **Status:** Verbatim, on the record to a named reporter. Bannon does not deny saying it; he disputes the interpretation. ## Related quotes - [[Steve Bannon - badge of honor]] — the transnational sequel, coaching a European far-right party two years later.