President Trump's former chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon is setting up a political foundation in Europe in the hopes of swinging power across the continent in favor of right-leaning nationalist parties such as France's National Front.
Bannon told The Daily Beast that The Movement, his forthcoming Europe-based group that will likely headquarter in Brussels, is meant to counter the influence of liberal billionaire George Soros and to encourage coordination between Europe's various nationalist parties.
“It was so successful that we're going to start staffing up,” Bannon said. “Everybody agrees that next May is hugely important, that this is the real first continent-wide face-off between populism and the party of Davos. This will be an enormously important moment for Europe.”
“Soros is brilliant,” he added. “He's evil but he's brilliant.”
Bannon went on to point to Europe's relatively lower cost of doing politics compared to the United States as one reason why he was optimistic about finding success in the region. Brexit, the U.K.'s decision to leave the European Union which Bannon heavily supported, was named as a wake-up call for his movement.
When they told me the spending cap was £7 million [for the campaigns], I go, ‘You mean £70 million? What the f-ck?!’ £7 million doesn’t buy anything. It doesn’t buy you Facebook data, it doesn’t buy you ads, it doesn’t do anything," Bannon said incredulously.
“Dude! You just took the fifth largest economy in the world out of the EU for £7 million!” he added.
In the interview, Bannon also took aim at German Prime Minister Angela Merkel, whom he blamed for a deal with Russia's Vladimir Putin over an oil pipeline that supplies much of Germany. Trump blasted the deal during a NATO summit in Brussels earlier this month.
“This is the lie of Angela Merkel. She’s a complete and total phony. The elites say Trump is disruptive but she’s sold out control to Russia for cheaper energy prices.”
Bannon was forced out of the White House last year by chief of staff John Kelly, and later burned by Trump who said the chief strategist had "very little" to do with his election victory in a tweet.
The former Breitbart chief, who left the publication last year, weathered intense criticism for his support of Roy Moore, a Republican Senate candidate in Alabama accused of inappropriate sexual acts with underage girls.
