Under Bannon, the closed-system experiment project shifted emphasis from researching human space exploration and colonization toward the scientific study of earth's environment, pollution, and climate change.

[66][46] While making and screening the film, Bannon met Reagan's War author Peter Schweizer and publisher Andrew Breitbart,[46] who described him as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement.

"[71] In 2011, Bannon spoke at the Liberty Restoration Foundation in Orlando, Florida, about the economic crisis of 2008, the Troubled Assets Relief Program, and their impact in the origins of the Tea Party movement, and his films Generation Zero (2010) and The Undefeated.

[89][90] Bannon was executive chair and co-founder of the Government Accountability Institute, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization where he helped orchestrate the publication of Breitbart News senior Editor-at-large[91] Peter Schweizer's book Clinton Cash,[52][92] from its founding in 2012 until his departure in August 2016.

[93] The organization creates fact-based indictments against politicians using the deep web, tax filings, flight logs, and foreign government documents and then forwards their findings to the media.

[110] His appointment drew opposition from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Council on American–Islamic Relations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, and some Republican strategists because of statements in Breitbart News that were alleged to be racist or antisemitic.

[111][112][19][113] However, a number of prominent Jews of the (politically) conservative persuasion defended Bannon against the allegations of anti-Semitism, including Ben Shapiro,[111][114][115] David Horowitz,[116] Pamela Geller,[117] Bernard Marcus of the Republican Jewish Coalition,[118] Morton Klein,[119] the Zionist Organization of America,[118] and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

The letter stated that appointing Bannon "sends a disturbing message about what kind of president Donald Trump wants to be",[126][127][128] because his "ties to the White Nationalist movement have been well documented"; it went on to present several examples of Breitbart News's alleged xenophobia.

[141][142] The enacted arrangement was criticized by several members of previous administrations and was called "stone cold crazy" by Susan E. Rice, Barack Obama's last national security adviser.

[164] Some White House officials said Bannon's main purpose in serving on the committee was as a check against former national security advisor Michael T. Flynn, who had resigned in February 2017 for misleading the vice president about a conversation with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

"[174] In August 2020, members of the Senate intelligence committee told the Department of Justice (DOJ) that they believed that Bannon, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. may have misled them with their testimony about Russia investigation.

[181] In his 2019 book Siege, Wolff wrote, "Trump was vulnerable because for 40 years he had run what increasingly seemed to resemble a semi-criminal enterprise," then quoted Bannon as saying, "I think we can drop the 'semi' part."

[200] He reminded The Weekly Standard that he had joined then-presidential candidate Trump's campaign on August 14, 2016, and said he'd "always planned on spending one year", but that he stayed a few more days due to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[236] Bannon believes that these movements – along with Japan's Shinzo Abe, India's Narendra Modi, Russia's Vladimir Putin, Saudi Arabia's Mohammad bin Salman, China's Xi Jinping, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,[237] and Trump, as well as similar leaders in Egypt, the Philippines, Poland, and South Korea – are part of a global shift towards nationalism.

[255] On August 20, 2020, federal prosecutors in New York unsealed criminal charges against Stephen K. Bannon and three other men they alleged defrauded donors to a massive crowdfunding campaign that said it was raising money for construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The pair had bought Yan a plane ticket to the United States, provided her accommodation, coached her in media appearances and helped secure interviews with conservative television hosts including Tucker Carlson.

[282][283] Bannon promoted the project until the day before the indictment, saying "You've been the leader of this, assisting President Trump in building this wall in these tough areas" in his War Room: Pandemic podcast.

[286] Bannon was arrested by U.S. postal inspectors on Long Island Sound, off the coast of Connecticut,[287] on board People's Republic of China expatriate Guo Wengui's luxury yacht.

[294] In February, 2025, Bannon pleaded guilty to one state felony count of a scheme to defraud in the first degree and was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge, without any prison time or restitution.

[339][340] On June 6, 2024, Judge Carl Nichols granted the motion and ordered Bannon to report to prison by July 1 unless the full appeals court were to take the case and pause enforcement of the sentence.

[350] During the November 5, 2020, edition of his webcast, Bannon called for the beheadings of Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious diseases expert, and FBI director Christopher Wray.

[355][356] Lebanese-American author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, neoreactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin and conservative intellectual Michael Anton have been pointed out as three of the main influences in Steve Bannon's political thinking.

Speaking at Turning Point USA's America Fest in December 2023, he proposed that gun classes should be integrated into school curriculums as a means for children to defend themselves against bullies.

[387][388] Bannon strongly favors U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal,[389] and was supportive of the approach taken by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman during the 2017 Qatar diplomatic crisis.

[403][404] According to a BuzzFeed News report, Bannon was in private contact with Johnson during his visit to Britain that month, and the two men were previously in text communication during their respective tenures as White House chief strategist and British foreign secretary.

[406] According to the book War for Eternity, Bannon met notorious Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin in Rome in 2018 to advocate closer relations between the United States and Russia, as well as Traditionalist philosophy.

"[417] In his talk delivered to a small conference in the Vatican during 2014, Bannon said: "If you look back at the long history of the Judeo-Christian West struggle against Islam, I believe that our forefathers kept their stance, and I think they did the right thing.

[431] Bannon's ideology was the subject of the book War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum, where his thinking is described as combining elements of a radical version of the Traditionalist school with paleoconservatism and other more standard American conservative beliefs.

[442][357][443][444] Bannon's political beliefs have been influenced by René Guénon's traditionalism, a form of anti-modernist thought that views "certain ancient religions, including the Hindu Vedanta, Sufism, and medieval Catholicism" as being repositories of spiritual truth under attack by Western secularism; he synthesizes traditionalist beliefs with Catholic social doctrine, particularly the idea of subsidiarity, as expressed in the 1931 papal encyclical, Quadragesimo anno, defending that political matters ought to be handled by the lowest, least centralized competent authority.

[453] In referring to the associated views of Vladimir Putin, who is influenced by Evola follower Dugin, Bannon stated "We, the Judeo-Christian West, really have to look at what he's talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.