Breitbart News executive director Steve Bannon recently addressed criticism that has dogged him since publicly aligning with President Donald Trump: that he is a racist. He denies such charges as baseless smears, claiming that blacks and hispanics are key parts of the winning nationalist coalition he is formulating to restore America.

“Once we get 25 percent or 30 percent of the black working class, once we get 25 percent or 30 percent of the Hispanic working class, we’re gonna govern for 100 years,” Bannon said to White House reporter Keith Koffler. Koffler is working on a new biography, “Bannon, Always the Rebel.”

Bannon is re-shaping the Republican Party to make it more amenable to what he believes are the core of America: the working class who embody the quality of life he remembers growing up being apart of a large Irish Catholic family in suburban Virginia.

“The reorganization of the Republican Party into a worker’s party, that’s what I focus on every day,” Bannon said.

Additionally, Bannon took aim at libertarian theorists of the CATO Institute. Bannon has frequently lobbed shots at the think-tank mentality of Republican elites who speak using talking points from corporate white papers instead of delivering populist rhetoric that stirs up the passions of the American people.



“I come from a black neighborhood,” Bannon said. “They’re conservative people. More conservative than the radicals I see coming out of the Cato Institute. You give me the Cato Institute versus a black, working-class neighborhood…[and I’ll take] the black working-class neighborhood, because it is workers, not libertarian theorists, who are the backbone of the country.”

Despite recent dismaying results in Virginia, New Jersey and other state elections across the country, Bannon remains hopeful in the long-term success of his strategy. He believes that Democrats doubling-down on inflammatory racial messages will only strengthen the cause he is championing.

“As long as they’re involved in identity politics, as long as they think ‘It’s alt-right, and racism, and anti-Semitism, they’re never going to focus on what the real issues are, which is really about working class economics,” Bannon said. “That’s all I’m focused on. And as long as they can’t answer that…they’re in a cul-de-sac that they literally can’t get out of to win. And that’s the place that I want them in right now.”