I met Steve Bannon for the first time in September 2013 at the so-called Breitbart Embassy on Capitol Hill in Washington.

I had spent the better part of the previous seven years working for Republican members of Congress before making the leap to start my own public relations firm. Like anyone starting a business, I was eager to find clients. In Breitbart I had a media platform at my disposal to attract a stable.

Before that meeting, I had never met or even heard of Steve, and so I approached it with an open mind. But as I would come to learn over the course of two years working with him closely, his character and temperament made his stunning fall over the past few days inevitable.

In that first meeting, Steve described his ambitious vision for Breitbart. He wanted to seize on the social media revolution to create a central digital destination for conservatives. His observation — entirely correct — was that the center-right media universe was fractured and underserved by the mainstream media. The Tea Party movement that swept unconventional Republicans into office in 2010 represented a turning point that upended the establishment, and Steve wanted to use Breitbart to tap into that movement.