Former White House Chief Strategist and Breitbart News Executive Chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, commended Japan’s Prime Minister saying that Shinzo Abe recognized the importance of nationalism and identified him as a “Trump before Trump.”

Tomohiro Osaki reported at the Japan Times:

Visiting ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Sunday lauded Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his Trump-like effort to infuse Japan with a spirit of nationalism while unleashing a volley of scathing criticism against what he called the “mainstream media,” likening them to “running dogs” with a globalist agenda.

Bannon, who was in Tokyo over the weekend to attend a gathering of conservatives, said Japan was on the right track under Abe, whom he called a “Trump before Trump.”

“He talked about a nation’s pride, a nation’s destiny, a nation taking control of its future,” Bannon said when talking about Abe in his speech at the Japanese Conservative Political Action Conference 2017, co-hosted by the Japanese Conservative Union and the American Conservative Union.

As such, Bannon, who is now head of the right-wing news website Breitbart News, credited Abe for trying to “re-instill the spirit of nationalism” and for not shying away from discussing “vital” issues including Japan’s “rearmament.”