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For Martin Bannon, a former telephone company lineman and splicer who worked his way into management without a college degree, the AT&T stock was sacrosanct.

That all changed during the panicked days of the 2008 financial crisis. As the market plummeted, Bannon, who raised five children on Richmond’s North Side, cashed out the stock that held virtually his entire net worth.

When Steve Bannon saw Wall Street’s recklessness hit home and the impact on his father, it fueled his rage against a system he now describes as “socialism for the wealthy,” where benefits accrue to those at the top while the downside is spread among the masses.

As overleveraged financial institutions ran into trouble, Steve Bannon said, they wanted “the Marty Bannons of the world” to bail them out.

The events of 2008 pushed Steve Bannon, a former investment banker and filmmaker, further into the world of politics and conservative media, setting him on a path to become chairman of the provocative right-wing website Breitbart News.

From there, he gained the ear of Donald Trump, got hired by Trump’s presidential campaign, and followed Trump to the White House as one of the chief architects of Trump’s new brand of Republican populism.