"The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore. Now is that a coincidence?” Steve Bannon said. | Mary Schwalm/AP Bannon compares Moore accusations to infamous Trump Access Hollywood tape

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon on Thursday likened a report that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore had a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl to last year’s publication of the infamous Access Hollywood tape, telling a New Hampshire audience that The Washington Post, which published both, is “part of the apparatus of the Democratic Party.”

"The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore. Now is that a coincidence?” Bannon said in remarks in Manchester that were reported by CBS News. “That's what I mean when I say opposition party, right? It's purely part of the apparatus of the Democratic Party. They don't make any bones about it. By the way, I don't mind it. I'll call them out every day."


Moore has denied the allegations in the story published by the Post, which also reported that the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice also sought sexual relationships with three other women who were teenagers at the time. Top Republicans, among them Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have said Moore should step aside from the race if the allegations are true.

The Post’s report adds fuel to the unease that already existed among Washington Republicans about Moore’s candidacy. The ex-judge was twice thrown off the bench in Alabama, once for refusing to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the state judicial building and again for refusing to recognize the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. He has said that “homosexual conduct” should be illegal and that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress.

Bannon, who returned to his previous job of running the conservative outlet Breitbart News upon leaving the White House, told the New Hampshire crowd that "it's not a free and fair media anymore." He conceded that his own media outlet is not without an agenda, that Breitbart is “kind of an advocacy group in our own way, in the way we present grass roots and present working-class people and economic nationalism, we're not shy about it.”

Bannon’s support for Moore is part of the former White House adviser’s vision for Washington, one that includes a wave of nationalist, populist politicians unseating incumbents in Congress. Bannon has made no secret of his distaste for the Washington establishment, telling Fox News earlier this week that he believes McConnell should resign.

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In an interview this week with The New York Times, Bannon complained that McConnell had used the power of the majority leader’s office to “quite frankly, thwart President Trump’s agenda.” He predicted that McConnell would no longer be the majority leader this time next year.

“The Senate and Mitch McConnell have been the — the most outrageous in their lack of support of President Trump’s agenda,” Bannon told the Times. “I have an objective that Mitch McConnell will not be majority leader, and I believe will be done before this time next year.”

Trump’s former chief strategist also defended the president against criticism that he has fanned the flames of white supremacy in the U.S., arguing that such arguments are “nonsense.” The president has spoken relatively warmly, at times, of such groups, including at a news conference over the summer when he told reporters that there had been “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

But Bannon insisted that Trump “is the least racist guy I’ve ever met” and that “nothing in the campaign, and nothing that he’s done to date” has been responsible for spurring the uptick in activity from hate groups.

“You can’t help with a couple of, these guys are marginalia to marginalia. Right? So they’ll grab on to anything — and by the way, every time they say Trump’s name, MSNBC has got a camera on it and The New York Times has an article on it, right? Because you’re obsessed with it,” Bannon said. “A hundred percent it’s a hundred percent media fabrication.”