Buzzfeed News
By McKay Coppins
August 9, 2015
As
Donald Trump faces a growing backlash from conservative media over his
recent attacks on a Fox News host, one prominent right-wing outlet
remains firmly in his corner:
Breitbart News, which has set itself apart by plastering its homepage
with fawning headlines about the candidate, and all-caps assaults on his
critics.
But
not everyone within the website’s editorial ranks is on board with
Breitbart’s boosterism, and many inside the company believe Trump has
provided undisclosed financial
backing to the outlet in exchange for glowing coverage, as I report in
my forthcoming book about the GOP and 2016, The Wilderness.
According
to four sources with knowledge of the situation, editors and writers at
the outlet have privately complained since at least last year that the
company’s top
management was allowing Trump to turn Breitbart into his own fan
website — using it to hype his political prospects and attack his
enemies. One current editor called the water-carrying “despicable” and
“embarrassing,” and said he was told by an executive last
year that the company had a financial arrangement with Trump. A second
Breitbart staffer said he had heard a similar description of the site’s
relationship with the billionaire but didn’t know the details; and a
third source at the company said he knew of
several instances when managers had overruled editors at Trump’s
behest. Additionally, a conservative communications operative who works
closely with Breitbart described conversations in which “multiple
writers and editors” said Trump was paying for the ability
to shape coverage, and added that one staffer claimed to have seen
documentation of the “pay for play.”
All
four sources spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize
their jobs; and none knew exactly how Trump’s alleged arrangement with
the privately held company
worked.
This
story is adapted from The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican
Party’s Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White
House, due out Dec. 1 from Little,
Brown and Company.
Breitbart
executive chair Steve Bannon responded to questions with a statement
denying that the company has ever had a “financial relationship” with
the candidate.
“We
have no financial relationship with Donald Trump as an investor,
advertiser or in any other capacity at this time — nor have we ever,”
Bannon said. “The insinuation
that we do — or did — is a lie. Mr. Trump is a savvy and successful
businessman but not the type of investor I partner with in emerging
growth companies.” (Bannon’s full statement can be found at the bottom
of this article.)
Trump’s
personal financial disclosure form does not indicate an ownership stake
in Breitbart, suggesting that any financial support he may have given
to the site did not
grant him equity in the company.
The
site was founded by the conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, who
died just as it was ramping up in 2012. His acolytes have at times
feuded bitterly over its
direction, but Bannon, who’s also produced a hagiographic film about
Sarah Palin, has turned it into a home for a stridently anti-immigration
and anti-Washington right, making Trump a natural hero for its
audience. And while many on staff roll their eyes at
the site’s Donald-worship — noting that the outlet’s founder was no fan
of Trump — the candidate is not without some genuine in-house fans. For
instance, Matt Boyle, a political reporter who frequently interviews
the billionaire, was described by two of his
colleagues as starstruck by the man he reflexively calls “Mr. Trump.”
During
the 2016 campaign, the site has also championed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, both of whom have deep roots in the tea party
movement.
But
Breitbart’s steadfast advocacy for the New York real estate mogul has
been thrown into sharp relief in recent days, as Trump nastily
criticized Fox News host Megyn
Kelly. After the popular conservative broadcaster aggressively grilled
Trump during Thursday’s presidential debate, he unleashed an all-night
Twitter rant against her “inappropriate” conduct, and eventually
suggested on CNN that she had been menstruating during
the event. “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes,”
Trump said on CNN. “Blood coming out of her wherever…” The crack
prompted a chorus of scorn from all quarters of conservative media,
including a last-minute announcement that Trump had been
disinvited from this weekend’s RedState Gathering, a high-profile
conservative convention in Atlanta where several Republican candidates
spoke.
Still, Breitbart has stayed true to Trump.
On
Saturday afternoon, Erick Erickson — the organizer of the RedState
Gathering and editor of its influential namesake blog — tweeted that his
decision to rescind Trump’s
invitation had “shut down Breitbart coverage” of the event. The tweet,
which he later deleted, included a screenshot of an internal message
apparently written by Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow instructing
staffers that any story about the convention
would first have to be approved by himself and Bannon.
The
fruits of this editorial edict could be be seen by scrolling through
the site’s homepage Saturday, where headlines like, “GOP CANDIDATES JUMP
ON BANDWAGON TO CRITICIZE
TRUMP,” sat alongside a column approvingly titled, “WHAT’S THE SECRET
TO DONALD TRUMP’S APPEAL? NATIONALISM,” and a video of Marlow accusing
Fox News of “trying to take out Trump” at the behest of the dreaded GOP
establishment. Unlike virtually all of Breitbart’s
peers on the conservative web, the site’s extensive coverage of the
Trump-Kelly feud has been almost universally pro-Trump, with one story
declaring that the Fox host had “legitimized the ‘war on women’ mantra
used by the Democratic Party,” and another recapping
a defense of Trump by former Playboy model and Celebrity Apprentice
contestant Brande Roderick.
A
spokesperson for Trump did not respond to requests for comment. But my
sources at Breitbart said the billionaire has regularly taken advantage
of his relationship with
the site by placing calls to Bannon and asking for stories to be
written about himself. They said his typical requests for coverage in
the past tended to center on his serial flirtations with running for
office, but they added that his constant presence on
the homepage — and his general knack for pandering to the conservative
fever swamps — had won him a true following among their readership.
Asked
whether Trump makes such coverage requests, Bannon said in his
statement: “As Executive Chairman of a company in this space plus
hosting six hours of a national
political news show on Sirius XM Patriot every week, I also personally
talk with many of the candidates and their senior staffers often.”
A
search of Trump’s name in the site’s archives yields thousands of
results, including some negative stories, but also years’ worth of
enthusiastic coverage of the billionaire’s
presidential prospects — and plenty of credulous stories about his
years-long birther crusade, as well.
Among
Breitbart’s more recent stories about Trump, there is a story headlined
“THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT REASONS TRUMP WOULD MAKE A GREAT PRESIDENT,” as
well as an “EXCLUSIVE”
detailing Trump’s trip to the southern border that includes the
disclosure that Breitbart Texas managing director Brandon Darby worked
with a border agent to prepare the trip.
There is also a rave review of Trump’s book, Time to Get Tough, written by Bannon himself.
“Detailed,
innovative, and smart, Time to Get Tough rivals all other GOP
presidential candidates’ books in both specificity and serious policy
proposals,” Bannon writes.
“It’s a book to be read by conservatives and feared by Trump’s
detractors.”
Here is Bannon’s full statement in response to my questions about Breitbart’s relationship with Trump:
“We
have no financial relationship with Donald Trump as an investor,
advertiser or in any other capacity at this time — nor have we ever. The
insinuation that we do —
or did — is a lie. Mr. Trump is a savvy and successful businessman but
not the type of investor I partner with in emerging growth companies. In
fact, Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign hasn’t — unlike other campaigns
— bought digital advertising on our site,
though we would certainly be open for business on that front as we are
with every campaign from both parties. Many campaigns have taken
advantage of the fact Breitbart News Network has nearly 20 million
readers and 90 million page views per month.
“We
would assume Mr. Trump’s campaign would seek to advertise on our pages
just like the campaigns of Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Carly
Fiorina and others have.
As for our coverage of Trump, he’s the Republican frontrunner and we’re
glad his campaign — just like every other campaign on the Republican
side and certain campaigns on the Democratic side — values our
impeccable news judgment and our audience. We are not
ashamed that our reporters and editors regularly communicate with him
and his staff just like they do with all the other campaigns for the
presidency. That’s our job: Get news about what is happening on the
campaign trail out to American people. We pride ourselves
on being at the forefront of the coverage of the conservative populist
movement in America, the United Kingdom and Europe.
“In
the U.S., we’ve had reporters present at nearly every presidential
campaign launch in both parties and offered unrivaled comprehensive
coverage of the entire election
as we continue to build a best-in-class news team. As Executive
Chairman of a company in this space plus hosting six hours of a national
political news show on Sirius XM Patriot every week, I also personally
talk with many of the candidates and their senior
staffers often — including three different candidates we are scheduling
for Sunday night’s show.”
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