UKIP leader Nigel Farage has said he is “mortified” by the establishment media’s constant attacks on Donald Trump’s director of strategy Steve Bannon, describing them as “laughable”.
Speaking to Raheem Kassam on Breitbart News Daily, Mr Farage said that if you challenge the establishment they lash out against you.
“They use mockery, they use abuse, but ultimately what they use above all else is the tactic of demonization,” he said.
This demonization consists of using pejorative terms against someone and then trying to make them stick as fact, he added.
Mr Farage said was “absolutely mortified” at the way the mainstream media has treated Steve Bannon, with various outlets repeating smears against him as fact without even double checking their accuracy.
“There needs to be a serious fight back on behalf of people who know Bannon,” he said.
“I’ve been working around Breitbart and indeed with Breitbart for several years, I’ve spent plenty of time with Steve Bannon. The idea that he is somehow anti-Semitic is almost laughable.
“I can’t think of a media organisation that has more clearly stood up for Israel and Jewish rights and indeed pointed out that in Brussels and Paris and many parts of Europe we are seeing Jews flee because of what is happening to them.”
“In all the time I have spent with Bannon, talking with Bannon, sitting round the table with Bannon, I have never heard him say anything that I thought was offensive,” he added.
Mr Farage said we were witnessing the entire American establishment, including the Republican establishment, gang up against Steve Bannon.
“There is an element of his own side trying to shoot him in the back, because there is an element in the old Republican Party who don’t like the fact that people like Bannon have come in, won an election and changed the direction of the Republican Party.”
He also said it was a “great honour” to meet with President-Elect Donald Trump on Saturday.
He said that many people have told him since the meeting what an “incredibly loyal guy” Mr Trump is, and said the reason he managed to meet the President-Elect so soon after his victory was most likely because he had shared a platform and helped his campaign.
“What we saw on Saturday was a thoughtful and reflective man,” Mr Farage said. “I got a genuine sense of his humanity in the sense that I really do believe that he want to make the lives of ordinary Americans better. I think he’s doing this presidency for absolutely the right reasons.”