PBS 'Frontline' Director Wrongly Claims 7-Year Navy Vet Steve Bannon Had Zero Military Experience

Newsbusters.org ^ | May 24, 2017 | Tim Graham

[Kaslin]

On Tuesday night, the leftish PBS documentary series Frontline aired a documentary titled “Bannon’s War” which seemed awfully reminscent of their anti-Cheney documentary suggestively titled “The Dark Side.” If you’re not a liberal PBS fanatic, it was another boring and predictable slog, attacking Bannon and Trump with lots of black and white photos and scary-sounding orchestral music.

It was more eye-opening to see the Frontline director and writer Michael Kirk appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to promote his anti-Bannon film on Tuesday morning, where made a flat-out false statement about Bannon’s resume, saying “He’d never been in the military.” What? Even Kirk's attack film discussed Bannon’s seven years in the Navy. But this is what Kirk said on C-SPAN:

PBS 'Frontline' Director Wrongly Claims Steve Bannon Had No Military Experience

PEDRO ECHEVARRIA: He’s listed as a chief strategist, but you saw what happened the first time around, when the Republicans introduced health care, you saw the travel ban, legal challenges, did that bruise Steve Bannon in a sense?

MICHAEL KIRK: I can’t imagine that it did not. You also didn’t mention that Trump, after the CPAC and all the headlines and the Saturday Night Live, also removed Bannon from the National Security Council, where he really didn’t belong based on his credentials. He’d never been in the military. He’d never had any national security clearances or anything else, so it was a little odd that he was there, but he was removed unceremoniously.

Earlier: Kirk also compared Bannon to a Kamikaze and Marxist guerrilla/killer Che Guevara:

KIRK: Bannon’s philosophy has been chaos and disruption, and that worked very well to get Trump elected. They came promising they would break the administrative state, they would create chaos and disruption all over Washington, they would drain the swamp, and I think when it seemed to be working, Kushner was with him and Ivanka was with him for that time. But Bannon is a little like a Kamikaze, or Che Guevara to Fidel Castro. Those people don’t last very long once you assume the problems of governing.

This is where Kirk’s thesis broke down: he assumed Bannon would be thrown out by the time this film aired in May, and when it didn’t happen, they had to rewrite the script to meet reality. “I thought at the time we were finishing the film, I thought, well, we now have the end of our film, which is Kamikaze insurgent comes to Washington and works inside the government, lasts about a month.”

Oops.

Kirk also referred to Bannon (and Jeff Sessions) as a surprising “super fringe group of people” who burrowed into the government.

KIRK: I’ve been watching presidents since Jimmy Carter, and every administration has this fight. What most administrations have not had is the super fringe group of people like, and someone like Steve Bannon, who get you elected – but to stay inside the government and be vital inside the government in the West Wing is an extremely rare thing. Bannon brought three or four people – Jeff Sessions is the Attorney General, they were all a team once, and that is unusual in my view of White Houses. There are people in that Oval Office who were the former radicals, the outsiders, the fringe people who are in the West Wing! It’s interesting to watch and see how long they can last and how long they can withstand forces that have come on every sitting president, to get more to the center, to get more even to the globalist perspective the world is operating under and has been for a number of years.

And yet after all this left-wing Bannon-bashing, Kirk insists his PBS team is fair and balanced and upset Obama, too. (This may be true, because unlike Republicans, Democrats expect to be coddled by PBS):

KIRK: I think we probably made eleven films about the George W. Bush administration, the Iraq war, the torture issues, other things like that. We made eight films about the Obama administration, equally, I think touching raw nerves here and there. And here we are now making our second, really third film [on Trump]. We made a film called “The Choice,” which was the biography, the woven biography of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump back last September. So this is the third film of what will probably be nine or ten or twelve films over the next four to eight years, depending on how long the Trump administration lasts. We’re here for serious, long-form journalism – the high road, the sort of 30,000 foot view, not above the fray of politics, but to get down in there are see how do all these dots connect?

I don’t think Steve Bannon or conservatives in general would think these attacks on Bannon can be called “the high road,” and it’s certainly not above the fray of politics. But this film got a thumbs-up from the lefties at Salon.com: "Nothing in this Frontline version of Bannon’s biography affords a glimpse of humanity or warmth in the man, and perhaps that is for the best."

[piasa]

To a “liberal” these days, being openly straight is fringe.

[kabar]

The recusal was probably a mistake, but it may have been strategically the best course given the Dems and the MSM’s attacks on him for his “Russian contacts.” Hopefully, he will have a narrow definition as to what he must recuse himself from. Investigations into the unmasking of Americans, Obama’s use of the IC to spy on his political opponents, and the operation of the Clinton Foundation should not require Sessions to recuse himself.

[jmaroneps37]

They don’t care about the truth because they believe other media will cover their lies and people like us don’t count to them.

[Organic Panic]

Now there's a rat faced fink if I ever saw one. Is he related to Henry Waxman?

[StAnDeliver]

Che Guevara was Fidel's executioner. He executed people without remorse. He was a psychopath who did not fit in civilized society.

Fortunately, Che was disposed of in the same way. He died as a prison bitch. His karma was complete.

[PCPOET7]

we need two rewrite the libel laws so that anyone holding them selves up as a reporter is held two a higher standard then the general public. it is one thing for me to lie about some one but to have an organization like cnn or front line knowingly lie about someone is a lot worse because there is an false assumption that it is accurate information.

[The people have spoken]

I watched the show last night on PBS. It seemed fair and balanced. I thought Bannon came off looking pretty good.

[silent_jonny]

Does Michael Kirk have on a HALOWEEN MASK???

That photo needed a warning, lol. I haven't been that startled since Helen Thomas was alive.

[tophat9000]

super fringe group of people

---

Interesting term

You know in the world of The Walking Dead The living and still civilized are the “super fringe group of people”... being in the majority or the minority doesn't make you the right or the wrong ... the most perfect person..Jesus... was a minority of one

[cld51860]

LOL!!

[Grampa Dave]

Kirk needs to be fired for being a fraud posing as a journalist.

This ancient Grand Dad did a Google search on Bannon’s military service. In seconds, I found out that Bannon served 7 years in our Navy from Carter’s attempt to destroy our Navy to President Reagan’s build up of our Navy.

Below are excerpts from two interesting articles of Bannon’s service in our Navy:

It’s been nearly 40 years since President Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Stephen Bannon reported for duty as a young surface warfare officer aboard a Navy destroyer. It was just a few years after the end of the Vietnam war and under President Jimmy Carter, most Navy ships were undermanned at the time and across the military complaints about a “hollow force” were common.

During Bannon’s seven-year stint in the Navy, things would change rapidly. Ronald Reagan became president in 1980 and set out to build a 600-ship Navy. Military pay was raised, morale improved and there was plenty of opportunity for advancement in the growing Cold War-era force. Bannon would eventually rise to the rank of lieutenant and served in the Pentagon’s E-Ring.

https://www.navytimes.com/articles/nav-bannon-career

How Bannon’s Navy service during the Iran hostage crisis shaped his views!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannons-navy-service-during-the-iran-hostage-crisis-shaped-hisviews/2017/02/09/99f1e58a-e991-11e6-bf6f-301b6b443624_story.html?utm_term=.167b2e3cb64b

So does Kirk suffer from AIDs dementia made worse by drugs and or alcohol?

Or is he just a typical lying liberal idiot, incapable of doing a Google search to validate what he has written.

Are his supervisors dumber or even worse mentally?

[ponygirl]

I watched it too. Fair and balanced???? Are you sure we watched the same show? You don't recall the part where they showed cherry-picked screenshots from the comments section of Breitbart News with a distinctly whiny voiceover reading them? Calling people who read Breitbart News (and its namesake) "the dregs of American society?" You didn't pick up on the undercurrent theme that Steve Bannon is actually DC Comic super villain The Jackal and is plotting to overthrow the world? How he pushed and pushed a documentary filmmaker to admit that a "Huge war is coming... the Fourth Turning" and insinuated — no, make that STATED, not insinuated — that Bannon intends to bring it about?

As far as current media propaganda goes, I guess it would seem fair and balanced.

[stellaluna]

It said Bannon was never in the military. That’s a flat out lie. How fair and balanced could the rest of it be?

[dsc]

“people like us don’t count to them.”

Is there no interest, even on FR, for a march on Washington?

The Leftist scum have blathered on about “million man” this and that, but I bet we could actually get a million.

[dsc]

“Che was disposed of in the same way. He died as a prison bitch.”

Um, no, he was executed by firing squad at the order of the president of Bolivia.

[The_Media_never_lie]

I thought they looked up to Che and Fidel?

Are they saying they respect Bannon?

Yep!

[RetiredTexasVet]

PBS - Probably Bull Sh!t.

[Colonelbuzzsaw]

Anything that gets a thumbs-up from the quaint online blog called Salon, is of no interest to me.

Thanks for the review. I'll avoid the Bannon hit job. PBS is a wasteland. Defund it now!

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

PBS keeps giving the sane American public one reason after another to defund them, and I like many of their cultural shows, but it is time to stop them promoting leftist BS and lies.

Either have people on who tell the truth (a little research would establish that) or go find your own funds.