Steve Bannon Compares Trump Coming Down the Golden Escalator to Nazi Propaganda and ‘Meant it as a Compliment’: New Book

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New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters’ new book, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, offers a startling insight into the thinking of former President Donald Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager, Steve Bannon.

Peters writes that when Bannon first saw Trump coming down the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential run in 2015, he thought to himself, “That’s Hitler!”

“He meant it as a compliment,” Peters explains in his book, which was published Tuesday. “As a documentarian himself who had studied and admired Riefenstahl’s work, Bannon saw some of her visual techniques in Trump’s production.”

Leni Riefenstahl was a German filmmaker, best known for her role in creating Nazi propaganda. Her film “Triumph of the Will” came to mind when Bannon saw Trump’s announcement.

“To create the illusion that Hitler towered over everyone around him as a figure of superhuman proportions, Riefenstahl would keep him tight in her frame, often placing him on a higher plane than his adoring subjects,” Peters explains.

“Bannon thought that Trump’s entrance looked strikingly similar, and that he was witnessing someone with an uncanny sense for manipulating public perception,” Peters writes.

Insider’s Jake Lahut notes that in the book’s “notes on sourcing — which involved interviews with over 300 people, mostly while Trump was still in office — Peters explains that quotes presented in italics and in the past tense indicate ‘material from interviews conducted with the author on-the-record.’”

The note explains that it was Bannon himself who recalled to Peters that when he saw Trump that he thought, “That’s Hitler.”