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Chief Strategist Steve Bannon Speaks At Noted Conservative Conference

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WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) - Members of the Trump administrative are drumming up support at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

Thursday morning, Kellyanne Conway thanked the audience for helping Trump win the presidency.

"Thank you for sticking with the conservative movement with principals," said Conway.

She was followed by Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon.

"If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight you are sadly mistaken, every day, every day is a fight."

Bannon showed the adversarial style he is famous for, taking aim at the media as the opposition party

"If you look at the opposition party and how they portrayed the campaign, the transition and now they're portraying the administration it's always wrong," he said. "It's not only not going to bet better, it's going to get worse every day by the media."

Bannon may well be the president's most influential advisor.

"The center core of what we believe that we're a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we're a nation with a culture and a reason for being and I think that's what unites us," he said.

And Bannon made no apologies for vowing to take the federal government apart, leaving as little of it behind as possible.

"If you look at these cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason," Bannon said. "And that is the deconstruction of the way the progressive left runs is if they can't get it passed they're going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That's all going to be deconstructed."

Bannon appeared on stage with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to show solidarity between the two men often viewed as being engaged in a West Wing power struggle.

"Well, in regard to us two, I think the biggest misconception is everything that you're reading. We share an office suite together. We're basically together from 6:30 in the morning until about 11:00 o'clock at night," Priebus said.

Bannon is the former chairman of Breitbart News, a website that became a platform for the self-described alt-right, a group criticized for promoting white supremacy.

Alt-right founder Richard Spencer says he was kicked out of CPAC after a speaker denounced the organization.

"There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks," said Dan Schneider of the American Conservative Union.

On Friday, Trump will take the stage. Many people in the audience admit they once doubted his commitment to a conservative agenda, but they changed their minds.

"The first executive order may not have been perfect, but he is taking some steps," said Judson Phillips of Nashville.

The conference was also flooded with millennials.

"We're the ones that have the ideas and answers," said Cabot Phillips of Campus Reform. "We want to just have the freedom to be able to act on those ideas we have and I think that is what conservatism is about."

The CPAC crowd expects the new president and Republican Congress to deliver lower taxes and repeal Obamacare.

Topics on Thursday's agenda included the future of health care, Israel and government corruption.

The gathering brings together thousands of political and religious conservatives as well as members of the populist and nationalist movements.

The organizers of the event made headlines earlier this week when they disinvited controversial speaker Milo Yiannopolous because of comments he made about pedophilia.

President Trump has a mixed history at CPAC. Participants have both cheered for and booed him in the past. This year, many conservatives have embraced Trump and his policies. He is scheduled to speak at the conference on Friday.

 

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