Media

Trump aide: Bannon had ‘receiving line’ with media execs

by Joe Concha - 11/22/16 9:43 AM ET

A top aide to President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said that Trump strategist Stephen Bannon had a “receiving line” waiting for him after an off-the-record meeting with top media executives and anchors.

{mosads}Media leaders met with Trump, Bannon and other administration figures Monday at Trump Tower. And according to top aide Kellyanne Conway, many guests sought time with Bannon, the former head of the “alt-right” website Breitbart.com.

“Many people wanted to meet him and talk to him, make some eye contact, exchange some business cards with him. That’s just a fact,” Conway said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“There was a lot of congenial conversation outside in the atrium … outside of the room where we all were. Nobody left there in a huff,” she added, pushing back on reports that the meeting was contentious.

“Nobody has called me and complained that they felt that they had been bamboozled.”

After Monday’s meeting, reports emerged that it went catastrophically, with one source calling it “like a f—ing firing squad.”

Trump called individual reporters liars and accused networks of choosing unflattering photos of him, the reports said.

Conway, who said she organized the meeting between top brass and anchors at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox News, says the exchange was “lively and spirited.”

“President Trump and the media have to share joint custody of the nation and its people for the next four or eight years so it’s highly productive and in everyone’s interest to find a way to do that,” she said.

“I believe Donald Trump received an unprecedented deluge of criticism and in some places unfair coverage. But he is the president and they are the press and they have to find a way to mutually assure, I would say, non-destruction.”

Conway also shared that after the meeting, Trump and CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker went back to his office to take photos for a special the network was planning.

Tags Donald Trump