Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about US politics

and the Trump presidency, or as we journalists call it, the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm Freddie Gray, I'm deputy editor of the spectator. I'm joined today by the spectator contributor

Nicholas Farrell, and we're going to be asking what on earth Steve Bannon is up to.

So Nick, today we have published your extraordinary interview with Steve Bannon. It's also available on the Spectator USA, our new exciting website.

And it is quite a remarkable piece. He doesn't give many interviews.

He does give some interviews, but he did decide to grant one to you. Can you tell us how it came about?

Well, yeah, I heard that he was in Italy just before the Italian election was at the beginning of the month.

And so I thought, ah, Steve Bannon.

And then I knew that he was due to go to Switzerland at some point soon to give a big speech there.

And so I decided to try and track him down.

And I thought, well, the only contact I've got that might help me is

the Bright Barth Rome correspondent, Tom Williams, who is an ex-priest and a professor of theology.

And I had his email and his phone number, actually. And I rang him in in Rome and he was the middleman who got me

in touch with balanced people. And the message came back, well, we probably can't do it in Italy,

but if you turn up in Switzerland where we're going next week, just after the elections, I'm sure we will fit you in

because you're just our kind of guy. Right. I never know whether that's a good thing or a bad

thing. You found out pretty quickly that he was a fan of your book, didn't you? In fact, in the

interview he tells you, he says, who else have you ever interviewed who's read your book on Mussolini? Yeah, well, I'm not sure I believe he has actually read it.

But anyway, I think he's probably read summaries of his at least.

Well, he claims he has 15,000 books in his library.

So, I don't know, you know, he does read, I reckon, a lot.

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