Scarborough: Bannon pretending to be populist

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough on Tuesday railed against Stephen Bannon for portraying himself as a populist while accepting donations and backing from “gazillionaires.”

“He is playing this dime-store populous … wearing like five or six shirts. … And then he’s like, ‘Hey, look at me, I’m a man of the people, a man of the people,'” Scarborough said.

Scarborough hit Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, for marketing himself as a populist, pointing to funding from GOP mega-donors, specifically Robert Mercer and his family.

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“The Mercers are gazillionaires that are funding everything that this guy does,” Scarborough said, adding that the family was a first major donor to Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) campaign.

The “Morning Joe” co-host also suggested that Bannon receives great perks from the Mercers.

Scarborough’s attack comes after Bannon told Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Monday that the GOP establishment has “total contempt for the forgotten man and the base” and that “no one is safe.”

He also told Hannity that he plans to recruit candidates to challenge every Republican senator in the upcoming 2018 elections, except Cruz.

Bannon has not given a full list of lawmakers he plans to target in upcoming elections, saying he will reveal that information over the next several weeks. Bannon did mention that Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Rocker Wicker (Miss.) are on his list.