Watch Steve Bannon Explain How He Sees the World

Stephen Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, rarely talks publicly about the worldview at the heart of his politics.

One exception: A Skype video interview as part of a Vatican conference less than three years before Bannon entered the White House, in which he portrays himself as a combatant in what he believes is an epic war.

As Trump prepares to make his first visit as president to the Vatican tomorrow, watch what Bannon said to participants at a 2014 conference there.

“I believe the world and particularly the Judeo-Christian West is in a crisis,” Bannon says in the rare video, which appears in the May 23 FRONTLINE documentary, Bannon’s War.

“We’re at the beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict. We are in an outright war against jihadist Islam — Islamic fascism,” Bannon says. “And this war is, I think, metastasizing almost far quicker than governments can handle it.”

“The threat that Bannon sees post- 9/11 to the Judeo-Christian West is that radical Islamic theology is metastasizing into more mainstream Islamic communities,” Ben Shapiro, former Breitbart editor-at-large, tells FRONTLINE.

“He has kind of reduced all of the conflicts of modern society to that essential faceoff between the terrorists and the Americans,” Marc Fisher of The Washington Post adds.

To learn more about how Bannon’s worldview came to be, how it resonated with Donald Trump, and how it has informed Bannon’s strategy for trying to change America’s immigration policies — and America itself — watch Bannon’s War on PBS and online.

From Michael Kirk and the team behind The Choice 2016 and Divided States of America, the documentary draws on nearly 30 in-depth interviews with political insiders, Bannon’s former associates at Breitbart, authors, and journalists to explore Bannon’s worldview and his influence within Trump’s White House.

The documentary also examines how Bannon transformed Breitbart into a political force targeting the GOP establishment — and incubating the nativist themes and messages that would go on to shape Trump’s winning presidential campaign.

Bannon’s War premieres Tuesday, May 23 at 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST on PBS stations and online.