new-yorker-festival-20181

Steve Bannon calls 'New Yorker' editor "gutless" for dropping him from fest

new-yorker-festival-2018

It didn’t take long for lots of people to be upset that The New Yorker Festival booked former Trump strategist Steve Bannon for its 2018 edition, including other participants in the fest — John Mulaney, Judd Apatow, Jack Antonoff, Patton Oswalt — who all said they would not participate because of it. And it didn’t take long after that for New Yorker editor David Remnick to announce that the Steve Bannon event would no longer happen. Bannon has made a statement on his being dropped from the fest: “The reason for my acceptance was simple: I would be facing one of the most fearless journalists of his generation,” Mr. Bannon said in a statement to The New York Times. “In what I would call a defining moment, David Remnick showed he was gutless when confronted by the howling online mob.”

While Bannon’s event is no longer on the New Yorker Fest website, the Mulaney, Apatow, Oswalt, and Antonoff events still are. Kurt Vile, Kacey Musgraves, Kelela, Miguel, Boots Riley and more also have events as part of this year’s festival which runs October 5-7 at various NYC venues.