The United States President's chief strategist said in an interview with The New York Times published on Thursday that the press has become "the opposition party" and that it should "keep its mouth shut".

Steve Bannon, one of Donald Trump's closest advisers in the White House, said in an interview Wednesday that "the media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States".

 "The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while," said Bannon, one of the architects of Trump's electoral victory and the former chairman of Breitbart News, a media organization that is part of the so-called "alt-right", a new far-right nationalist movement in the US.

The strategist, who rarely gives interviews, reiterated some of the "alt-right" maxims in his conversation with The New York Times: that the American press is an elite group and out of touch with ordinary citizens.

In addition, Bannon humorously referred to himself during the interview as the US government's "Darth Vader", which harked back to his previous interview with the Hollywood Reporter in November, in which he said: "Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power."

Trump's chief strategist told the New York Times that the media was "100 percent dead wrong" in predicting the victory of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In comments during his visit to the CIA last weekend, Trump said that his administration is at "war" with the media, defining them as "the most dishonest human beings on Earth".

Since Trump's inauguration, the press has clashed with the new president's team by reporting that some of their claims have no factual basis.

They include claims of massive attendance at the Jan. 20 inauguration, and the president's allegation of massive electoral fraud, without providing any evidence.

Bannon added in the interview that he is not worried about the loss of credibility of White House spokesman Sean Spicer after he said that sometimes the new administration will "disagree with the facts" and falsely claiming that the crowd at the inauguration was the largest in the history.

"'Questioning his integrity' - are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work," he said.