Steven Cortes was CNN Political Commentator. Previously, he worked for CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg Business, and the Halftime Report.

Steven Cortes is of Colombian descent. His father grew up in the San José region of the distant mountain s in a ranch of Colombia in the 1930s. His father chose to attend Graduate school at Indiana Tech in the United States because he knew of Abraham Lincoln and University of Notre Dame due to the Missionaries having teaching positions in the town that he grew up. ^[6]

Cortes resides in Chicago with his wife and four children. ^[13]

Cortes is a graduate in 1994 from Georgetown University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government, where he played American Football, and was nominated for a Rhodes Scholarship. ^[4]

Steven started in financial markets in 1994 as a government bonds salesman for Prudential Financial, Inc.. In 1998, he left sales to trade independently, using technical black-box models on global government bond markets. ^[5]

In 2002, Cortes started Veracruz LLC, a Research-consulting firm that provides real-time market research to Broker /Dealers, hedge funds, and sovereign wealth funds. Veracruz TJM Research covers global markets. ^[5]

In his conferences, Cortes presents the argument that the United States of America is one of the best countries to invest because of its excellence in innovation. He believes innovation is the reason for America's exponential economic growth. ^[3]

In 2007, Steve became an On-Air Broadcaster and since that time he has worked for CNBC, Fox and Bloomberg Television. Currently, he is a CNN Political Commentator.^[1]

In 2018, CNN hired Cortes, who also served as a Trump campaign adviser, despite his anti-CNN history. As Media Matters documented in May 2018, Cortes had previously called the network “fake news” and suggested he was “very happy” to work at Fox News Channel - where he was a contributor at the time -- instead of CNN. He had also tweeted that CNN Chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta “sadly … has stopped even pretending to be a journalist. He's an anti-Trump activist masquerading as a reporter.”^[14]

In August 2019, Cortes starred in a video for the right-wing outlet PragerU which attempted to rewrite Trump’s “very fine people” remarks after the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In recent months, he has been benched from appearing on the network, with one former CNN contributor telling The Hollywood Reporter’s Jeremy Barrett: “They just won't book him. They'll just pay him. They won't fire him, because that's just blatant. But they won't book him, and they'll tell all the producers not to book him.” Cortes has not appeared on CNN since September 17, according to a search of transcripts in the Nexis database.^[14]

Cortes has recently started hosting The Steve Cortes Show on Chicago’s WIND. On that show, which frequently features discussion of the media, Cortes said that while he previously thought Trump “was too harsh” when he called the media the “enemy of the people,” he now thinks that “the fake news media” is “very much the enemy of the people” and pointed to the media’s coverage of the killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani.^[14]

In January 2020, Cortes officially left CNN. He said on the January 20 edition of his radio program that his stint at the network “just ended.” He later that day appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, where he said that CNN benched him “directly because of” his PragerU Charlottesville video. Cortes also joined the pro-Trump group America First Action PAC as a senior adviser and spokesman.^[14]

In July 2020, the Trump campaign confirmed that Cortes joined the president’s reelection team as a senior advisor for strategy.

Cortes previously served on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign as a member of Trump's Hispanic Advisory Council.

He also served as a surrogate, regularly appearing on television and at rallies in support of the campaign.

Cortes also recently served as a spokesperson for the major pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.^[15]