So Bannon here was saying the reception of McCain's recent speech in the Mainstream Media was like the reception of "Pericles at Athens." The implication is that is undeserved praise. I think in a second he calls McCain's speech "happy words."

The reference is to Pericles' Funeral Oration, the text of which is preserved in Thucydides (to the extent that Thucydides preserves any speech). This was the speech Pericles gave honoring the Athenian dead after the first year of the Peloponnesian War, and is widely considered a model eulogy - it describes who the Athenians who died are, who the Athenians who are alive are, and why the dead fought and the living continue to fight. As a matter of fact, when I visited the Greek Parliament building many years ago as a student, they gave me a copy of that speech.

Bannon makes the comparison out of hyperbole. His point is McCain's speech wasn't that great, and in fact his continued criticism is that McCain's speech was childish. The comparison to Pericles, in his opinion, is completely misplaced.