The Trump Presidency
Bannon ... post White House

If Trump read books he'd sound just like Steve Bannon ... The more you hear from Steve Bannon, the more you have to question whether he could recognize good strategy if it was burning on his own lawn

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

If Trump read books he'd sound just like Steve Bannon

The more you hear from Steve Bannon, the more you have to question whether he could recognize good strategy if it was burning on his own lawn


steve bannon ‘Bigotry and bullying doesn’t sound any better when it comes wrapped in the language of a book cover or three.’ Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

They called him Trump’s brain, which was a back-handed compliment that said more about the president’s brainpower than his own. But given the substance and style of Steve Bannon’s latest media musings, this moniker looks like yet another monumental mistake that defines this fine-tuned machine of a presidency.

Newly liberated from his role as chief strategist in the West Wing, Bannon looked a lot like his Grim Reaper alter ego as he sparred with Charlie Rose on 60 Minutes.

Bannon was supposed to be close to Trump because they were spiritually in sync. But it turns out that their real bond comes from at least three shared traits: their tolerance of total self-contradiction, a visceral desire to hunt down enemies and a blanket disdain for people of color.

For a former chief strategist, this is neither chief-like nor strategic.

Let’s start with his brilliant self-image, shall we? This is, after all, what got him fired, thanks to his ill-judged cooperation with a book about his own genius: Devil’s Bargain.

As a result, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci graphically described Bannon’s self-love in ways that are still burned on our retinas.

Bannon initially conceded to Charlie Rose that his media image was correct, and seemed to take great pride in it. “The media image I think is pretty accurate,” he said. “I’m a street fighter. That’s what I am.”

That was just a few minutes before the supposed media maestro claimed that he couldn’t care less about his Saturday Night Live caricature. “I don’t need the affirmation of the mainstream media,” he told one of the major broadcast networks in a primetime interview. “I don’t care what they say. They can call me an anti-Semite. They can call me racist. They call me nativist. You can call me anything you want, OK? As long as we’re driving this agenda for the working men and women of this country, I’m happy.”

As an expression of nativist politics, this is as white as condensed milk. Because Bannon makes it clear throughout his interview that he doesn’t mean black or brown people when he talks about “working men and women”.

When Rose pressed him on his troglodyte views about immigration, Bannon pushed back on the rather obvious and fundamental notion that America was built on and by newcomers, who overwhelmingly take on the worst-paid working class jobs.

“You couldn’t be more dead wrong,” Bannon blustered. “America was built on her citizens.”

“We’re all immigrants,” Rose shot back. “Except the Native Americans.”

“Don’t give me … this is the thing of the leftists,” Bannon countered. “Charlie, that’s beneath you. America’s built on our citizens. Look at the 19th century. What built America is called the American system, from Hamilton to Polk to Henry Clay to Lincoln to the Roosevelts. A system of protection of our manufacturing, financial system that lends to manufacturers, OK, and the control of our borders. Economic nationalism is what this country was built on.”

Where to begin with this verbal diarrhea? Even a pre-teen Broadway fan could tell you that Hamilton was an immigrant. It’s as if Bannon cannot reconcile the notion that new immigrants can exhibit deep patriotism for their new home.

If you want to know what a book-reading Trump would sound like, in all its half-baked glory, you should listen closely to his former strategist. Because bigotry and bullying doesn’t sound any better when it comes wrapped in the language of a book cover or three.

When Rose pointed out that Bannon, as “a good Catholic”, might want to listen to Cardinal Dolan on immigration, Bannon lashed out with a curious smear about the Church’s business model.

“The bishops have been terrible about this,” he raged. “You know why? Because unable to really to come to grips with the problems in the church, they need illegal aliens. They need illegal aliens to fill the churches. It’s obvious on the face of it…They have an economic interest.”

It’s obvious on the face of it. Steve Bannon is as much of a racist as his media image. He raised the issue of Trump’s botched response to Charlottesville to praise it, and condemn the critics, as if Trump’s sympathy for neo-Nazis deserved its own kind of sympathy.

“Our purpose is to support Donald Trump,” he said, forgetting for several minutes that his purpose was supposedly to help working class America. “To make sure his enemies know that there’s no free shot on goal. By the way, after the Charlottesville situation, that’s what I told General Kelly. I was the only guy that came out and tried to defend him. I was the only guy that said, ‘He’s talking about something, taking it up to a higher level.’ Where does it all go? Where does this end? Does it end in taking down the Washington Monument?”

Did you catch the swipe at General Kelly, the White House chief of staff who pushed Bannon out the door? Please don’t get blinded by the absurdities of dismantling the stone needle in the middle of the National Mall. We have some Olympic-sized score-settling going on here.

Now there’s an obvious reason why nobody else was arguing that Trump’s neo-Nazi comments were “taking it up to a higher level”. That reason is that he was taking it down to the lowest possible level.

To be fair, Bannon did call the Klan “a vicious group” – but he also claimed their marching for Confederate monuments was just “the normal course of First Amendment”. On this point, Bannon really should talk to Justice Clarence Thomas, who broke with several years of self-imposed silence and his ultra-conservative friends, to say that the Klan’s cross-burning deserved no such respect.

The more you hear from Steve Bannon, former chief strategist, the more you have to question whether he could recognize good strategy if it was burning on his own lawn.

Bannon took great pride in recounting how Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff who was briefly his best friend, said Trump would lose the election after the pussy-grabbing video emerged from the Access Hollywood archives.

“I was the last guy to speak and I said, ‘It’s 100%. You have 100% probability of winning.”

Even Trump was in disbelief at this world-class nonsense, which is saying something.

“Come on, it’s not 100%,” the candidate said.

“It’s absolutely 100%,” the strategist replied.

This is as demonstrably brilliant as Bannon’s new plan to primary every senator and Representative he considers an ally of the Republican leadership.

When Rose asked if Bannon was going to go to war with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, the former chief strategist said: “Absolutely.”

Of course it makes no sense. Of course it’s self-defeating. Of course it’s the worst possible way to demonstrate his loyalty to Trump: to destroy the very people who stand between Trump and impeachment.

But that’s OK, because Steve Bannon is an absolutist. He absolutely believes in his absolute right to sound absolutely convinced in his own genius. In that way, he’s just like the man in the Oval Office: absolutely wrong.