Steve Bannon Will Lead Trump’s White House
“I’m a Leninist,” Steve Bannon told a writer for The Daily Beast, in late 2013. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”*
.. Barack Obama made just one personnel announcement: that Congressman Rahm Emanuel would be his chief of staff. Every staff member in the Obama White House reported to Emanuel, including political advisers such as David Axelrod. Even in the George W. Bush White House, which at first had a weak chief of staff, Andy Card, and a powerful political adviser, Karl Rove, everyone, including Rove, formally reported to Card.
.. The key to influence in any White House is simply to establish oneself as the President’s most important adviser. This seems to be the role that Bannon has created for himself.
.. In 2008, he became fascinated by Sarah Palin, the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, and the crowds she attracted. He spent the next eight years making hagiographic films about Palin and other right-wing political figures
.. “When Sarah Palin was on the rise, he had found a way to become a part of that circle. When the Tea Party was on the rise, he seemed to be right there in that circle. When it was going to be Ted Cruz, he was there. When it was going to be Ben Carson for a hot second, he was there. He’s been someone who’s been in pursuit of that pipeline to power for a long time now.”
.. The turning point for Bannon, Breitbart, and the movement that would eventually coalesce around Trump was the 2013 debate over immigration reform. After Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama, in 2012, the Republican leadership, encouraged by the business wing of the G.O.P. and the Party’s consultant class, made comprehensive immigration reform a legislative priority. Fox News became sympathetic to the effort and Priebus, then the chairman of the R.N.C., issued a report declaring that passing immigration reform was necessary for the survival of the Party.
.. This was the opening that Bannon had been looking for.
.. He believed that Clinton was weaker with Hispanics, African-Americans, and white millennials than Obama was in 2012. And he believed that, with a surge of white working-class support, Trump could win Wisconsin and Michigan, which had voted Democratic since the nineteen-eighties. He was right about all of this.
.. Bannon sees those European movements as allies, and has cultivated ties with far-right parties in the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy.
.. How will Bannon continue his crusade to defeat Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and Priebus when he now needs them to pass Trump’s agenda? Despite Bannon’s hatred for Priebus, they worked closely together to elect Trump. Bannon believed it was an alliance of convenience, similar to Stalin and Churchill working together to defeat Hitler. I doubt Bannon will be as focussed on knocking off Republican leaders as he was when he was throwing rocks from the sidelines. You don’t actually have to destroy the establishment if you can force it to bend to your will.