He was damned the moment he was cast as a puppeteer. That means there’s a puppet in the equation, and no politician is going to accept that designation
.. Trump went so far as to suggest that he was barely acquainted with Bannon before August 2016, when Bannon joined his presidential campaign. Wrong. Trump had been a guest on the radio show that Bannon used to host nine times.
.. He didn’t grapple with who Trump really is. Trump’s allegiances are fickle. His attention flits. His compass is popularity, not any fixed philosophy, certainly not the divisive brand of populism and nationalism that Bannon was trying to enforce.
Bannon insisted on an ideology when Trump cares more about applause
.. He has means for revenge. He also has a history of it.
.. Bannon’s deputy, Stephen Miller, who has been cozying up to Kushner
.. if you want to be the Svengali, you have to play the sycophant. That was a performance beyond Bannon’s ken.
Dan Rather Thinks We Need Patriotism, Not Nationalism
I think journalism is in crisis, but journalism is always in one crisis or another. The crisis now centers on trying to make the transition from old media to new media — and then the second-most-important part of it is the changing dynamics of journalism as a business.
.. nobody — well, with very few exceptions — has come up with a new business model that can sustain the most important kinds of journalism, like investigative reporting and first-class international coverage. To be a journalist is to be in a tradition, not a profession.
.. I do news analysis and commentary. I don’t always succeed, but I try to avoid an actual editorial that proposes a course of action.
.. we need some grit and resolve, hope, healing. We need patriotism, but we have to understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
.. the bulk of your questions should be based on what you hear from the interview subject
Donald Trump Considers Major Shake-up of Senior White House Team
Mr. Trump is specifically evaluating whether to keep his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, in their current positions.
Is Putin the ‘Preeminent Statesman’ of Our Times?
Putin stands against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be. Years ago, he aligned himself with traditionalists, nationalists, and populists of the West, and against what they had come to despise in their own decadent civilization.
What they abhorred, Putin abhorred. He is a God-and-country Russian patriot. He rejects the New World Order established at the Cold War’s end by the United States. Putin puts Russia first.
.. And in defying the Americans he speaks for those millions of Europeans who wish to restore their national identities and recapture their lost sovereignty from the supranational European Union. Putin also stands against the progressive moral relativism of a Western elite that has cut its Christian roots to embrace secularism and hedonism.
.. what has Putin done to his domestic enemies to rival what our Arab ally Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has done to the Muslim Brotherhood he overthrew in a military coup in Egypt?
.. What has Putin done to rival what our NATO ally President Erdogan has done in Turkey, jailing 40,000 people since last July’s coup—or our Philippine ally Rodrigo Duterte, who has presided over the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers?
.. Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West, when standing up for Russia’s interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.
.. There is another reason Putin is viewed favorably. Millions of ethnonationalists who wish to see their nations secede from the EU see him as an ally. While Putin has openly welcomed many of these movements, America’s elite do not take even a neutral stance.
Putin has read the new century better than his rivals. While the 20th century saw the world divided between a communist East and a free and democratic West, new and different struggles define the 21st.
.. The new dividing lines are between social conservatism and self-indulgent secularism, between tribalism and transnationalism, between the nation-state and the New World Order.