“Since inauguration, it was really about four camps,” Ryun replied. “It was the Kushner camp, it was the Bannon camp, it was the Reince camp, and it was the Pence camp. But I’m starting to think, based off what I was hearing from yesterday and then reading reports this morning, that this is becoming actually more of two camps – that it really is the national populists, really led by Bannon, versus, quite frankly – there’s no other way to describe them – the liberal New York City set that have come in.”
.. “God bless them, they’re part of the Trump family, but let’s not kid ourselves: they are part of the Manhattan liberal set,” he said of the latter duo.
.. “The people that voted for Donald Trump voted for very specific things,” he noted. “They do want to see a wall. They want to see immigration dealt with. They want to see healthcare reform. They want to see tax reform. They want to see all of these things.”
.. “I have real concerns, not only about the New York liberal set that has come into the White House. … I am more and more concerned about the Goldman Sachs people that have come into the administration,” Ryun professed.
He said they have a “different worldview than the American people that voted Trump in.”
.. my hope is that Trump will say, ‘I know what got me in. I know what brought me to the White House. Steve Bannon is really the lead cheerleader on that front. Keep Steve close. Listen to Steve.
.. I really do think we’re going to get something done with health care. There’s going to be a massive step in the right direction. I do think we’ve got a real shot at tax reform.”
.. “If the other guys win, I guarantee you Bannon’s out, Reince is out, Spicer’s out, the corporate New York set is in.”
Kushner and Bannon Battle for the Soul of the Trump White House
For Trump supporters, this is a battle between the populist nationalist movement on the right, for which Trump is a figurehead, and the more pragmatic, less ideological approach exhibited by Kushner and his allies. The result could determine whether the Trump White House stays, well, Trumpian, or whether it begins to morph into exactly what someone like Steve Bannon hates: a more mainstream Republican administration.
.. “Jared is a liberal Democrat,” the official said, accusing Kushner of trying to limit the role of some in Trump’s orbit—including Bannon, policy aide Stephen Miller, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Domestic Policy Council Director Andrew Bremberg, and Vice President Mike Pence—in making policy. Kushner, the official charged, is trying to “slow-walk” executive orders on trade, for example.
.. “Jared just doesn’t think that Trump will be successful with somebody like Bannon in there,” said one source close to the White House. “I know, for instance, that there have been meetings that Bannon would normally be in and he hasn’t been in recently.”
.. Kushner and Ivanka Trump have carefully managed their brand in the media, and Bannon’s hard-edged nationalism threatens their smooth public personae.
.. “I’m sure Jared and Ivanka are very embarrassed by Steve’s politics,” the source with inside knowledge of the White House said. “I know they’re not fashionable in Manhattan but those are the politics that got Trump elected. Clearly Jared wants the president to be a more mainstream political figure.”
.. Breitbart News, the right-wing nationalist outlet formerly run by Bannon, has published a string of stories critical of Kushner in the last few days, accusing him of having a “thin resume in diplomacy” and writing up Stone’s accusations.
.. a dynamic within this White House that has thus far proved unshakeable: You can’t bet against the family. And it speaks to a truth about Washington, which is that the establishment always seems to find a way to reassert itself—even in as unusual an environment as Trump’s White House.
“If the Trump administration becomes a pale copy of the Bush administration,” the source with inside knowledge of the White House said, “then there was no reason for this election.”
Report: Steve Bannon Says American Health Care Act ‘Written by the Insurance Industry’
White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has privately expressed concern that the American Health Care Act (AHCA) betrays the populist voters who put Donald Trump in the White House.
And in the hall of mirrors that is Washington, the big winner to emerge out of the health-care debacle could be Steve Bannon. That’s because Bannon has been waging war against Ryan for years. For Bannon, Ryan is the embodiment of the “globalist-corporatist” Republican elite. A failed bill would be Bannon’s best chance yet to topple Ryan and advance his nationalist-populist economic agenda.
.. Bannon said that he’s unhappy with the Ryan bill because it “doesn’t drive down costs” and was “written by the insurance industry.” While the bill strips away many of Obamacare’s provisions, it does not go as far as Bannon would wish to “deconstruct the administrative state” in the realm of health care.
.. He’s told people that Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn — a West Wing rival — has run point on it.