Trump “knew [endorsing Strange] was a mistake but one he was willing to make because Luther was loyal,” a senior White House official told CNN. A person familiar with his mindset said the President went to bed “embarrassed and pissed.”
.. Bannon pulled out all the stops to rally pro-Moore forces in the closing days of the campaign, making multiple TV appearances, and working to bring a team of populist-nationalist all-stars to the Yellowhammer state for Moore, including former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, ex-UKIP leader Nigel “Mr. Brexit” Farage, Duck Commander founder Phil Robertson, and fellow ex-White House adviser Dr. Sebastian Gorka.
.. “The president complained about Bannon’s aggressive moves on Moore’s behalf, as well as about the political advice he got from aides inside the White House,”
.. Palin exhorted the crowd at Thursday’s post-debate train-yard rally that, “A vote for Judge Moore isn’t a vote against the president. It’s a vote for the people’s agenda that elected the president,” as she warned against the political class “hijacking” the Trump election victory.
.. Gorka also emphasized that supporting Moore was a loyal move for Trump supporters like him. He told Fox News’s Brett Baier on Friday:
The president has gone with the forces of the establishment on this one candidate. But guess what happens – when Judge Moore wins on Tuesday, it will strengthen the president, because now he’ll be able to go to the establishment GOP – to the swamp dwellers and say, ‘Hey guys, we are back on my agenda. This wasn’t worth it.’
.. In retrospect, the decision appears to have made on advice from anti-populist elements both outside the administration, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and within the White House, like senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.
How Steve Bannon just defeated Trump
Former judge Roy Moore’s victory over Sen. Luther Strange was a sign of just how extreme Republican rank-and-filers have become. Moore, who believes biblical law should override the Constitution, beat Strange 55 percent to 45 percent. Contrast that with the 2006 gubernatorial primary in which then-Gov. Bob Riley trounced Moore by a margin of 2-to-1.
.. “What Donald Trump has done,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, “is embolden the Roy Moores of the world.”
.. Trump was so embarrassed by his chosen big guy’s big defeat that he deleted earlier pro-Strange tweets
.. Trump seems to think that his support base is so loyal to him that it will follow him anywhere. Bannon would beg to differ. He threw his all behind Moore’s candidacy to show that Trump’s movement is attached even more to a rebellious right-wing ideology than it is to the president himself.
.. “What’s going on is bigger than Trump, and he is just a vehicle.”
.. The good news for Bannon is very bad news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who put millions of dollars behind the campaign to defeat Moore
.. Among other things, he has said that
- parts of America are under Muslim sharia law;
- suggested that the 9/11 attacks happened because the country had forsaken God’s “word and trust”;
- said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know”;
- and likened homosexuality to bestiality.
.. Advocates of a major undertaking on behalf of Jones see this as precisely why taking on Moore would be worth the gamble. Jones could do in Alabama this year what Republican Scott Brown did in a 2010 special election in Massachusetts
.. A Jones win would also cut the Republicans’ already tough-to-manage Senate majority to a bare 51 seats.
.. At an election eve Moore rally, Bannon called out McConnell and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, by name.
.. “Your day of reckoning is coming,” Bannon declared.
.. The message from Alabama is clear; he and his party have unleashed forces they cannot control.
Steve Bannon basically just admitted Trump is easily duped
Aides often privately describe the president as highly susceptible to acting upon the last piece of information he’s seen — no matter how dubious. And controlling that flow of information is a big part of new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly’s effort to right the ship and keep the Oval Office on-task.
But rarely do you see someone close to the president just come out and admit how unsophisticated he is as a consumer of information.
.. While chatting with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, the former White House chief strategist suggested that Trump was essentially duped into supporting appointed Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) in Tuesday’s Alabama special-election runoff. And it wasn’t really all that subtle.
.. Inherent in Bannon’s argument is the idea that Trump either isn’t discerning enough to make that endorsement decision for himself, or at least that he doesn’t do enough homework.
Bannon is basically confirming everything aides have said privately about how unsophisticated Trump is in consuming information. This is the president of the United States, and Bannon is talking about him as if he’s still a total political novice — a weather vane, even.
Trump Humiliated Jeff Sessions After Mueller Appointment
The president attributed the appointment of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to Mr. Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation — a move Mr. Trump believes was the moment his administration effectively lost control over the inquiry. Accusing Mr. Sessions of “disloyalty,” Mr. Trump unleashed a string of insults on his attorney general.
.. Ashen and emotional, Mr. Sessions told the president he would quit and sent a resignation letter to the White House, according to four people who were told details of the meeting. Mr. Sessions would later tell associates that the demeaning way the president addressed him was the most humiliating experience in decades of public life.
.. Mr. Trump ended up rejecting Mr. Sessions’s May resignation letter after senior members of his administration argued that dismissing the attorney general would only create more problems for a president
.. the attorney general has stayed in the job because he sees a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity as the nation’s top law enforcement official to toughen the country’s immigration policies.
.. In the middle of the meeting, Mr. McGahn received a phone call from Rod J. Rosenstein
.. In the telephone call to Mr. McGahn, Mr. Rosenstein said he had decided to appoint Mr. Mueller to be a special counsel for the investigation.
.. When the phone call ended, Mr. McGahn relayed the news to the president and his aides. Almost immediately, Mr. Trump lobbed a volley of insults at Mr. Sessions, telling the attorney general it was his fault they were in the current situation. Mr. Trump told Mr. Sessions that choosing him to be attorney general was one of the worst decisions he had made, called him an “idiot,” and said that he should resign.
.. An emotional Mr. Sessions told the president he would resign and left the Oval Office.
.. In the hours after the Oval Office meeting, however, Mr. Trump’s top advisers intervened to save Mr. Sessions’s job. Mr. Pence; Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist at the time; and Reince Priebus, his chief of staff, all advised that accepting Mr. Sessions’s resignation would only sow more chaos inside the administration and rally Republicans in Congress against the president.
.. For Mr. Sessions, the aggressiveness with which Mr. Trump has sought his removal was a blow.
.. But Mr. Trump continued his public attacks in the days that followed, including taking to Twitter to call him “weak” — a word that is among the harshest criticisms in Mr. Trump’s arsenal.