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.
Inside Trump’s White House, New York moderates spark infighting and suspicion
Led by Gary Cohn and Dina Powell — two former Goldman Sachs executives often aligned with Trump’s eldest daughter and his son-in-law — the group and its broad network of allies are the targets of suspicion, loathing and jealousy from their more ideological West Wing colleagues.
.. led by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has grown closer to Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in part to counter the New Yorkers.
.. Would he jet to New York at the invitation of Canada’s progressive hero, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to attend a Broadway performance of “Come From Away,” a musical that showcases the generosity of foreigners?
Or would he fly to Nashville to dip his head in reverence at the gravesite of Andrew Jackson and yoke himself to the nationalist legacy of America’s seventh president?
.. An unexpected political marriage has formed between Bannon, with his network of anti-establishment conservative populists, and Priebus, who represents a wing of more traditional Republican operatives.
.. Kushner and Cohn are particularly close with the Cabinet’s industry barons — Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — as well as Chris Liddell and Reed Cordish, two businessmen recruited by Kushner to work on long-term projects.
.. many people inside and outside the White House frequently note the growing visibility of Cohn and Powell and wonder if they might eventually gain influence over Trump’s message and moderate it from Bannon-style populism, especially if the president’s popularity wanes further.
.. The tug at Trump forces near-daily decisions between following his tendency to gravitate toward those he considers highly successful in business and maintaining the combative political persona cheered by many conservatives.
.. Trump expanded Powell’s portfolio this past week, naming her deputy national security adviser for strategy in addition to her post as senior counselor for economic initiatives.
Born in Egypt and fluent in Arabic, Powell is taking on a more visible role in foreign affairs.
.. Powell has tapped the network she cultivated as a George W. Bush administration official and as president of Goldman’s philanthropic foundation
.. [Cohen] is opinionated and sharp-elbowed, walking between offices with the swagger befitting a banking titan
.. He is seen internally as a contender for chief of staff should Priebus exit, though one senior official noted, “Nobody wants Reince’s job here. I can tell you that with certainty.”
.. Last month when two dozen manufacturing chief executivesvisited the White House, Trump singled out Cohn by noting his vast wealth.
“You all know Gary from Goldman,” Trump said. “Gary Cohn — and we’re really happy — just paid $200 million in tax in order to take this job, by the way.”
..Trump enjoys having the rich and powerful reporting to him.. A competition over Trump’s trade and economic agenda is brewing between Cohn and Peter Navarro.. Cohn shrugged off Navarro’s ideas as almost irrelevant, according to two officials. Trump stepped into the conversation and defended Navarro and his point of view.
.. Priebus has been frustrated with Cohn and Powell for what he sees as short-circuiting his process by communicating directly with the president
.. “The president wants W’s — he wants wins,” Kudlow said. “That’s key to understanding this bit of change in the whole outlook. He’s trying to get W’s and have Congress work with him, and he’s looking to lots of people to get them.”
Let Bannon Be Bannon!
He seems to have a big influence on Trump speeches but zero influence on recent Trump policies.
.. the 21st-century political debate is not big versus small government, it’s open versus closed.
.. Many of us wouldn’t have liked that agenda — the trade and immigration parts — but at least it would have helped the people who are being pummeled by this economy.
.. Bannonesque populism is being abandoned. The infrastructure and jobs plan is being put off until next year (which is to say never). Meanwhile, the Trump administration has agreed with Paul Ryan’s crazy plan to do health care first.
.. The Trump budget is an even more devastating assault on Bannon-style populism. It eliminates or cuts organizations like the Appalachian Regional Commission and the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative that are important to people from Tennessee and West Virginia up through Ohio and Michigan. It cuts job-training and road-building programs. It does almost nothing to help expand opportunity for the working class and almost everything to serve defense contractors and the national security state.
.. Donald Trump doesn’t really care about domestic policy; he mostly cares about testosterone.
He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.
But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.
Indeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy. It lavishes attention on every aspect of hard power and slashes away at anything that isn’t.
.. When these two plans fail, which seems very likely, there’s going to be a holy war between the White House and Capitol Hill.
Opinion: Steve Bannon’s father made 3 basic investing mistakes that are so avoidable
Diversify, don’t panic and don’t watch too much TV, says Howard Gold
..“Everything since then has come from there,” Steve Bannon said. “All of it.”
Steve Bannon’s philosophy of economic nationalism holds that global elites have, well, screwed hard-working Americans like his father. That’s why real Americans need to “take their country back” and enact policies like strict border controls, massive deportation of illegal immigrants, huge infrastructure projects to restore blue-collar jobs, big defense spending to “rebuild” the military, and protective tariffs on imports of goods from “predatory” countries like Mexico and China. He also believes the Judeo-Christian West is at war with ascendant Islam.
That dark world view full of conspiracy theories apparently stemmed from his father’s big loss in the shares of a TV and wireless provider.
1. He put all his money in company stock.
2. He sold in a panic near the bottom.
3. He watched too much TV, especially Jim Cramer.
.. During times of panic, I stop looking at my statements and turn off the TV (though I still read MarketWatch!) And I find stock picker Cramer’s ideas useless at best for the vast majority of investors.
.. This is why older, conservative investors like Marty Bannon, who are more susceptible to euphoria and panic, should be in short-dated target funds or old-fashioned growth and income funds, both of which provide income and diversification. Even professional investors don’t know when to sell stocks.
.. Still, like his son, the elder Bannon knows who was at fault for his loss. “”The government created this problem,’” he told The Journal. “’The elites, they got bailed out.’”
Yes they did. But rather than blame the government for losing money in an inherently risky stock market, investors should learn from the many mistakes of Marty Bannon—and not repeat them.