Whether it’s Priebus or Bannon — or a dark-horse candidate — Trump will send a big message with his selection.
Priebus is a Wisconsin political operative who has long been a close ally of House Speaker Paul Ryan, a relationship that would be crucial to any of the legislative priorities Trump has outlined thus far — from amending or repealing Obamacare to passing a massive infrastructure package.
.. But picking Priebus could provoke a revolt among Trump’s fervent supporters on the right, who thought they were voting for a president who wanted to “drain the swamp” of Washington — not stack his administration with the very people he vowed to overthrow.
.. Under Bannon’s guidance, Breitbart became a ferocious critic of Ryan’s tenure, casting him as a “saboteur” in favor of amnesty for undocumented immigrants and describing him as “universally despised” by conservatives. One article published under Bannon’s co-byline, headlined “Paul Ryan Betrays America: $1.1 Trillion, 2,000-Plus Page Omnibus Bill Funds ‘Fundamental Transformation of America’,” portrays the speaker as a sellout secretly working to boost Obama’s policies — complete with a photograph of a bearded Ryan posing with a grinning president.
.. Bannon reportedly described the mild-mannered House speaker as “the enemy” on conference calls, and once swatted down Breitbart staffers seeking a more conciliatory approach: “Long game is him gone by spring,” he wrote in one leaked email.
.. Many in the GOP establishment view Breitbart with scorn — not only for its scorched-earth attacks on fellow Republicans, but also for promoting views well outside the conservative mainstream.
.. Bannon’s own copious writings and commentary would likely come under intense scrutiny should Trump select him for any White House job, let alone chief of staff. In July, for instance, he weighed in on the racially charged topic of police shootings by musing: “[H]ere’s a thought: What if the people getting shot by the cops did things to deserve it? There are, after all, in this world, some people who are naturally aggressive and violent.”
.. Former Breitbart staffers have savaged their ex-boss for allegedly “verbally abusing supposed friends and threatening enemies,” though current employees
Why the way Trump won makes him more dangerous
For those of us who viewed a potential Donald Trump presidency with alarm, the only thing more troubling than his victory Tuesday is the manner in which he won.
.. Therefore, this victory is also a vindication — confirmation, in the eyes of the millions who evidently wish to believe it, that “Mr. Trump” is gifted with special insight and a special connection with the people.
.. Such political “miracles” (which is what, on Nov. 8, a senior adviser said a Trump win would be) confer upon their authors a particular kind of authority.It is charismatic authority, which is not quite the same as personal charm or magnetism, neither of which Trump possesses... The fear, though, is that his charismatic authority intoxicates, portending great difficulty for any who would challenge him, at least at the beginning.
.. The Trump White House response could well be “He was right about the election, when everyone else said he was wrong, so who are you to say he’s not right about this, too?” — on Russia, immigration or anything else... Trump can go over their heads to the GOP masses, aided by the new high priest of Republican communications, Stephen K. Bannon of Breitbart News, who has just helped Trump to campaign victory and is therefore enjoying his own powerful moment of vindication... When and if resistance develops, or Trump blunders, or untoward world events — such as a recession — occur, aides will be ready to assist Trump in deflecting blame onto anyone except the new president himself, just as pro-Trump media promiscuously scapegoated the mainstream press and other enemies during the campaign... The American constitutional system’s checks and balances may be about to face a historic test. If they still work, however, Trump should find himself bogged down in a series of inconclusive political battles, which ultimately disillusion his followers, encourage his opponents and force him into a more conventional, and stable, form of democratic politics.
American Gut Check
But this dangerous man is incapable of bottling up his dark self for a full 90 minutes. And in the end, he finally crosses the one political barrier he had yet to fully cross — trashing democracy itself, we the people.
.. The remaining enablers — Reince Priebus, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Pence — had to know that things were bad when the Republican presidential nominee was tougher on the sainted Ronald Reagan than on the Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin.
.. And they had to know the game was over when another 3 a.m. tweet was blasted out by Trump, with his conclusion that he won, because of online polls that could not pass the vetting of Baghdad Bob.
.. He’s become a very tired and confused 70-year-old man feeding nuts to squirrels in the park of his delusions.
.. Steve Bannon, the former head of a fabulist, far-right website — Breitbart. Bannon is not much of a Republican.
.. “I’m a Leninist,” he said in a conversation recounted by Ronald Radosh in The Daily Beast. “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.”
.. His debate-night threat, holding the validity of the election itself hostage, is no surprise. Trump is bereft of patriotism, and seems to hate the country he wants to lead. He’s been talking down this nation and its most cherished institutions throughout his campaign. Time and again, he would rather defend Russia than the United States.
.. He’s gone after free speech — that would be the right granted in the amendment just before the only one he knows — threatening his enemies in the press. That same first amendment ensures that a religious test will not be used to judge us — another thing he has thrown to the side.
.. But in the final debate, his true persona was there for all to see — a self-hating American.
Goldberg: Trump’s Nutter News Network (NNN) Strategy
Yes, the media is particularly biased against Donald Trump. But this is not quite the outrage Trump’s spinners want to make it. Not only is Trump an exceptionally unworthy presidential candidate on the merits, but he does everything he possibly can to maximize the endemic problems of liberal-media bias. Thanks to his lizard-brain narcissism, he would rather have awful headlines about himself and be the center of attention than have Hillary Clinton steal the limelight.
.. Yes, absolutely, the WikiLeaks e-mails provide countless vulnerabilities that might have destroyed Hillary’s candidacy if she were running against any conventional Republican. But it’s not liberal-media bias per se that causes the press to pay outsized attention to tales of sexual misconduct; the press always pays attention to sex. The Lewinsky scandal got a lot of media attention. You could look it up.
.. It was inevitable and obvious that this lecherous adulterer who bragged in print about cheating on his wife would have these skeletons in his enormous, gold-and-velvet-lined closet. But no one needed to be a master sleuth or even a run-of-the-mill opposition researcher to know this. You know why? Because this guy said so! When accused of being a sexual predator by Howard Stern, Trump said, “That’s true!” — and then he laughed (in front of his daughter, whom he has affectionately called “a piece of ass”).
.. But, he also said that he couldn’t run for political office because of his attitude toward women:
“I think women are beautiful — I think certain women are more beautiful than others, to be perfectly honest — and it is fortunate that I don’t have to run for political office.”
.. Even if you wanted to think the best of a man who disparages war heroes but insists that dodging the clap was his “personal Vietnam,” a serious political party would have still demanded that he submit to an internal opposition-research investigation.
.. Trump refused to let his own campaign do an inventory of his skeletons. The guy who hires the best people was implored by thepeople he hired to do this basic form of due diligence and he refused. And now we’re supposed to be shocked that the Clintons found the skeletons in question? Or that the press is eager to report on them?
.. Take for example, the bowel-stewed hysteria over Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” comment. Romney said — and did — exactly what feminists and liberal reporters should applaud. He wanted to hire qualified women. So he reached out to women’s groups for suggestions. They sent him lots of recommendations. Binders full of them. And then he hired many of the women listed in the binders. What a monster!
.. So let’s talk about these allegations against Trump. I think they’re true. Maybe not all of them, but certainly enough of them, not least because they conform to what Trump confessed to in an unguarded moment. But also because we can be sure that at least some of them were given to the media by Democrats who would have made sure to vet them.
.. If you’re looking for a theory to explain what Trump and Campaign CEO Steve Bannon — the former head of Breitbart News —are doing, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than this fanciful notion that he’s trying to become president.
.. Or maybe that’s the rationalization they throw out there to distract from the more realistic goal: the launch of Nutter News Network.
.. Read the transcript of Trump’s speech from Thursday railing about the globalist corporate-media conspiracy. It might as well be the mission statement for Bannon’s new enterprise, a network that stands up to the global cabal
.. Why has Trump done scores of interviews on Fox and virtually nowhere else the last two months? Because he’s not interested in winning over undecideds, independents, or swing voters — you know the sort of thing serious presidential candidates do. No, he’s reselling the same product to people who’ve already bought it so he can take the customers with him after the election.
.. Because he wants the faithful to be permanently alienated from the rest of the political culture and utterly reliant on him. In fairness, it’s also because he can’t tolerate the idea that people will reasonably conclude that he’s a loser and choker so he has to lay the groundwork for the claim the other side cheated. But that narcissistic insecurity just makes him all the more susceptible to Bannon’s manipulation. He was such a Bannon puppet yesterday you could almost see Bannon’s fingers moving in the back of Trump’s mouth.
.. All of the idiotic arguments his cheerleaders made a year ago have been exposed as the magical-thinking B.S. they always were. He can win blue states! Name one. He’s expanding the GOP coalition! Really? Then why are Republican Senate candidates outperforming Trump in almost every battleground state?