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.
Video: Why a Staff ‘Shake-up’ Poses Challenges for President Trump
There are Three Pillars of Political Thought in the white house:
- Economic nationalists: Steve Bannon, Stephenen Miller, Peter Navarro
- Moderate Globalists: Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell
- Establishment Republicans: Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer
Internal White House battles spill into Treasury
Already, critics note that Mnuchin has selected another Democratic donor, Craig Phillips, for a top position within the department. He told senators at his confirmation hearing that he supports parts of the controversial Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks from making some bets with their own money — an anathema to conservatives who want to scrap stricter banking laws.
.. “For conservatives, Mnuchin is a missed opportunity because he is not conservative. He will not drive the kind of tax reform we want, nor will he be strong on fixing Dodd-Frank,” the donor added.
.. Allies of Cohn and Powell, both former Goldman Sachs executives like Mnuchin, say their opponents, led by Bannon, are attempting to plant stories about Cohn and those around him to discredit their standing with conservatives and with Trump himself.
.. These include allegations that Cohn is pushing a carbon tax and for keeping the U.S. in the Paris climate accords and was behind a visit to the White House by Zeke Emanuel, an architect of Obamacare.
.. Cohn has proven himself among the few West Wing advisers able and willing to contradict the president. One person close to the matter said the NEC director regularly pushes back in meetings with the Trump. “It’s always done in a respectful, ‘Can I just make my point?’ kind of way. He’s not interrupting him,” this person said.
.. Cohn has also been positioning himself as the leader of any upcoming tax reform process. This month, he met with Ways and Means Republicans and his top tax policy adviser, Shahira Knight, to give a broad overview of how the White House views tax reform
.. “We believe in free trade. We are in one of the largest markets in the world. …Trade has been good for us. It has been good for other people,” he said. “Having said that, we want to re-examine certain agreements.”
.. once the health care fight is over they should be able to take center stage.”
.. Advocates of the Bannon wing, which also includes senior adviser Stephen Miller, argue that pursuing this kind of centrist approach, either at Treasury or inside the White House, would be a rejection of Trump’s voters who elected him on a clear platform of changing trade policy to benefit Americans, building a wall with Mexico, cracking down on illegal immigration and preventing travel to the United States from nations associated with terrorism.
.. Conservatives have applauded a few of Mnuchin recent picks for top Treasury jobs, including David Malpass, a former Bear Stearns economist, for the undersecretary of international affairs and Drew Maloney, Rep. Tom DeLay’s former legislative director, for the assistant secretary for legislative affairs. Among others, Treasury also added Dan Kowalski, Stephen Miller’s deputy on the Trump campaign, as a counselor.
Stephen Miller’s bushels of Pinocchios for false voter-fraud claims
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on, though, to the question of voter fraud as well. President Trump again this week suggested in a meeting with senators that thousands of illegal voters were bused from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and that’s what caused his defeat in the state of New Hampshire, also the defeat of Senator Kelly Ayotte.
That has provoked a response from a member of the Federal Election Commission, Ellen Weintraub, who says, “I call upon the president to immediately share New Hampshire voter fraud evidence so that his allegations may be investigated promptly.”
Do you have that evidence?
Sununu later said he did not mean to imply that “I see buses coming over,” saying it was more of a figure of speech.
.. False. As shown above, this is disputed even by the researcher whose work is being cited by Miller
.. “Carmichael noted that Kobach has not brought a single case against a noncitizen for voting illegally. All of the cases he has brought concern U.S. citizens accused of voting in more than one state.”
.. MILLER: We should stop the presses. And, as a country, we should be aghast about the fact that you have people who have no right to vote in this country registered to vote, canceling out the franchise of lawful citizens of this country.
That’s the story we should be talking about. And I’m prepared to go on any show, anywhere, anytime, and repeat it and say the president of the United States is correct 100 percent.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you just repeated, though, you just made those declarations. But, for the record, you have provided zero evidence that the president was the victim of massive voter fraud in New Hampshire. You provided zero evidence that the president’s claim that he would have won the general — the popular vote — if 3 million to 5 million illegal immigrants hadn’t voted, zero evidence for either one of those claims.
.. It’s pretty shameless to cite research in a way that even the researcher says is inappropriate, and yet Miller keeps saying 14 percent of noncitizens are registered to vote. The Republican governor of New Hampshire has admitted that he was wrong to say buses of illegal voters voted in the election, and yet Miller shamelessly suggests that is the case. Miller cites a supposed expert on voter fraud, Kobach, who has been mocked for failing to prove his own claims of voter fraud. Miller also repeats a claim about people being registered to vote in two states, even though that is not an example of voter fraud.