Thread: Bannon: 'The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over'

Bannon: 'The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.'


Departed White House strategist speaks to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

6:18 PM, AUG 18, 2017 | By Peter J. Boyer

With the departure from the White House of strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who helped shape the so-called nationalist-
populist program embraced by Donald Trump in his unlikely path to election, a new phase of the Trump presidency begins.

Given Trump’s nature, what comes next will hardly be conventional, but it may well be less willfully disruptive—which, to Bannon, had been the point of winning the White House.

“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”


Bannon says that he will return to the helm of Breitbart, the rambunctious right-wing media enterprise he ran until joining the Trump campaign as chief executive last August. At the time, the campaign was at its nadir, and Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls by double digits.



Although his influence with the president waxed and waned, Bannon’s standing in the Trump circle was always precarious. Among the senior advisers competing with Bannon in trying to shape Trump’s agenda, and his tone, were the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared. Bannon pointedly voiced criticism of those in the president’s sphere whom he considered to be globalists, or liberals (or both), and the president himself plainly bristled over the early attention that Bannon got from the press (including a Time magazine cover, which is said to have particularly irked Trump).


Bannon says that his departure was voluntary, and that he’d planned it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of his joining the Trump campaign as chief executive, on August 14, 2016.



August 7th , I talked to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and to the President, and I told them that my resignation would be effective the following Monday, on the 14th,” he said. “I’d always planned on spending one year. General Kelly has brought in a great new system, but I said it would be best. I want to get back to Breitbart.”


Bannon says that with the tumult in Charlottesville last weekend, and the political fallout since, Trump, Kelly, and he agreed to delay Bannon’s departure, but that he and Kelly agreed late this week that now was the time for Bannon to leave.


Bannon may have resigned, but it was clear from the time that Kelly became chief of staff that Bannon’s remaining time in the West Wing was going to be short. Kelly undertook a study of the West Wing’s operating system, and let it be known that he kept hearing about Bannon as a disruptive force and a source of leaks aimed at undermining his rivals. One of those, with whom Kelly is deeply in sympathy, is National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who clashed forcefully with Bannon over such policies as strategy for the war in Afghanistan.



It is plainly Bannon’s view that his departure is not a defeat for him personally, but for the ideology he’d urged upon the president, as reflected in Trump’s provocative inaugural address—in which he spoke of self-dealing Washington politicians, and their policies that led to the shuttered factories and broken lives of what he called “American carnage.” Bannon co-authored that speech (and privately complained that it had been toned down by West Wing moderates like Ivanka and Jared).


“Now, it’s gonna be Trump,” Bannon said. “The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely . . . I just think his ability to get anything done—particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just gonna be that much harder.”


Bannon assigns blame for the thwarting of his program on “the West Wing Democrats,” but holds special disdain for the Washington establishment—especially those Republicans who have, he believes, willfully failed to provide Trump with meaningful victories.


And, he believes, things are about to get worse for Trump. “There’s about to be a jailbreak of these moderate guys on the Hill”—a stream of Republican dissent, which could become a flood.


Bannon says that he once confidently believed in the prospect of success for that version of the Trump presidency he now says is over. Asked what the turning point was, he says, “It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this. They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.


“What Trump ran on—border wall, where is the funding for the border wall, one of his central tenets, where have they been? Have they rallied around the Perdue-Cotton immigration bill? On what element of Trump’s program, besides tax cuts—which is going to be the standard marginal tax cut—where have they rallied to Trump’s cause? They haven’t.”


Bannon believes that those who will now try to influence Trump will hope to turn him in a sharply different direction.


“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”


But Bannon believes that Trump, with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, has already effected a lasting realignment of American politics.


As for himself, Bannon says the fight is just beginning.
“I feel jacked up,” he says. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
Bannon tells The Weekly Standard that he can be more effective without the constraints of the White House. “I can fight better on the outside. I can’t fight too many Democrats on the inside like I can on the outside.”


And, he says, Trump encouraged him to take on the Republican establishment. “I said, ‘look, I’ll focus on going after the establishment.’ He said, ‘good, I need that.’ I said, ‘look, I’ll always be here covering for you.’”


http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/...rticle/2009355

Related:

Steve Bannon out at the White House

https://www.alipac.us/f9/steve-banno...86/index3.html

Bannon is wrong with that statement, just as he was wrong with his statement about no military option in North Korea. The Trump Presidency is not over, it's just getting started. Trump is Trump, he's not changing because of who works or does not work in the White House. This concern over who works with him or advises him has been long over-dramatized. Trump makes the call based on Trump opinion, Trump judgment, Trump goals to fix America. We may agree with a lot or most of them, we may disagree with some or dislike how he gets to the finish line from time to time, but this is Trump's Presidency, no one else's and it is just beginning. Look forward to and enjoy many changes for the better that will make our country great again.

Oh, and this President Trump could use a little support along the way!

Brandon Darby
@brandondarby



Then-Secretary Kelly did so. Wasn't Bannon's "policies," was Trump's promises to ICE Council and NBPC.
Chad Hasty @ChadHastyRadio
Replying to @brandondarby
...who got in the way of Bannon's border policies and why the President hasn't lived up to some promises?



6:40 PM · Aug 18, 2017

Mickey Kaus @kausmickey·6h


Still requires Trump to stand alone against his entire staff. Don't think that works. Need some staff that represents Bannon positions.
Jack Murrell @iu70us
Replying to @kausmickey
Bannon does not have to work at White House to talk to @POTUS and will have fewer restraints outside.

Originally Posted by Judy

Bannon is wrong with that statement, just as he was wrong with his statement about no military option in North Korea. The Trump Presidency is not over, it's just getting started. Trump is Trump, he's not changing because of who works or does not work in the White House. This concern over who works with him or advises him has been long over-dramatized. Trump makes the call based on Trump opinion, Trump judgment, Trump goals to fix America. We may agree with a lot or most of them, we may disagree with some or dislike how he gets to the finish line from time to time, but this is Trump's Presidency, no one else's and it is just beginning. Look forward to and enjoy many changes for the better that will make our country great again.

Oh, and this President Trump could use a little support along the way!

I disagree with several of your points and I'll just leave it at that.