The power behind the throne
UNITED STATES: When a shaggy-haired millionaire declared that he would use his Rightwing news website to ‘‘destroy all of today’s establishment’’, it struck many in Washington, DC as an idle boast from the fringes.
Four years later, that threat sounds rather different now that Stephen Bannon might plausibly be the second-most powerful man in America.
Amid the tumult of President Donald Trump’s first fortnight in office, the fingerprints of the former Breitbart News boss have been detected on most of his key decisions.
They range from the tone of the inaugural speech, with its desolate portrait of ‘‘American carnage’’, to the president’s incendiary order to block visitors from seven Muslimmajority countries and all refugees, to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch as a Supreme Court judge.
With that realisation has come growing alarm at the power wielded by a man labelled a racist and a fascist by Republicans and Democrats alike.
A late recruit to Trump’s campaign, Bannon, 63, has predicted war in the South China Sea, and views the world as a clash of civilisations between the ‘‘Judeochristian West’’ and what he views as the mortal threats posed by expansionist Islamism.
He played a key role in propelling Trump to victory and was appointed chief strategist to the new president, where he was promised equal status with Reince Priebus, the incoming White House chief of staff. All the indications are that Bannon’s influence outstrips that of Priebus and Vice-president Mike Pence.
Last weekend, while there were protests at airports across America against the immigration bans, Bannon was given a permanent seat on the National Security Council, a stunning break from protocol for a political adviser. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence were excluded.
Susan Rice, a national security adviser under President Barack Obama, called the decision ‘‘stonecold crazy’’. Susan Collins, a prominent Republican senator, said Bannon’s elevation was entirely inappropriate.
Pete Hoekstra, an adviser to Trump, said Bannon was among the few people to have the president’s unfettered trust.
‘‘[Trump] will tend to rely on those people he believes will have only [his] interests.’’
Hoekstra said Trump’s judgment could come from his feeling that Bannon was in tune with the part of America that supported him. Bannon was ‘‘a phenomenal communicator - he understands where these groups are and how to speak to them’’.
Bannon’s place at the table was a signal of ‘‘the tremendous amount of trust Trump has in him’’ and suggested that he would play a long-term role in shaping policy, Hoekstra said.
Bannon sees himself as an even more powerful force. He told The Hollywood Reporter just before Christmas: ‘‘I am Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.’’
The moderating influence of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, one of his closest confidants, is already said to be waning.
Sources told Vanity Fair that Kushner was ‘‘f ..... g furious’’ at his father-in-law for tweeting about a proposed wall along the Us-mexico border. In the ensuing row, President Pena Nieto of Mexico cancelled a meeting Kushner had helped to arrange.
The fallout has left Bannon free to seize the turf he coveted. ‘‘He wants to be the intellectual, strategist bomb thrower,’’ Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker, said. ‘‘He does not want to be the guy who makes the trains run on time.’’ - The Times
Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker