Trump strategy chief: We’ll take nation back from ‘globalist’ elites
STEVE BANNON, the White House chief strategist, vowed the Trump administration would fight to take the US back from “corporatist, globalist” elites in rare public comments yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Mr Bannon prefers to operate behind the scenes, but his fingerprints are all over President Donald Trump’s speeches and policy initiatives, making him an enigmatic, even feared figure in Washington.
But the message was clear yesterday from the former executive at Breitbart News, the Right-wing website.
“If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you’re sadly mistaken,” Mr Bannon said of the media, warning that relations between the White House and the “opposition party” would only get worse.
Mr Bannon said Mr Trump was intent on implementing policies outlined in his campaign speeches.
The chief strategist said: “He’s laid out an agenda with those speeches, with the promises he made, and our job every day is just to execute on that. And he’s maniacally focused on that.”
Mr Bannon said nationalism would be at the heart of every decision Mr Trump made in office.
“The centre core of what we believe – that we’re a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being, I think that’s what unites us,” he said.
Mr Bannon shared the stage with Reince Priebus, Mr Trump’s chief of staff. There has been intense speculation about their relationship, with reports abounding that the insurgent Mr Bannon was “at war” with the more mainstream Mr Priebus, but they insisted they are “dear friends” and partners in enacting Mr Trump’s agenda.
“Hold us accountable,” Mr Bannon said to the overwhelmingly pro-Trump audience. “Hold us accountable for delivering what we promised.”
Mr Bannon pledged that Mr Trump would doggedly pursue every proposal made during the campaign – dashing the hopes of many establishment Republicans who had hoped that would not be the case.
“We’re at the top of the first inning in this and it’s going to take just as much fight, just as much focus and just as much determination” as winning the White House, he said.
While the president’s top advisers spoke at CPAC, his chief diplomat was in Mexico City and tasked with both smoothing relations with Mexico and ensuring that the US is “treated fairly”.
Mr Trump conceded that he had sent secretary of state Rex Tillerson and John Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, on a “tough trip”. Meanwhile, he continued to talk tough about his immigration clampdown.
“You see what’s happening at the border. All of a sudden for the first time, we’re getting gang members out. We’re getting drug lords out.
“We’re getting really bad dudes out of this country, and at a rate that nobody’s ever seen before,” Mr Trump said.
Mexican officials, already infuriated by Mr Trump’s insistence that they pay for a border wall, have said they will not accept new deportation guidelines stating that immigrants of any nationality can be expelled to Mexico rather than to their native countries.
Mr Tillerson acknowledged the strains in the relationship. “Two strong sovereign countries from time to time will have differences,” he said.