Bannon bashes bozos
Calls hard right ‘losers, clowns’
White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, in a shockingly candid interview with a liberal magazine, called the far right “a collection of clowns” distracting the United States from its “economic war” with China.
“Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers. It’s a fringe element,” Bannon said during a surprise phone call with The American Prospect writer Robert Kuttner. “I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it.”
Despite Bannon’s choice words for the hard right, he admitted that the movement creates a useful distraction while he maneuvers behind the scenes to enact his economic-nationalist agenda.
“The longer [Democrats] talk about identity politics, I got ’em,” Bannon (right) said. “I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
The rare interview, published Wednesday, covered a wide range of topics — including the events in Charlottesville, Va., Bannon’s ongoing rivalries inside the White House, and economic tensions between the United States and China.
“To me, the economic war with China is everything,” he said. “And we have to be maniacally focused on that.”
Detailing his plan to punish China with stricter trade sanc-sanctions, Bannon said a President Trump memorandum Monday would eventually spark an investigation of Chinese trade practices.
“We’re going to run the tables on these guys,” he said. “We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us.” Bannon said he phoned out of the blue Tuesday because he agreed with a column Kuttner wrote about China benefiting from the nuclear tensions between the US and North Korea. Discussing the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Bannon flat-ouout said that there was “no military solution” in place to deal with a possible nuclear strike from the North. “Forget it,” Bannon said. “Until somebody solves the part ofo the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul [South Korea] don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no military solution here, they got us.”
Bannon never once asked for his remarks to be off the record, Kuttner said. But Bannon later told associates he did not intend for the conversation to be turned into an “interview” for a left-wing publication, Axios reported.
“Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon,” Kuttner recalled. “I had never before spoken with Bannon. I came away from the conversation with a sense both of his savvy and his recklessness.”
Bannon spoke openly about his plans to marginalize White House adversaries.
“They’re wetting themselves,” Bannon said, adding that several people at the departments of Defense, State and the Treasury are worried about being pushed out.
“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense,” he explained. “I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”
Many of Bannon’s rivals have reportedly urged Trump to fire him. Despite this, he said he will continue to work to get them out of the administration.