What Trump and Bannon’s break means for the self-styled revolutionary and the President
TThe increasingly nasty breakup between Donald Trump and Steve Bannon could mark the first genuine rupture in the Trumpist ranks, but so far the civil war on the right has been decidedly one-sided. Bannon has been abandoned by many of his populist-nationalist media allies, who scurried to establish their fealty to the regime. Perhaps worse for Bannon, he has alienated his dark money patrons, the Mercers, a breach that may cost him his job at Breitbart.
In his romantic self-regard, Bannon is likely to think of himself as the Robespierre of this Trumpian revolution, who was ultimately destroyed by the forces he helped release. But Bannon is reaping what he has sowed.
For the last year, he imagined that he could control, shape and use Donald Trump as an empty vessel to fill with his poisonous worldview (he even at one point described him as an “imperfect vessel” for the political upheaval he had long been envisioning). Like so many others on the right, Steve Bannon thought he could ride the tiger. Instead, he and his allies have become the latest road kill in this shambolic presidency.
In retrospect, it’s extraordinary how tone-deaf Bannon was. He helped create a pro-Trump media ecosystem that demanded loyalty, not ideological consistency. But in the process he also helped create something else: a cult of personality that may be immune to the attacks he might now hope to launch.
A study by the Columbia Journalism Review documented the impact of a “right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart” that had “developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world.” In a remarkably short period of time, the study found, Breitbart had become “the center of a distinct rightwing media ecosystem…”
Bannon used that ecosystem to build up the persona of Trump as the great leader and perpetual victim – a man whose every falsehood, slur, blunder and fraud had to be rationalized and defended at any cost.
For months, it has been obvious that Trump cannot be controlled (even by himself) and is not going to pivot to anything remotely presidential. It has been obvious that his ignorance and indifference to policy runs deep; that he is a man without any deep principles and little loyalty even to his closest allies. But despite all that, his base continues to rally around him and will likely continue to do so.
Voters who swallowed the multiple indignities of the last year are unlikely to break with him because Bannon thinks that economic adviser Gary Cohn is a globalist or Ivanka Trump is as “dumb as a brick.”
But Bannon’s fundamental sin was worse than hubris or even his attacks on the President’s family members. His cardinal and potentially deadly sin was appearing to validate the Russia investigation, and doing so in direct and lurid terms. For Trump and his acolytes, this may be the ultimate apostasy, because they understand that the probe poses a direct, existential challenge to his presidency.
Over the last year, Trump and his loyalists have done everything possible to undermine, obstruct, deny and discredit that investigation, deriding it as a hoax and a witch hunt. But in Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury,” here is the President’s own chief strategist, the CEO of his campaign, the man who seemed to be the President’s id, lending legitimacy to the investigation. Even worse, Bannon used words like “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” to describe the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians. “They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.”
Raising the stakes, Bannon also suggested that Trump could be ensnared by investigations into “money laundering,” a direct shot at the President’s family, his business, and perhaps some of his deepest financial secrets.
“This is all about money laundering,” Bannon is quoted saying. “Mueller chose [prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first” to join his staff “and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f--king Trump