Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Doubts dissipating that Bannon IS in real danger

Yesterday Michael Goodwin posited that in an interview with the president, Trump would not get behind Bannon.
I asked the President Tuesday afternoon if he still has confidence in Bannon, who took over the campaign in mid-August, I did not get a definitive yes.
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”
He ended by saying, “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”
And from Axios:
Axios’ Jonathan Swan points out that if Bannon goes, there’s no one of similar status in the White House who has the status to push the nationalist agenda to Trump – and more centrist figures are already ascendant (Jivanka, Gary Cohn). Without Bannon’s voice, this becomes a much more conventional White House. It would be an acute normalizing of the staff, although no one can normalize Trump.
  • The brutal headline: “Trump won’t definitively say he still backs Bannon.”
  • What Trump said: “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late … I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary. … Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”
  • The instant fallout: Swan hears Bannon allies inside and outside the White House were taken by surprise when Goodwin’s column posted, and are distraught. Bannon allies are bitter about the role they believe economic adviser Gary Cohn has played in undercutting their guy to POTUS. In private conversations, they call him “Globalist Gary.” In text messages, the shorthand is CTC (Carbon Tax Cohn) or one simple emoji: ðŸŒŽ.
  • What got Bannon in trouble: Axios AM is told that President Trump didn’t like the stories about Bannon as the Svengali, or leaks against Jared and Ivanka, or planted stories that he blamed Bannon for. It was less than 10 weeks ago that Bannon appeared on the cover of TIME as “THE GREAT MANIPULATOR,” with the inside story asking if he was “the Second Most Powerful Man in the World.”
  • Bannon’s mistake: He did little to build alliances and a personal retinue within the White House, while his rivals did the opposite. So he wound up isolated in “West Wing Survivor.’
  • The huge risk for Trump: The base (including Breitbart) remains very attached to Bannon, and would go crazy if he were axed. And does the president lose his psychic connection to the issue palette that helped put him in power?
I don’t agree with everything Bannon has espoused, but he represents the MEAT of Trump’s VOTED FOR policies. The most important by far, being FREE TRADE/ECONOMY.
The people in MI, and OH, and PA, and WI who turned this election were not thinking about Assad, or thinking about Crimea, or Carter Page, or even emails, they were thinking about evaporated middle class careers born of a high school education, making cars, smelting steel, working where you could spend a career, and now struggling with part time jobs, or brain deadening low paying full time jobs worrying about their kids’ education, medical bills, and tomorrow in general, every single today. Bannon’s departure WOULD represent the victory of globalist, hedge fund, international bank ideas and financial products, and the idea that if the  DOW and NASDAQ are up, that means everyone wins.
That idea has ALREADY FAILED in reality and been REJECTED at the voting booth in a national election. It won over a LOT of resistance born of claims of racism, misogyny, and corruption.
The demotion of Bannon is a loud warning sign, and his removal WILL end up with a lot of Americans tuning their backs on the entire idea of change BY VOTE and REVOLUTION BY ELECTION.

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