STEVE BANNON: THE MOST INFLUENTIAL & DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE

…He doesn’t talk much, but Bannon carries a big White House stick of influence

 

The “Alt-Right” Steve Bannon is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, and now he on the National Security Council.

 

There are a lot of people that are advising Donald Trump that bother me.  But none as much as his White House Senior Strategist, Steve Bannon, the former CEO of Breitbart News.

 

Fortunately for us, Bannon doesn’t talk much with the media.  But when he does speak up, he sometimes gets way out of line. 

 

That happened last week when Bannon went directly at the American press during a telephone interview.  He stated that “news organizations had been humiliated by an election outcome few had anticipated”, and he repeatedly described the media as “the opposition party” of the current administration. 

 

Bannon is one of Trump’s most trusted advisers, so it’s no wonder that the president refers to the media as some of the “most dishonest people around’.  That comment originally came from Bannon.

 

“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States. The elite media got it dead wrong, 100% dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”

 

“That’s why you (the media) have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”

 

All of this comes at a moment of high tension between the US news media and the new administration.  There have been major arguments over the size of Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd and the president’s false claims that millions of illegal votes by undocumented immigrants swayed the popular vote of 3 million against him.  When we have serious issues in this country to deal with, this is where the new president is spending much of his time.  Just more proof that to Trump, his “brand identity” is the number one issue, bar none.

 

Mr. Bannon, who rarely grants interviews to journalists outside of talking to Breitbart News, (the provocative Alt-Right-wing website he ran until last August), they were echoing comments by Mr. Trump this weekend when the president said he was in “a running war” with the media and called journalists “among the most dishonest people on earth.”

 

During a call to discuss the comments from the president’s new press secretary, Sean Spicer, Mr. Bannon let loose with his criticism.  He offered up his broad indictment of the news media as being biased against Mr. Trump and out of touch with the American public. That’s a common argument for Breitbart News readers and those Fox-followers of their Trump-friendly mouth pieces like Sean Hannity.  “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said during the telephone call.

 

“The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.”  Even though he called for this action, he did not name any specific reporters or editors in his “mainstream media” reference.

 

Mr. Bannon is personally responsible for implementing the nationalist vision that Mr. Trump channeled during the later months of the campaign.  As a senior White House advisor, Bannon accompanies Trump on all of his travels and he was the one that put the description of “American carnage’’ in Trump’s inauguration speech.  He is also responsible for Trump’s series of executive actions outlining policy on trade agreements, immigration, and the building of the border wall and the demand that Mexico pay for it.  Yes, all of this came from Bannon.

 

No one disputes that Bannon is one of the strongest forces in a White House with multiple power centers. This is normal for Trump, as he likes to have competition between the power centers of his organizations.  Bannon is a capable manipulator of the press, and obviously a proud “crap disturber”.  Mr. Bannon was among the advisers who urged Mr. Spicer to make the confrontational and emotional statements to a shocked White House press room on his first trip there as press secretary.  At that time, the White House was disputing those press reports on the inauguration crowd size.  Bannon shares Trump’s view that the news media has misunderstood the movement that the president rode into office.

 

On his telephone calls, Mr. Bannon speaks in blunt but scarily calm tones, that are peppered with large doses of profanities.  He sometimes refers to himself as a “Darth Vader”.  He stated with ironic relish that Donald Trump was elected by a surge of support from “the working class hobbits and those ‘deplorables’.”

 

This latest telephone conversation was initiated originally by Mr. Bannon to offer praise for Mr. Spicer, who has been criticized for making false claims at the White House press podium about the attendance of Mr. Trump’s inaugural crowd.  He was also widely criticized for calling reporters dishonest and lecturing them about what stories to write.  Also for failing to admit that Trump had lied about widespread voter fraud in the election.

 

When Bannon was asked if he was concerned that Mr. Spicer had lost credibility with the news media, Bannon just laughed and said: “Are you kidding me?  We think that’s a badge of honor. ‘Questioning his integrity?', are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and absolutely no hard work.”

 

“You’re the opposition party,” Mr. Bannon said. “Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.”

 

Even though Bannon uses the term “mainstream media”, he many times refers directly to The New York Times and The Washington Post, by name.

 

“The paper of record for our beloved republic, The New York Times, should be absolutely ashamed and humiliated,” Mr. Bannon said. “They got it 100% wrong.”

 

But Bannon did add that with all this, he has been a reader of The Times for most of his adult life.

 

However, today's issue is, “What are the qualifications for a political right-wing nationalist to be appointed to the NSC?”

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017