I’m sure a few more years of Congressional investigations will finally make it one. It’s only time and money they could otherwise use to do something important for the country’s benefit, after all.
What percentage of people for whom the email server was a major issue know what an email server is?
Bannon indicates the tone. Trump will say things, suggest ideas based on what appeals to Nativists. Of course, now that the election is over, it’s put up or shut up time: Trump, Bannon et al have to deliver the goods. And no amount of propaganda can polish a turd if Trump fails to come through on the economy.
But suppose there’s a honeymoon period. Suppose there’s a bull run on the market and suppose that some of Trump’s policies actually unshackle the economy and it takes off like a rocket in the first 2 years – very possible, IMO. In that case, whatever Bannon says is backed up by results. “These guys know what they’re doing so if they want to call Van Jones a n—, who am I to judge?”
That’s the danger.
Just trying to imagine the howling if Obama had put the African American version of Bannon into a similar position.
Agreed, but the market taking off would have be some kind of coincidence or miracle completely unrelated to Trump, whose incompetence and ignorance is just absolutely astounding. ATM the stock market doesn’t seem to know what to do – the S&P 500 closed yesterday at almost exactly the same level as the first week of September, and is currently lower. Meanwhile bond markets are falling. According to this, the “Trump effect” is not only depressing bond prices, but anticipation of interest rate rises has already started increasing mortgage rates here and may depress what has been a historically robust housing market. Throw in a rise in racial strife and ethnic hate to go with a tanking global economy, and what could possibly go wrong?
It boggles the mind, doesn’t it? The wingnuts have already used up the worst insults they could think of to hurl at Obama, as if he’d literally already done that, so I don’t know what they’d have left.
In the real world, though, an African American version of Bannon couldn’t be appointed to anything because he’d be in jail.
I think the equivalent is Louis Farakhan, who Obama, in order to unite with the right not only did not appoint to be an advisor but denounced.
Is it my imagination, or have more people in the last six months try to convince us that Blightbart is a cite?
It seems to me that there’s only one person in the world that Trump actually trusts, and that’s his daughter. Everybody else is either a flunky, a stooge, a mark, a nobody, or an enemy.
This leaves Trump very susceptible to guys like Steve Wormtongue, because Trump can’t help but to think that anybody who flatters him is a genius. And if it’s not Bannon it’s going to be somebody else, because Trump won’t stand for advisers who aren’t sycophants.
The thing about flattery is that it has to escalate. We can take it for granted that, so far, Bannon is the most skilled person in that circle at telling Trump what Trump longs to hear.
But “you will be the greatest President of all time” and “Western Civilization [read: white power and preeminence] will have YOU to thank for rescuing it from certain doom” and “Mr. President, you just surprised me again with how brilliant you are! I wouldn’t have believed it possible!” can go only so far.
It’s inevitable, I believe, that Bannon will tell Trump that for the sake of future generations he must remain President, and that means that anyone who would threaten that outcome–political rivals as well as naïve souls who believe they have any sort of right to tell Trump what to a President can or can’t do–must be removed from the scene and/or made to know the error of their ways.
This will happen only if Bannon et al believe they can get backing from like-minded top men in the military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities. Of course we saw in the “New York field office of the FBI/October 28 Comey letter” case that there are plenty at the FBI, at least, who saw Trump as a good candidate—that alone should tell us that Bannon’s message would not fall on deaf ears.
Sounds more like “shite,” but maybe they’re drunk and slurring?
Bannon is just one guy in the new administration. Trump will be surrounded by his entire cabinet and chief of staff. His Jewish son in law is one of Trump’s most trusted advisors.
The far right helped (a little) to get Trump elected. That means someone from that group gets a seat in the new administration.
I wish the press would give Bannon hysteria a rest. Trump is and always has been a moderate. A yankee republican just like his buddy Gulinnea. Heck he endorsed Hillary in 2008. The Clinton’s attended his wedding.
Bannonwon’t be the all powerful Trump whisperer. He’ll probably be nudged out within a couple years.
He may wield no power at all, he may just be parking his butt in an office and twiddle his jowls all day. A Presidential appointment lends dignity to this slime mold of a man. That he is there is bad enough!
While I disagree with most of what you wrote, I agree he’ll be nudged out. I’d say weeks or months, instead of years, though. Too toxic, even for Trump.
Nudged out in a couple of years? Seems unreasonably optimistic to me.
I think he was hired to draw media coverage, manufacture outrage, (repay him with WH experience), then fire his ass and look much more reasonable, with the bonus of appearing to be doing ‘something’ about the racist outrage du jour. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole first round of appointments amounts to similar fodder. (Nor would I be shocked if they know that’s what’s gonna happen. )
Think about it, no matter who he replaces this guy with, everyone will be relieved. If he does it right after a church bombing, or such, he’ll actually appear presidential!
This IS his forte! It’s gonna be something to see.
I’m pretty sure Trump and his party will want Bannon gone before the mid term elections in 2 years.
It may happen even quicker. It depends on the positions he takes in front of Trump. He’ll lose credibility fast if he starts quoting David Duke.
This would suggest they actually have a plan, a strategy, an actual understanding of how to run a high-level government office. Absolutely nothing coming out of Trump’s transition team suggests such a thing. In fact, the complete opposite.
He was hired because he has a pulse, and he was on Trump’s side during the campaign.
Banning muslims, building a border wall, deporting all illegal immigrants, means-testing NATO members to determine if they qualify for U.S. assistance, suggesting that Japan and South Korea get nukes, suggesting that Russia be given a free hand in Syria, recognizing Russia’s takeover of Crimea as legitimate and alienating Ukraine, starting a trade war with China by openly labeling them a currency manipulator and imposing tariffs on all of their exports, and advocating torture and the intentional killing of terrorists’ families are not moderate positions.
Mitt Romney is a Yankee Republican.
Seriously. I keep hearing that he’s some kind of anti-semitic, white-supremacist monster, but the only evidence I’ve seen is bits of a leaked deposition from a contested divorce.
Is there any other evidence to support this notion?
Ever read Breitbart?
He’s a racist! He’s sexist! Just like Romney!