President Trump has undoubtedly made many mistakes almost a year into his presidency, but none may prove to be more costly than the hiring of alt-right icon Steve Bannon. Knowing he could not win over minority voters in 2016, Trump reached out to Bannon in hopes of stirring up white constituents all over the country. The strategy worked and Trump awarded Bannon with a prominent role in the White House for his hard work. That’s when things started to go downhill.
The move was met with backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike and praised by the KKK and the American Nazi Party. Still, Trump ignored the red flags and stuck by his man. Then the Charlottesville white supremacist rallies happened and everything changed. Many Americans felt at the time that these individuals now feel emboldened by Trump and Bannon. The situation managed to get even worse when the president called the white nationalists “some very fine people” instead of condemning their racist, anti-semitic rhetoric, causing the protestors to praise him and the rest of the country to wonder whether or not Trump was a member of the radical alt-right after all.
Trump’s approval rating subsequently plummeted and the White House staff saw several shake-ups that ultimately led to Bannon being let go.
Little did Trump know, the monster he had created would serve him even worse outside the White House than in it.
After his ousting, Bannon declared “war” on the Republican establishment, vowing to recruit and field primary challengers against almost every GOP Senate incumbent this year in hopes to further promote his alt-right vision and thoroughly change the ideals of the Republican party. The first battled started in Alabama’s special election with Bannon’s candidate Roy Moore, who defeated Trump’s own candidate Luther Strange in the Republican primary. Moore was ultimately defeated by liberal Doug Jones, who awarded the extremely conservative state its first Democratic senator in twenty-five years.
Many Republicans blamed Steve Bannon for their loss in Alabama and now fear that the same result will end up happening in other states if he continues his war against the establishment. With their majority in the Senate quickly evaporating, Republicans and Trump desperately need Bannon to give up his fight and go away before it’s too late.
Bannon, however, has no plans to do so. In fact, today excerpts from a new book by Michael Wolff quote Steve Bannon on the record calling the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting “treasonous” and that Trump’s son Donald Trump, Jr. will “crack like an egg on national TV”. He also went on to say that the White House is “sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five” hurricane when it comes to the impeding Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian ties, then went on to say that the F.B.I.’s path to the president goes right through Trump, Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort (who has already been indicted by Mueller’s team).
It would appear that the man Trump elevated to the national spotlight is now turning on him, his campaign, and his family in a major way. These bombshell statements by someone who had a major role in the campaign and administration are not good news for the president. Bannon is once again thoroughly dividing the Republican party, this time against the commander-in-chief who hired him in the first place.
Bannon was a risky hire when Trump first brought him onto the campaign. He has always had a strong backing from white nationalists like Richard Spencer and runs a website that publishes cringe-worthy articles like Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. After the new chief of staff John Kelly took over, Bannon was finally pushed out to prevent any more damage to the president’s shrinking approval ratings. Yet since his departure, Bannon’s been even more of a headache for the administration. His war against establishment Republicans led to their special election loss in Alabama and his quickly escalating feud with Trump may ultimately diminish any backing from the alt-right that the president was still clinging on to, not to the mention the fuel he’s throwing on the fire of growing impeachment talks during the ongoing Russia investigation.
This war of words between these two outspoken men seems far from over. Trump has already countered Bannon’s words by trying to distance himself from his former employee, claiming that “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency” and even going as far to say that he has “lost his mind”. Maybe he has. Or maybe Trump is the one who lost his mind when he thought it would be a good idea to put this white nationalist in the White House in the first place.
Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr
