Bannon’s New Role
This is Actually Bad News.
Many rejoiced last week upon hearing the news that Steve Bannon had finally been given the boot. It may have seemed as though it was a pathetic attempt to smooth things over after Trump’s meltdown press conference but in fact the dismissal had been in the works for some time. The events in and following Charlottesville provided a convenient cover for Bannon to leave without demanding too much speculation as to why, and he was quickly being discussed by many in the media as a potentially volatile ex who might now be a liability for Trump. This feeling was validated by the Breitbart editor and chief’s provocative tweet: “#War.” However, at this point in his presidency Trump has a well established pattern of letting people go to appease those around him without anyone walking away too bitter. Whether it is Flynn begging the FBI for immunity, The Mooch behaving like Rahm Emanuel’s less intelligent evil twin, or Reince Priebus who made the unfortunate mistake of being Reince Priebus, there is almost never any bad blood. On the contrary, some have maintained their support for the President very publicly. This is in part because Trump will never admit any wrongdoing — such as hiring someone you were warned not to hire by the outgoing President and the Attorney General — and when he is forced to let people like Flynn go he spends most of the discussion explaining why he was right to hire them in the first place, even going so far as to suggest that they did nothing wrong and implying that he had no reason to dismiss them in the first place. For all the people who have come and gone not one of them has thrown any mud on their way out the door. So far Bannon has been no exception. Trump may have no need to worry about him spilling secrets out of spite and while the rest of us may be tempted to feel slightly better with him gone we should know better. After all, Trump was Trump long before Bannon was whispering in his ear. There is no reason to believe that now he’ll decide to tone down the dangerous rhetoric and start listening to the likes of John Kelly.
The conversation seems to have fizzled out at this stalemate: Trump has no reason to worry and we have no reason to rejoice. Unfortunately the outcome is not so balanced we do have considerable reason to be concerned. Now that he is no longer in the office Bannon is freed up to pursue his own agenda, which will at times be rallying the alt-right to Trump’s side in which case the new normal will remain. But it will also mean publicly criticizing him for not going far enough and this is where the real threat begins to appear.
None of us were surprised when we learned that he would be returning to his old position but few have stopped to reflect on how much more significant that position has become and how much power he will be able to wield with it. Bannon has achieved mainstream political legitimacy by being a white house cabinet member, and also brought Breitbart to the national conversation in a way that it wasn’t before. The amount of attention it has received is evidenced by the higher standards it has as of late been forced to impose upon itself. According to a June 7th Washington Post article by Paul Farhi the skid-mark of the American media repertoire (my words, not his) has been faced with “advertiser boycott and plummeting readership” and is therefore being strong-armed into at least making it look as though they’re moving slightly more towards center. The article cites ComScore’s report that the readership has declined by 53%, but the number it is now sitting on is still higher than it was prior to its endorsement of Donald Trump’s campaign and Bannon declaring it the “platform of the alt-right.” Farhi’s article centers on Breitbart’s ambitions of becoming a more accepted news source and the concessions it is making in order to do that. But there is an obvious parallel here between the rise and fall of readership and the rise and fall of Trump support. Upon endorsing each other, the news-ish outlet and the president type person were able to expand their base from a small lunatic fringe known as the alt-right to a slightly less lunatic faction of the far-Right. 6 months in both the President and the publication are back to their core base.
Bannon’s eagerness to enjoy his new found freedom does not jibe well with the publication’s attempts at calming down these past few months. And Trump has been showing more and more that he would rather keep his loyal followers amped up than risk losing them by moving more towards center or even emphatically condemning Nazis and White Supremacists. He thrives on praise. It is the one test he has for people, and it is better to have a fired up 30% than a lukewarm 45.
Rather than being part of the same team, now the two men are back to their mutually symbiotic relationship that worked out so well for them last year. Trump wants ratings, Bannon wants his ethno-nationalist agenda and the two are now in a position to help each other. At the end of the day, Trump’s base is much more inclined to follow Bannon and Breitbart, with their coherent and consistent message than they are to remain loyal to Donald — an only recent addition to the cause. Many in that group have been very open about Trump simply being good enough for now. Nowhere was this view more spelled out than in the Vice News interview with domestic terrorist, Chris Cantwell in which he professed a hope for somebody “like Donald Trump who does not give his daughter to a Jew.” These are the types of people who love Trump.
It is safe to say that the second he stops giving dog-whistles, winks, and nods he will lose their affection rather quickly. Now that Bannon has been freed from the constraints of an office in which he had to be a team player (something he did with as much competence and enthusiasm as a 9 year old forced to join a soccer team primarily composed of the kids beating him up at school) he is free to pursue his own agenda. Returning to a commanding role over the alt-right troops, he has gone from riding in the chariot to dangling the carrot out in front of the horses. And given the choice between following the dictates of human decency and the best interests of the entire country, or following the demands of the only approval ratings Trump has, we know which way he’ll go. There is no telling how far to the alt-right he will be able to drag the President.
