Thursday, January 04, 2018

A Bannon scorned

The Republicans seem to think that casting Bannon into the wilderness will solve the problem once and forever.

No. That trick won't work. Bannon is combative, and, unlike most others in this melodrama, he is driven by genuine ideological fervor. He reads Julius Evola. Bannon's grand goal is to replace "liberalism" with "traditionalism" -- which is Evola-speak for replacing democracy with feudalism (or dictatorship).

This is not a man likely to scurry away meekly.

Marginalizing Bannon will only make him reckless and vengeful. Once he fully understands that there's no other way for him to stage a comeback, he'll do everything he can to destroy Trump.

From The Hill:
Bannon allies say statement praising Trump Jr. was spiked after Trump went nuclear

In the unreleased statement, Bannon had planned to call Trump Jr. a patriot and dispute the account in Wolff’s book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," in which Bannon described Trump Jr. as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for setting up a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer.

Bannon and his allies did not see a need to release the statement once Trump accused his former top campaign aide of having “lost his mind.” They believe the president’s statement effectively ended the relationship between the two men.

“He was literally just about to respond but backed off when the White House issued the statement,” said one source.
I suspect that Trump's "nuclear" response will go down in history alongside Trump's great Lester Holt motormouth moment. Trump's "speak first, think later" attitude will destroy him.

The Guardian suggests that Bannon is already cooperating with Mueller. So far, I don't see sufficient evidence to back that idea. But I do believe that Bannon knows where some of the bodies are buried, figuratively speaking. (Maybe literally. Who knows?)

The neo-Nazis hate Jared and Ivanka for an obvious reason beginning with the letter J.  Although Bannon pretends not to be in bed with the Nazis, I don't buy it: Anyone who reads Evola probably has one of those Strangelovian saluting arms that keeps shooting up into heil position. Early on, Bannon made it crystal clear that he hoped to engineer the ouster of Ivanka and Jared, even though everyone else knew that rule #1 of Trumpland is Don't mess with the family. For months, Bannon danced a very public jig atop that particular third rail. Yet Bannon wasn't fired. Sure, he was demoted and diminished, but he wasn't fired. He remained inside the White House long after the ax should have fallen.

Why? Probably because he knew too much.

Now is the time to reveal and unseal and play Let's Make a Deal. Mr. Bannon, you have a president to destroy. Unless you tell the world what you know about Trump, unless you prove that you are right and he is wrong, you have no hope of ever again having any influence.

5 comments:

Alessandro Machi said...

Your Trying Trump article that was written right after this one does not allow me to post a comment, but this topic does. Just thought you should know.

Alessandro Machi said...

I'm off on my own tangent. No matter what these clowns do, Barack Obama has become the exulted one yet besides the deplorable racists who did not like him, there still were millions who were hurt by Obama's Mortgage Modification program. They won't come back to the democrats unless the democrats admit that they did not do a good enough job separating house flippers from those homeowners scuffling to get by.

The Democrats keep going to more and more immigration and racism issues while ignoring their own wrongs during the Obama tenure.

Alessandro Machi said...

And it should also be noted that the Republicans would have been worse than Obama if they had had the presidency in 2008, but they didn't.

b said...

Trump has often accused opponents of doing whatever he himself has done or that he is accused of: birtherism, taking drugs, bigotry, being crazy. His lawyers are demanding that Michael Wolff's publishers take steps to maintain all relevant digital information. They go into a lot of detail about "preservation obligations". MOST of their letter is about that.

Is that normal nowadays in the US in cease and desist letters that allege libel and other torts? For all I know, it may be.

But still, several top law firms have turned down work for Trump. Why?

Might this letter be similar to his famous medical certificate? Could he be getting his retaliation in first?

Might Trump, or Trump Junior or Kushner, have been ordered by Mueller to meet "preservation obligations" in respect of digital information?

Does this presidency end when Trump stamps his foot and calls a judge or a special counsel "Lying Bob" or "Four Eyes", tweets that nuclear weapons are bigger than gavels, and, as Mike Pence relieves him of office under the 25th amendment, shrieks that in fact it's the FBI who are laundering money for Russians in league with Obama and Clinton, and who destroyed all of his electronic documents after he was ordered to preserve them?

#BaitTrump

Anonymous said...

b: But still, several top law firms have turned down work for Trump. Why?

Because he is unlikely to listen to counsels' advice; they fear a reputational backlash harming client retention and expansion and new associate recruital; and his history of not paying his lawyers. Several law firms sued him for lack of payment.

I agree the best way to decode what he says is to reverse it.

XI