Trump trusted Bannon the most, and that could now cost him very dearly

It's the biggest political bust-up of the presidency so far

• Andrew Buncombe New York 
• @AndrewBuncombe 
• Wednesday 3 January 2018 21:00 GMT

There are few things more painful than when hot love turns cold.

For a long time, Donald Trump and Steve Bannon were hard to separate. The former naval officer was one of just a few who genuinely believed the reality television star could win the White House.

When he did so, Trump rewarded Bannon with an office in the West Wing and a top job. Trump’s daughter and son-in-law thought Bannon was vulgar and uncouth and the President smarted when his special advisor got better press coverage, but in the abrasive, aggressive Bannon, with his motto of “always attack”, Trump had found someone he could relate to. Someone whom he could trust.

2018: IT’S LIT https://t.co/Jv2SNY6fqs

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 3, 2018

Even when Bannon was forced from the White House, a victim of competing factions and the arrival of former general John Kelly as the Chief of Staff, Trump continued to dial Bannon’s cell phone and seek his counsel.

That bromance now seems over. After excerpts of a forthcoming book were leaked in which Bannon was quoted as criticising Trump’s eldest son and son-in-law, and saying a meeting they held with a Russian lawyer was “treasonous”, the President hit back in a way Bannon may quietly have approved of.

“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said in a statement, that would have been staggering had it come from someone else. 

“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.”

He added: “Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well.”

Trump was stung after excerpts were published, first by the Guardian, from journalist Michael Wolff’s forthcoming book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. In it, Bannon is quoted as saying the meeting Trump Jr held with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was “treasonous and unpatriotic”.

“The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers,” the former strategist is quoted as saying.

When Bannon left the White House, he speculated that he was just as powerful outside, back at the controls of Breitbart News, as he was in the West Wing.

“I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he told one interviewer. “I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”

The danger for Trump attacking Bannon in such stark, personal terms is what his former confidante does next. Bannon and Breitbart are backed by the Mercer family, Republican mega-donors whose wealth was established by tech entrepreneur Robert Mercer.

The Mercers were also financial supporters of former judge Roy Moore in the Alabama senate race, one of a series of insurgent candidates Bannon intends to put his support behind between now and the midterm elections of November.

Many of Trump’s supporters obtain their news through sources such as Bretibart. While admirers of Bannon have to date largely been hard to separate from supporters of Trump, if the 64-year-old decides to use his news site to attack the President, will it impact his base? Trump’s White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, claimed it would not.

“I don’t think it does anything to the President’s base. The base and the people that supported this President supported the President and supported his agenda,” she told reporters. “Those things haven’t changed. The President is still exactly who he was yesterday as he was two years ago when he started out on the campaign trail.” 

Breitbart News’ reporting of the spat on Wednesday was pretty straightforward. But if he wanted to twist the knife, Bannon has a powerful weapon in his hands.

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has so far charged four former Trump associates as he continues to probe Russia’s alleged meddling in the election. While Trump may try to airbrush Bannon from history, Bannon was a central figure during the transition and in setting the tone during the first six months of this strangest of presidencies. He helped draft his “America First” inauguration speech.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bannon-trump-book-russia-claims-bad-news-president-cost-dearly-a8140691.html

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My Comments :  

1. Robert Mercer - the man who (together with fellow super-PAC donor Sheldon Adelson) propelled Trump in the WH and employed Bannon on several leading positions on several of his companies - had recently been forced, to sell his (majority) stake at the Breitbart Company to his daughters, of whom in this respect Rebekah Mercer especially seems to be worth mentioning.

2. Mercer has been forced to act that way because his strong affiliation with Trump and his controversial policy initiatives seemed to negatively effect the credibility of the successful and exclusive Renaissance hedge fund that he participates in (be it no longer in a prominent boardroom position, which he also recently had to give up).

3. Rebekah Mercer - qualified by some as a political animal by her own right, with possibly presidential ambitions of her own - was (at the time together with her father) the central figurehead in the rather successful effort to have Trump elected plus to deliver the GOP a majority in both Houses of Congress.

4. She in fact more or less supervised the last part of the Trump campaign and she was highly influential during the WH transition period in deciding who had to possess what executive post and she also more or less determined (directly or through Bannon) what policies had to be accentuated.   

5. Rebekah Mercer most probably will - in close cooperation with her conspiracy theory addicted father no doubt - continue to advertise the preferred main policy-direction of her father so far : "Upsetting the Washington establishment" (including the GOP establishment).

6. She is also highly active on the political front of selecting and supporting "alternative candidate names" for GOP Congress nominations, but in the process completely miscalculated the heavily Mercer/Bannon supported Moore nomination.

7. Do also not underestimate the covert political influence on the Trump administration of the aforementioned right-wing, notorious birth-right organiser and super-PAC Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson, who - together with middle man and self-acclaimed ME peace envoy, Jahred Kushner - can be held highly, if not exclusively responsible for the extremely controversial, and highly counterproductive USA recognition of Jerusalem as the "undivided capital of the Jewish State".

8. Idem for the recently deployed, highly aggressive approach towards the Shiite Teheran regime (following the militant neo-Conservative motto of "crushing the Shiite crescent") and the intentional stimulation of the ever decreasing Palestinian Rights.

9. Bannon himself - who after his dismissal from the WH, already predicted, that Trump most probably would disappear from the presidency within the second half of his term - knows probably in great detail about the inner-secrets of the Trump family and the inner-secrets of the Trump campaign and seems to anticipate on the resignation of Trump.

10. So when Bannon indeed might have presidential ambitions by himself, he simply has to distance himself profoundly and in time from Trump, in order to prevent any political contamination from - for example - the possibly highly toxic outcome of the Mueller / FBI investigation against Trump and his cohorts.

11. I do estimate as well, that Trump - who has a history of threatening with mafia-style intimidating legal actions against his enemies - will not go to court for the apparent breech by Bannon of the usual WH gag-clause, because the possible revelations on his presidential tenure (and/or pre-presidential misbehaviour) during a legal procedure most probably will hurt Trump infinitely more than Bannon can ever be damaged.

12. Meanwhile the world undoubtedly will be able to enjoy many more colourful specimens of (the political equivalent of) revenge porn during the belligerent interactions between Trump and Bannon in the near future... 

13. This not at least, because "Teflon Trump" might soon have to conclude that his political future might be in existential danger when even more damaging revelations will touch the surface.

14. Revelations, maybe including the revival of the (apparently highly substantiated / corroborated) accusation of the brutal rape by the notoriously sexually obsessed predator Trump of a thirteen year old youth some decades ago.