|
EPILOGUE:
BANNON AND TRUMP
O n a sweltering morning in October 2017, the man who had more or less
single-handedly brought about the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate
accord, stood on the steps of the Breitbart town house and said, with a hearty laugh, “I guess global warming is real.”
Steve Bannon had lost twenty pounds since his exit from the White House six
weeks before—he was on a crash all-sushi diet. “That building,” said his friend
David Bossie, speaking about all White Houses but especially the Trump White House, “takes perfectly healthy people and turns them into old, unhealthy
people.” But Bannon, who Bossie had declared on virtual life support during his
final days in the West Wing, was again, by his own description, “on fire.” He had moved out of the Arlington “safe house” and reestablished himself back at the Breitbart Embassy, turning it into a headquarters for the next stage of the
Trump movement, which might not include Trump at all.
Asked about Trump’s leadership of the nationalist-populist movement,
Bannon registered a not inconsiderable change in the country’s political
landscape: “I am the leader of the national-populist movement.”
One cause of Bannon’s boast and new resolve was that Trump, for no reason that Bannon could quite divine, had embraced Mitch McConnell’s establishment candidate in the recent Republican run-off in Alabama rather than support the nat-pop choice for the Senate seat vacated by now attorney general Jeff Sessions.
After all, McConnell and the president were barely on speaking terms. From his August “working holiday” in Bedminster, the president’s staff had tried to organize a makeup meeting with McConnell, but McConnell’s staff had sent back word that it wouldn’t be possible because the Senate leader would be getting a haircut.
But the president—ever hurt and confused by his inability to get along with the congressional leadership, and then, conversely, enraged by their refusal toget along with him—had gone all-in for the McConnell-backed Luther Strange, who had run against Bannon’s candidate, the right-wing firebrand Roy Moore.
(Even by Alabama standards, Moore was far right: he had been removed as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for defying a federal court order to take down a monument of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama judicial building.)
For Bannon, the president’s political thinking had been obtuse at best. He was unlikely to get anything from McConnell—and indeed Trump had demanded
nothing for his support for Luther Strange, which came via an unplanned tweet in August. Strange’s prospects were not only dim, but he was likely to lose in a humiliating fashion. Roy Moore was the clear candidate of the Trump base—and he was Bannon’s candidate. Hence, that would be the contest: Trump against
Bannon. In fact, the president really didn’t have to support anyone—no one
would have complained if he’d stayed neutral in a primary race. Or, he could have tacitly supported Strange and not doubled down with more and more
insistent tweets.
For Bannon, this episode was not only about the president’s continuing and
curious confusion about what he represented, but about his mercurial,
intemperate, and often cockamamie motivations. Against all political logic,
Trump had supported Luther Strange, he told Bannon, because “Luther’s my
friend.”
“He said it like a nine-year-old,” said Bannon, recoiling, and noting that there was no universe in which Trump and Strange were actually friends.
For every member of the White House senior staff this would be the lasting conundrum of dealing with President Trump: the “why” of his often baffling
behavior.
“The president fundamentally wants to be liked” was Katie Walsh’s analysis.
“He just fundamentally needs to be liked so badly that it’s always . . . everything is a struggle for him.”
This translated into a constant need to win something—anything. Equally
important, it was essential that he look like a winner. Of course, trying to win without consideration, plan, or clear goals had, in the course of the
administration’s first nine months, resulted in almost nothing but losses. At the same time, confounding all political logic, that lack of a plan, that impulsivity, that apparent joie de guerre, had helped create the disruptiveness that seemed to so joyously shatter the status quo for so many.
But now, Bannon thought, that novelty was finally wearing off.
For Bannon, the Strange-Moore race had been a test of the Trump cult ofpersonality. Certainly Trump continued to believe that people were following
him, that he was the movement—and that his support was worth 8 to 10 points in any race. Bannon had decided to test this thesis and to do it as dramatically as possible. All told, the Senate Republican leadership and others spent $32 million on Strange’s campaign, while Moore’s campaign spent $2 million.
Trump, though aware of Strange’s deep polling deficit, had agreed to extend
his support in a personal trip. But his appearance in Huntsville, Alabama, on
September 22, before a Trump-size crowd, was a political flatliner. It was a full-on Trump speech, ninety minutes of rambling and improvisation—the wall
would be built (now it was a see-through wall), Russian interference in the U.S. election was a hoax, he would fire anybody on his cabinet who supported
Moore. But, while his base turned out en masse, still drawn to Trump the
novelty, his cheerleading for Luther Strange drew at best a muted re-sponse. As the crowd became restless, the event threatened to become a hopeless
embarrassment.
Reading his audience and desperate to find a way out, Trump suddenly threw out a line about Colin Kaepernick taking to his knee while the na-tional anthem played at a National Football League game. The line got a standing ovation. The president thereupon promptly abandoned Luther Strange for the rest of the speech. Likewise, for the next week he continued to whip the NFL. Pay no attention to Strange’s resounding defeat five days after the event in Huntsville.
Ignore the size and scale of Trump’s rejection and the Moore-Bannon tri-umph, with its hint of new disruptions to come. Now Trump had a new topic, and a winning one: the Knee.
|
发帖
雷达卡
加JingGuanBbs
京公网安备 11010802022788号
论坛法律顾问：王进律师
知识产权保护声明
免责及隐私声明
提升卡
置顶卡
沉默卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
