Senior White House Advisor and National Security Council Permanent Member Stephen K. Bannon
You need to read Senior White House Advisor Stephen K. Bannon’s literal words to the media, because voters just put him in charge of running America.
Readers may recall that the Democratic Coalition filed formal campaign financing complaints against Steve Bannon with the FBI, over payments he received from Republican donor Robert Mercer’s Super PAC.
The Washington Post also reported that a Mercer charity paid Bannon significant sums through the election.
There’s been limited news about Bannon’s activities since then reported in the media.
Until this week.
First, Bannon contacted The New York Times to send a message aimed at casting a chilling net of prior restraint against America’s news media.
Then last night, the Senior White House Advisor just got named to the National Security Council, and against all logic and reason, America’s top General and Director of National Intelligence were just removed from the 400 person group of people.
The National Security Council is the only people who directly advise the President on urgent matters of foreign affairs and terrorism, as well as literally on war and peace.
Mr. Bannon is also widely reported to be responsible for drafting of this week’s series of presidential edicts.
In three media interviews with Mr. Bannon, since being named Trump Campaign Chairman, he has made numerous comments that relate to his mental impression and moral philosophy of life; One with The Daily Beast in August, one with The Hollywood Reporter in November and one with the New York Times this month.
So I’ll shut up now and let you read Bannon’s statements, chronologically arranged, as reported by the mainstream press:
August 2016
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed. “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
“National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also.”
November 2016
"Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when ‘they’ get it wrong. When ‘they're’ blind to who we are and what we're doing."
"The Clinton strength was to play to people without a college education. High school people. That's how you win elections."
"I'm not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist. The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver [the Trump Administration] we'll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we'll govern for 50 years. That's what the Democrats missed. They were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It's not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about."
"Like [Andrew] Jackson's populism, we're going to build an entirely new political movement. It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement."
"You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don't speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids."
"I knew that she couldn't close. They outspent us 10 to one, had 10 times more people and had all the media with them, but I kept saying it doesn't matter, they got it all wrong, we've got this locked."
"I am," he says, with relish, "Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors."
January 2017
“The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview on Wednesday. “I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”
“The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”
“The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: They were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He did not name specific reporters or editors.) “That’s why you have no power,” he added. “You were humiliated.”
Mr. Bannon spoke in blunt but calm tones, peppered with profanity, and humorously referred to himself as “Darth Vader.” He said, with ironic relish, that Mr. Trump was elected by a surge of support from “the working-class hobbits and deplorables.”
Asked if he was concerned that Mr. Spicer had lost credibility with the news media, Mr. Bannon chortled. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “We think that’s a badge of honor. ‘Questioning his integrity’ — are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.”
“You’re the opposition party,” he said. “Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.”
Mr. Bannon mostly referred to the “elite” or “mainstream” media, but he cited The New York Times and The Washington Post by name. “The paper of record for our beloved republic, The New York Times, should be absolutely ashamed and humiliated,” Mr. Bannon said. “They got it 100 percent wrong.”
He added that he has been a reader of The Times for most of his adult life.