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标题: 关于Steve Bannon被开简单说几句 [打印本页]
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 10:51
标题: 关于Steve Bannon被开简单说几句
本帖最后由 Dracula 于 2017-8-19 11:49 编辑

Steve Bannon被Trump开掉的消息传开后，被liuqing098点名提到，我就简单说几句。



1.        Steve Bannon失去Trump的信任，以致现在被开的最重要原因并不是他和Trump的政治观点上发生了严重分歧，或者是白宫内各个派系之间的内斗（尽管这是一个重要因素）。而是去年大选Trump令绝大多数人跌破眼镜意外获胜后，媒体把不少的功劳归在Bannon身上，认为他的alt-right的政治观点尽管让人厌恶，但他本人确实是有疯狂的天才，作为军师在背后运筹帷幄是Trump获胜的重要因素。Trump正式就任后的前几个星期，白宫的一系列雷厉风行的举措，声势很大（当然现在回头来看没有多少雨点），基本上按照Bannon的nationalist的agenda来的，尤其是穆斯林禁令。好多人觉得这都是Bannon在背后指挥，不少媒体暗示Trump就是个傀儡，背后实际指挥的是Bannon（最有名的是Saturday Night Live里的sketch），乃至Bannon本人都上了时代周刊的封面。Trump这个人性格里最重要的一点就是Narcissism。他自己永远都是最伟大、最光荣、最正确。几个月以前曾经公开说过，他在总统这个位子上已经取得的成就，除了林肯以外，超过美国历史上其他任何总统，包括华盛顿罗斯福等。Trump这一生中干成的最惊天动地的事情当然就是去年总统大选获胜，这里的功劳无论如何不能跟任何人分，完全都是他一个人的。现在媒体抬高Bannon的作用，让Trump极其的不爽，乃至非常愤怒。那以后就已经对Bannon开始很疏远。白宫内各个派别争夺权力极其激烈，他们也都知道这点。强调Bannon作用比较出名的有一本Bloomberg记者Joshua Green写的书Devil's Bargain。Bannon在白宫的对手象Jared Kushner等在跟Trump谈话的时候都会时不时的似乎无意的提到它，让Trump对Bannon的观感越来越差。Trump多次在接受记者采访的时候主动反复提到，去年大选获胜的功劳完全是他一个人的，他才是自己真正的chief strategist（Bannon在白宫的头衔），Bannon没起任何作用。前天还有一条报道说，Trump对他的亲信说"That fucking Steve Bannon taking credit for my election"。对Bannon都已经接近深恶痛绝了，因此Bannon现在被开掉也算是在意料之中吧。

2.        Bannon过去几个月在白宫的影响已经是越来越小。几个星期以前就传出不少谣言说他要离开。包括Anthony Scaramucci短暂但是非常耀眼在白宫的那10天里，也用18+的语言重炮攻击过Bannon。Bannon很可能也知道自己是待不长，或者就不想干了。几天前主动找一个左派的杂志谈自己对政治局势以及经济政策的看法。最犯忌讳的是他承认美国对朝鲜不可能有任何实际的军事行动方案。他那些话本身是挺有道理，我也同意。但是Trump对朝鲜的言论和政策是Fire and Fury， Locked and Loaded，威胁对朝鲜进行军事打击。Bannon这些话等于是给Trump的朝鲜政策拆台。要是其他的白宫人员这个干的话也都属于fireable offense。我看到的评论认为Bannon说这些话前应该知道这一点。他这么干就是在白宫受气受够了。这么干算是逼着Trump 开掉自己，也算是临走前给了Trump一击。

3.        Trump上任后的7个月有一些政策上是和Bannon的主张一致。象穆斯林禁令，修墙等。但是在经济政策上却并没有听Bannon的。大规模基础设施建设，到现在也还就是一句空话。我估计明年也不会实现。同中国贸易战，把制造业的工作抢回美国，Trump大选的时候口号喊得很凶，说上任第一天就要将中国列为currency manipulator。但是现在都不提了。Bannon在同American Prospects采访的时候，字里行间中也对这挺不满。我估计Bannon离开对Trump政府的政策不会有多大的影响。从这个星期Trump对Charlottesville极右游行的反应来看，那些White Nationalist的言论观点，Trump本人就是信的，并不是Bannon在背后指挥。

4.        Bannon那些White Nationalist的意识形态和agenda尽管我挺厌恶，不过我也承认他在战略的层次上还是有些想法的。从穆斯林禁令混乱实施那件事来看，Bannon这个人实际办事的能力不怎么样。但是我觉得他还是有些才能的。现在白宫剩下的人Trump的亲信里，Ivanka, Kushner, Steven Miller，Kellyanne Conway这些人的能力其实还不如Bannon。而且象我在以前那个帖子里说的那样，看到Trump对司法部部长Jeff Sessions的对待，我很难想象能力强的现在会有人愿意加入白宫为Trump卖命。因此如果Jared Kushner的影响随着Bannon被开而增加的话，Trump政府的competence可能会更差。而且象现在的chief of staff， John Kelly也要小心，他如果干得不错，得到媒体赞赏抢了Trump的风头，可能马上也会遭到Bannon的命运。最近几个星期，Trump政府内部的混乱越来越厉害。Trump能熬到今年年底，白宫会变为什么样子，我觉得都不好想象。

5.        Steve Bannon离开白宫后，现在回到了Breitbart。Breitbart在右翼尤其是极右那儿还是挺有影响的。Bannon熟知白宫的内幕，他会不会对Trump进行报复，现在还不清楚。如果这发生的话，Trump对他base的控制可能也会严重松动。他被弹劾的可能性也会变得越来越大。



[groupid=149]酒庄[/groupid]
作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-19 10:59

搬弄：“尼玛你以为是你自己选上的？没有老子指点，你丫现在还在找钱还工地民工欠薪呢。老子再找个候选人，下次大选怼死你！咦，我手里攥着Breitbart，一呼万应，我他妈的干嘛不自己参选呢？”

也许搬弄同志回去后会另推一个候选人出来怼川总。那就太太太好玩了。
作者: 司马梦求    时间: 2017-8-19 11:08
trump不是明主啊
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-19 11:21
在Trump内阁里，最有见识的还就是Bannon，Kushner也不错，但他不大暴露自己的主张，还摸不透到底是什么政策主张。在竞选时期，甚至入住白宫后，Trump的有见识的政策主张基本上都来自Bannon。在“感情”上，Trump和Bannon是一致的；但在理性上，Trump根本没有Bannon的智商。Bannon离开白宫，就怕Trump只会shoot from the hip，闯更大的祸。美国政府现在还是auto pilot，就怕bad captain把船开到触礁了。
作者: liuqing098    时间: 2017-8-19 11:22
谢谢解答。
但是还有一问，“Trump大选的时候口号喊得很凶，说上任第一天就要将中国列为currency manipulator。”现在不是搬超级301条款了？
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-8-19 11:30
liuqing098 发表于 2017-8-18 19:22
谢谢解答。
但是还有一问，“Trump大选的时候口号喊得很凶，说上任第一天就要将中国列为currency manipulat ...

我的理解是班农认为跟中国的经济战是第一位的，而老床是用这个当做交换朝鲜的筹码。所以班农无所顾忌的时候才会放话说拿朝鲜已经没辙了，好好跟中国开经济战才是正经。
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-8-19 11:32
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-18 19:21
在Trump内阁里，最有见识的还就是Bannon，Kushner也不错，但他不大暴露自己的主张，还摸不透到底是什么政策 ...

我有感觉这次debt ceiling 药丸
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-19 11:36
holycow 发表于 2017-8-18 21:32
我有感觉这次debt ceiling 药丸

这才是点到要点了！还有两个月，这debt ceiling要是不能解决，这特家铺可能就要开不下去了。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-19 11:39
holycow 发表于 2017-8-18 21:30
我的理解是班农认为跟中国的经济战是第一位的，而老床是用这个当做交换朝鲜的筹码。所以班农无所顾忌的时 ...

从美国利益来说，Bannon是对的。Trump的生意经实际上在国家层面是不管用的，尤其是对中国这样的实际超级大国来说。
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-8-19 11:39
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-18 19:36
这才是点到要点了！还有两个月，这debt ceiling要是不能解决，这特家铺可能就要开不下去了。 ...

一个月
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 11:41
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-19 11:21
在Trump内阁里，最有见识的还就是Bannon，Kushner也不错，但他不大暴露自己的主张，还摸不透到底是什么政策 ...

Kushner本来是民主党，在好多问题象同性恋等社会问题上属于自由派。他比Bannon更接近于主流，从这个角度来看是比Bannon要好。但是我觉得他的实际能力也不怎么样。就经商来说，他的房地产公司现在面临的问题很大。就实际政治来说他也没有任何经验。就他给Trump出的主意，象开掉Comey（Bannon是反对），现在看很不怎么样，Trump这几个月的麻烦主要都是从那个决定来的。

Kushner和同他的亲信Gary Cohn反对对中国进行贸易战（我怀疑Kushner和同中国包括中国政府的商业关系不干不净）。他在白宫的影响增加的话，对中国是好事。

作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 11:43
liuqing098 发表于 2017-8-19 11:22
谢谢解答。
但是还有一问，“Trump大选的时候口号喊得很凶，说上任第一天就要将中国列为currency manipulat ...

这个主要是给中国施加压力，让中国对朝鲜施加压力。朝鲜宣布不会在关岛附近海域试射导弹，也算是给Trump以及中国面子了。这事我估计对中美贸易不会有多大实际影响。

作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-19 11:56
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-18 21:41
Kushner本来是民主党，在好多问题象同性恋等社会问题上属于自由派。他比Bannon更接近于主流，从这个角度 ...

Kushner好像在运作方面更加擅长，像撮合特朗普与中国的关系，但在大政上还不清楚他到底是什么路子。俄罗斯问题是戳到痛处了，可能是慌不择路，开掉Comey是很笨的做法。
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-8-19 11:56
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-18 19:39
从美国利益来说，Bannon是对的。Trump的生意经实际上在国家层面是不管用的，尤其是对中国这样的实际超级 ...

班农在那次无所顾忌的访谈里还说如果可能，就和中国做个trade: 朝鲜冻结核计划换取美军撤出朝鲜半岛。这人才能还是有的。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-19 12:00
本帖最后由 晨枫 于 2017-8-18 22:02 编辑
holycow 发表于 2017-8-18 21:56
班农在那次无所顾忌的访谈里还说如果可能，就和中国做个trade: 朝鲜冻结核计划换取美军撤出朝鲜半岛。这 ...


从战略角度来看，这对美国是有利的。在韩国驻军本来就是人质，真要在东北亚兴风作浪，以日本为基地更加方便。但要是换取朝鲜冻结核计划，甚至促成韩国主导的半岛统一，对美国是有利的，尽管倒向中国的风险也不小。他这个trade是比特朗普那个用贸易与朝鲜做trade要靠谱多了。
作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-19 12:41
liuqing098 发表于 2017-8-19 11:22
谢谢解答。
但是还有一问，“Trump大选的时候口号喊得很凶，说上任第一天就要将中国列为currency manipulat ...


对付超级301我天朝是老司机了。以前没有加入世贸的时候，天朝几乎年年要对付一次，怎么对应都66的了，而美帝那边怎么被对应也都玩得66.

川总动用超级301而不是汇率操纵国，本身就是不想打贸易战的意思。

川普上任200天内做的所有事情，真正能出成果的只有跟习大会面谈的那几条东西。时间长了，川总会走投无路的。当川总病急乱投医的时候，会怀念维尼熊迷之微笑的。
作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-19 12:44
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-19 12:00
从战略角度来看，这对美国是有利的。在韩国驻军本来就是人质，真要在东北亚兴风作浪，以日本为基地更加方 ...


问题是显然中国对北朝鲜失去了控制。这个deal即使再美丽也做不了。
作者: 冰蚁    时间: 2017-8-19 13:04
本帖最后由 冰蚁 于 2017-8-19 00:07 编辑
holycow 发表于 2017-8-18 22:56
班农在那次无所顾忌的访谈里还说如果可能，就和中国做个trade: 朝鲜冻结核计划换取美军撤出朝鲜半岛。这 ...


这个trade没戏。除非签终战协议，美朝建交，实现金大胖的盘算，还有一线可能终结朝鲜核计划。不是南棒叫得凶，武力打击北棒对美国又能怎样。也就中俄会发点噪声。欧洲那些国家压根不会反对。
作者: 龙血树    时间: 2017-8-19 13:58
holycow 发表于 2017-8-19 11:56
班农在那次无所顾忌的访谈里还说如果可能，就和中国做个trade: 朝鲜冻结核计划换取美军撤出朝鲜半岛。这 ...

美国抽身，这倒是解决半岛问题的根本办法
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 15:19
刚看到的，Bannon下来之后接受采访。

Bannon: 'The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.'

http://www.weeklystandard.com/ba ... er./article/2009355

With the departure from the White House of strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who helped shape the so-called nationalist-populist program embraced by Donald Trump in his unlikely path to election, a new phase of the Trump presidency begins. Given Trump’s nature, what comes next will hardly be conventional, but it may well be less willfully disruptive—which, to Bannon, had been the point of winning the White House.

“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

Bannon says that he will return to the helm of Breitbart, the rambunctious right-wing media enterprise he ran until joining the Trump campaign as chief executive last August. At the time, the campaign was at its nadir, and Trump was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls by double digits.

Although his influence with the president waxed and waned, Bannon’s standing in the Trump circle was always precarious. Among the senior advisers competing with Bannon in trying to shape Trump’s agenda, and his tone, were the president’s daughter, Ivanka, and son-in-law, Jared. Bannon pointedly voiced criticism of those in the president’s sphere whom he considered to be globalists, or liberals (or both), and the president himself plainly bristled over the early attention that Bannon got from the press (including a Time magazine cover, which is said to have particularly irked Trump).

Bannon says that his departure was voluntary, and that he’d planned it to coincide with the one-year anniversary of his joining the Trump campaign as chief executive, on August 14, 2016.

“On August 7th , I talked to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and to the President, and I told them that my resignation would be effective the following Monday, on the 14th,” he said. “I’d always planned on spending one year. General Kelly has brought in a great new system, but I said it would be best. I want to get back to Breitbart.”

Bannon says that with the tumult in Charlottesville last weekend, and the political fallout since, Trump, Kelly, and he agreed to delay Bannon’s departure, but that he and Kelly agreed late this week that now was the time for Bannon to leave.

Bannon may have resigned, but it was clear from the time that Kelly became chief of staff that Bannon’s remaining time in the West Wing was going to be short. Kelly undertook a study of the West Wing’s operating system, and let it be known that he kept hearing about Bannon as a disruptive force and a source of leaks aimed at undermining his rivals. One of those, with whom Kelly is deeply in sympathy, is National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, who clashed forcefully with Bannon over such policies as strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

It is plainly Bannon’s view that his departure is not a defeat for him personally, but for the ideology he’d urged upon the president, as reflected in Trump’s provocative inaugural address—in which he spoke of self-dealing Washington politicians, and their policies that led to the shuttered factories and broken lives of what he called “American carnage.” Bannon co-authored that speech (and privately complained that it had been toned down by West Wing moderates like Ivanka and Jared).

“Now, it’s gonna be Trump,” Bannon said. “The path forward on things like economic nationalism and immigration, and his ability to kind of move freely . . . I just think his ability to get anything done—particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just gonna be that much harder.”

Bannon assigns blame for the thwarting of his program on “the West Wing Democrats,” but holds special disdain for the Washington establishment—especially those Republicans who have, he believes, willfully failed to provide Trump with meaningful victories.

And, he believes, things are about to get worse for Trump. “There’s about to be a jailbreak of these moderate guys on the Hill”—a stream of Republican dissent, which could become a flood.

Bannon says that he once confidently believed in the prospect of success for that version of the Trump presidency he now says is over. Asked what the turning point was, he says, “It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this. They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.

“What Trump ran on—border wall, where is the funding for the border wall, one of his central tenets, where have they been? Have they rallied around the Perdue-Cotton immigration bill? On what element of Trump’s program, besides tax cuts—which is going to be the standard marginal tax cut—where have they rallied to Trump’s cause? They haven’t.”

Bannon believes that those who will now try to influence Trump will hope to turn him in a sharply different direction.

“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”

But Bannon believes that Trump, with the help of Stephen K. Bannon, has already effected a lasting realignment of American politics.

As for himself, Bannon says the fight is just beginning.

“I feel jacked up,” he says. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. 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.”

Bannon tells The Weekly Standard that he can be more effective without the constraints of the White House. “I can fight better on the outside. I can’t fight too many Democrats on the inside like I can on the outside.”

And, he says, Trump encouraged him to take on the Republican establishment. “I said, ‘look, I’ll focus on going after the establishment.’ He said, ‘good, I need that.’ I said, ‘look, I’ll always be here covering for you.’”

作者: Riverofstars    时间: 2017-8-19 17:31
副总统Pence 呢？这个人貌似不简单
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 18:04
Riverofstars 发表于 2017-8-19 17:31
副总统Pence 呢？这个人貌似不简单

Pence属于传统的Evangelical那派的共和党。他是个虔诚的基督教徒，前段时间曾经传出他给自己定下的准则，除了他的妻子以外，从不和其它女性一起单独用餐，即使完全是工作原因。惹来不少自由派嘲笑。我自己对这条准则谈不上有多赞赏，但也不觉得有什么不好的。

Pence现在的情况很微妙。他知道Trump在未来2，3年里被弹劾的可能性已经挺大，也就是说自己在未来2，3年已经挺有希望成为总统的了。这样一方面他不想和Trump绑的太近，避免Trump的丑闻沾到自己身上，要和Trump在各个问题上的立场有一点点距离。另一方面他又不能被人看作在背后搞阴谋把Trump弄下台，更不能引来Trump对自己的攻击，同Trump的距离也不能太大。他这个balancing act我觉得做得还不错吧。前段时间有消息，Pence已经组成了2020年的acting committee，在为2020年总统大选做准备。作为在任副总统这也是以前闻所未闻的。

就我知道的，Pence的能力还可以吧。他作为Indiana的州长好像干的一般。没有什么特别的政绩，但也不算太差（比如同Kansas的Sam Brownback相比）。他以前当过众议员，和国会打交道的能力能比Trump强很多。如果你是Trump的Make America Great Again的agenda的积极支持者的话，作为传统的establishment的共和党，Pence会让你失望。如果你和我一样是反Trump的那一派的话，Pence取代Trump会是个很好的结果。

作者: 陈王奋起挥黄钺    时间: 2017-8-19 19:57
五月 发表于 2017-8-19 12:44
问题是显然中国对北朝鲜失去了控制。这个deal即使再美丽也做不了。

打球的时候球也不听指挥的，但一样乖乖地进篮
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 21:31
刚看到的

Why Bannon Lost and the Globalists Won

http://www.politico.com/magazine ... obalists-won-215506



The day after Christmas last year, New York Times sportswriter Marc Tracy by chance spotted Steve Bannon in the Atlanta airport and struck up a chat. Tracy noticed a little virtue-signaling from the incoming White House “chief strategist.” Bannon was carrying David Halberstam’s famous history of the hubris that led three presidents to disaster in Vietnam, “The Best and the Brightest.” “It’s great,” Bannon told him, “for seeing how little mistakes early on can lead to big ones later.”

In a White House fond of superlatives, it would be insulting to call any of its mistakes “little.” Bannon’s mistakes were huge, and they not only led to his ouster, but also the collapse of his grandiose dream: a realigned American political map centered on economic populism.

Days after Trump’s election, a giddy Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter that he was an “economic nationalist,” and then went on to explain what he meant:

“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia … If we deliver … 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 … 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 … It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

Nothing of this vision came to pass. There is no trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, or anything else resembling a “jobs” agenda. There is no multiracial economic populist movement behind Trump; his approval in the latest Quinnipiac poll is 44 percent among whites and 24 percent among nonwhites. And Bannon has lost several internal White House policy fights to his “globalist” nemeses, as Trump has flinched from junking NAFTA, gutting the Export-Import Bank, branding China a currency manipulator or raising taxes on the wealthy.

Where did Bannon go wrong? His first order of business had nothing to with jobs, let alone bridging racial divisions. He played a singular role in engineering the travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries, cutting Cabinet agencies out of the loop and purposefully dropping it without warning on a Friday to stoke maximum weekend street protest from the left. Courts balked, and Republican members of Congress complained about the shoddy process. It was Trump’s first political defeat as president, a humiliating own-goal that sowed early doubts about the administration’s basic competence.

In an alternate timeline, Bannon could have encouraged Trump to avoid such racially divisive matters in his first week, as well as steer clear of the always politically treacherous health care debate, and put all his weight behind that trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. Top Democrats had been signaling to Trump since the election that they were open to an infrastructure deal, which need not violate their ideological principles. If there was any chance to erase the old partisan lines and start the new administration with a policy win, this was it. But Bannon apparently didn’t try or wasn’t able to stop Republicans from placing the ill-fated Obamacare repeal at the top of the domestic policy agenda.

Bannon fancied himself a policy wonk and ferocious bureaucratic infighter. He posed for pictures in front of his office whiteboard with a detailed list of bureaucratic to-dos. Just this week he bragged to the progressive populist American Prospect that he was removing people from administration posts who had been blocking his plans for economic sanctions on China.

Yet he didn’t have the chops to rebut substantive arguments. Bannon almost persuaded Trump to unilaterally pull out of NAFTA, until Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue showed Trump a map of where trade-dependent farmers reside: states that Trump won. Trump was swayed, saying afterwards, “It shows that I do have a very big farmer base, which is good. They like Trump, but I like them, and I’m going to help them.”

Bannon thought his trade and manufacturing agenda would be easier to execute. In February, he told the conservative Conservative Political Action Conference that Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership was going to usher in a new economic nationalist era. “People are starting to think through a whole raft of amazing and innovative, bilateral trading relationships with people that will reposition America in the world as a fair trading nation and start to bring jobs—high value-added, manufacturing jobs—back to the United States of America,” he said.

But even Trump’s top trade official recently admitted to POLITICO Magazine, “some of the TPP countries don’t want to do bilaterals” because it’s not worth lowering tariffs without wider global market access in return. And while the Trump administration loves talking about the occasional new American manufacturing plant, it has little to say about the likelihood that these plants will be run increasingly by robots.

Attempts to economically punish China have been pushed aside by national security concerns, with State and Defense officials trying to enlist China’s help with the North Korea nuclear standoff. Bannon revealed to the American Prospect that he’s been making the case that “there’s no military solution [with North Korea], they got us” whereas “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that.” Not even Trump, whose personal obsession with “Chi-ee-na” goes back decades, seems to agree; he has refused to fulfill his own “currency manipulator” campaign pledge while he rants about Kim Jong Un.

“They’re wetting themselves” Bannon told the Prospect of his internal opponents, expressing confidence his proposed sanctions on China would soon resurface. But “they” are still in the administration, and Bannon is not.

Bannon was clearly enamored of proposals that challenged partisan orthodoxy, such as when he floated a new 44 percent top tax rate for incomes above $5 million. But he had no capacity to follow through. His trial balloons were laughed off by conservatives, and his association with the “alt-right” made him a toxic negotiating partner for the left. Bannon’s nemesis, economic adviser Gary Cohn, meanwhile, built up a relatively competent team that ran circles around the poorly staffed former Breitbart chairman.

Contrast Bannon with the record of the last Republican White House Svengali, Karl Rove. President George W. Bush’s top political strategist had big dreams of political realignment as well. He saw Bush as walking in the footsteps of President William McKinley, who established Republican dominance at the dawn of the 20th century. During the 2000 campaign Rove said, “[McKinley] understood the new economy. It was a period of rapid industrialization. He also understood the changing demographic. Immigrants were now providing the manpower.”

Joshua Green, before he chronicled the rise of Bannon, summed up Rove’s McKinley-inspired vision in 2007: “Rove’s idea was to use the levers of government to … force a realignment himself through a series of far-reaching policies. Rove’s plan had five major components: establish education standards, pass a ‘faith-based initiative’ directing government funds to religious organizations, partially privatize Social Security, offer private health-savings accounts as an alternative to Medicare, and reform immigration laws to appeal to the growing Hispanic population. Each of these, if enacted, would weaken the Democratic Party by drawing some of its core supporters into the Republican column.”

Rove got further than Bannon did. He actually prioritized what he set out to prioritize. He met with Democrats immediately after the bitter conclusion of the 2000 election to talk education, and the No Child Left Behind Act passed with a big bipartisan vote in the spring of 2001. And he worked with Democrats again in 2003 to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

It was only the second term when Rove took on too much and saw his dreams of Republican realignment vaporize. The sharp Josh Bolten, deputy chief of staff for policy during much of the first term, became budget director and later chief of staff. Rove assumed Bolten’s policy post in the second term, and proceeded to botch Social Security privatization and immigration reform. One official told Green, “[Bolten] was a strong enough intellect and a strong enough presence that he was able to create a deliberative process that led to a better outcome … Formalizing [Rove’s policy role] was the final choke-off of any internal debate or deliberative process.”

Bannon lacked anyone like a Bolten to deftly shepherd policy initiatives, on top of serving a manic president and dealing with a fractious Republican Congress. All he had were Sebastian Gorka, a thinly credentialed counterterrorism adviser whose only duty seems to be going on Fox News, and Julia Hahn, a 20-something former Breitbart writer known for her hair-on-fire hot takes. He had no chance.

Might Trump pursue Bannon’s economic agenda after Bannon is gone? Anything is possible. Simply being surrounded by “globalist” advisers cannot predict the behavior of a president who often revels in doing the opposite of what he is told. But Bannon’s failure almost surely prevents the realization of a broad political realignment in which Trump leads an economically populist rainbow coalition.

Bannon crowed this week that “identity politics” is a loser for Democrats. But his own obsession with identity led him to shelve infrastructure in favor of the travel ban, and arguably racial grievance among whites also fueled the passion to repeal Obamacare. The focus on playing to the white conservative base culminated in Trump’s rationalizing the violent behavior of white supremacists and seeking the protection of Confederate war memorials. All this has poisoned the well. Trump is now irredeemable in the minds of most Democrats and most nonwhite voters, no matter what he offers on infrastructure, trade or taxes.

There were no small mistakes by Bannon. Only huge ones driven by a desire to divide, and an inability to sweat the details. Someday there will be a book about it. It won’t be called “The Best and the Brightest.”


作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-19 21:42
这张今年1月28日的照片，Trump在同普京通话



里面这几个Trump最重要的亲信里，除了Trump没法fire掉的副总统Pence以外，都已经离开白宫了。


作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-19 22:21
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-19 21:31
刚看到的

Why Bannon Lost and the Globalists Won


最恨天朝的班总, 最想和天朝痛痛快快战一场的班总, 在单方面废掉对天朝威胁最大的TPP之后，悄然离开了白宫。

如果说班总其实是战忽局外籍副局长兼北美处处长的，有人信吗？

天朝近年的国运不是一般的昌隆，好得都让俺开始担心起来



作者: CatchActually    时间: 2017-8-20 05:47
Trump 自传的那个ghostwriter 这两天说他给自己辞职铺路呢，没准儿年底前就辞了。
自个儿辞了好啊，省了明后年可能的impeachment.
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-21 10:32
刚看到的

At Breitbart, Bannon has a brigade of similarly happy warriors. “We’re in a loud bar celebrating the return of our captain!” Breitbart’s Washington editor Matt Boyle told me on Friday night. Breitbart’s defense of Trump has so far helped keep the Russia scandal from gaining traction on the right. But that could swiftly change if Trump, under the influence of Kushner and Cohn, deviates too far from the positions he ran on. If that happens, said one high-level Breitbart staffer, “We’re prepared to help Paul Ryan rally votes for impeachment.”


https://www.vanityfair.com/news/ ... readies-his-revenge

那句加重是我加的。

作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-21 21:06
本帖最后由 Dracula 于 2017-8-21 21:09 编辑
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-19 11:21
在Trump内阁里，最有见识的还就是Bannon，Kushner也不错，但他不大暴露自己的主张，还摸不透到底是什么政策 ...


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/ ... rump-departure.html

He also advised that ideological softening would buy the president no good will from Democrats or independent voters, whom Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump believe Mr. Trump still has a chance of reaching.

“They hate the very mention of his name,” Mr. Bannon told them. “There is no constituency for this.”


单就这一点来看，Bannon的政治智慧就要比Kushner和Ivanka强不少的。


作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-21 21:33
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-21 07:06
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/us/politics/steve-bannon-fired-trump-departure.html

这家伙是Brilliantly Evil。他不贪恋权势，只想“干事业”，不过他的事业是干不成的，除非把美国国本连根挖起，经济民族主义和民族民粹主义是死路。但那样也就不是美国了。他（还有特朗普）的核心主张是Take back our country，但什么是our country？他们想回到过去的好时光，但火车已经离站了。
作者: natasa    时间: 2017-8-21 21:44
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-21 21:33
这家伙是Brilliantly Evil。他不贪恋权势，只想“干事业”，不过他的事业是干不成的，除非把美国国本连根 ...

感觉冷战不仅搞垮了苏联，也带歪了美国
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-21 21:50
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-21 21:33
这家伙是Brilliantly Evil。他不贪恋权势，只想“干事业”，不过他的事业是干不成的，除非把美国国本连根 ...

Take back our country, 这里的“我们”属于dog whistle，就是暗指信基督教的白人。别的象穆斯林、拉丁裔、黑人、乃至亚裔在Bannon以及Trump看来都是属于他们，是被排斥的范围。

我引这句主要不是想说明Bannon怎么brilliant，民主党base对Trump的仇恨已经到沸点这一点我的帖子里都提到过好多次，而我要搞政治的话下场肯定会很惨的。我是想说Jared Kushner和Ivanka Trump看来连我都不如，如果接下来Trump的白宫会是他们主导的话，别看Trump政府现在非常动荡，整天冒坏消息，未来几个月可能还不如现在呢。


作者: tianxq888    时间: 2017-8-21 21:57
natasa 发表于 2017-8-21 21:44
感觉冷战不仅搞垮了苏联，也带歪了美国



冷战好啊，垮了苏修，烂了美帝
作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-21 22:00
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-21 21:06
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/20/us/politics/steve-bannon-fired-trump-departure.html


我怎么觉得从川总到班总到库总到伊总，全都是政治白痴。

这帮人的政治智商之低，实在令人惊奇。甚至有点办公室政治常识的人也不会把牌打成这个样子。

我怀疑这帮人连自己的公司都管不好。

天诛美帝啊


作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-21 22:08
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-21 07:50
Take back our country, 这里的“我们”属于dog whistle，就是暗指信基督教的白人。别的象穆斯林、拉丁裔 ...

我对这个our country更多从经济角度看，而政治含义则是引申的。我会攒一篇小文说明我的看法，到时候请伯爵指正。
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-21 22:29
五月 发表于 2017-8-21 22:00
我怎么觉得从川总到班总到库总到伊总，全都是政治白痴。

这帮人的政治智商之低，实在令人惊奇。甚至有 ...

Trump的公司破产过6次。他的经营管理的能力我觉得不怎么样。他的才能在于marketing。他在90年代破产的时候到了很低谷，进入21世纪是靠reality TV翻得身。但是show business和运行庞大的联邦政府还是有极大区别的。

Kushner的房地产公司最近一年多遇到很大的财政上的麻烦，前段时间还爆出消息，他的姐姐到北京来想用卖美国投资签证来筹到资金，曝光出来这算是丑闻的，可以看出他们家现在是挺desperate的了。他的经商能力我看到的评论都觉得不怎么样。他和Trump一样都是靠继承拥有巨额财富的。

Trump的政治嗅觉我觉得还是很敏锐的。他凭直觉就能知道他的base想什么。他能在他的base里激起那么大的热情，能赢得大选，我觉得他在marketing 以及操纵媒体方面是很有一手的。他的致命伤是他对具体政策的实际知识接近为零，不论是国内政策还是国际政治，而且还很懒，没兴趣下功夫学。对美国政治制度是怎么运作的知识也极其有限。这样他有了总统的权力，除了喊口号以外实际应该干什么却模糊，就是有点想法，在美国的政治制度下怎么实现，他也不清楚。而且他其实挺嫉贤妒能的，以前在接受采访的时候谈自己的用人管理经验就是不要用比自己smart的人。象Bannon，在他身边的亲信里算是很有才能的了，但是因为Bannon在媒体风头太盛，遮住了自己的光芒，就非常不爽。他这种性格，现在他的政府处于特别的困境也不奇怪。



作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-21 22:43
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-21 22:08
我对这个our country更多从经济角度看，而政治含义则是引申的。我会攒一篇小文说明我的看法，到时候请伯 ...

Bannon的政治主张包括两个方面，文化方面属于极右，我会时不时到Breitbart看看，那里大多数文章的undertone都是反穆斯林、反移民、反黑人以及反犹太人等，当然不是像纳粹党、3K党那么直白，但字里行间尤其是下面的读者评论里是很容易看出来的（他们喜欢说的globalist很多情况下其实是指犹太人的隐语）。Trump也很清楚这是他铁杆的base，因此上个星期那么不情愿直接谴责纳粹，因为他的base对纳粹的很多sentiment其实是挺有共鸣的。

在经济政策上，Bannon其实是挺左的，主张贸易保护政策，大规模基础设施建设，乃至税制改革的时候对富人加税。他上个星期联系左派杂志American Prospect，他认为他和Bernie Sanders代表的民主党左翼在经济政策上有很多共识，想联合他们、甩开共和党里的establishment，来彻底改变美国的政治版图。

作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-8-21 23:13
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-21 08:43
Bannon的政治主张包括两个方面，文化方面属于极右，我会时不时到Breitbart看看，那里大多数文章的underto ...

政治上的极端主张来源于经济上的缺乏希望，纳粹、西班牙内战、十月革命还有很多历史上的极端时期都可以从经济上找原因。我对马克思的经济基础决定上层建筑还是很相信的，马克思说到经济基础发展后上层建筑要跟着发展，但没有说到的是经济基础相对衰落对上层建筑的影响，现在可以看到了。班农的政治base和经济base是脱节的，这是他的主张的不可实现性的关键。
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-22 00:04
晨枫 发表于 2017-8-21 23:13
政治上的极端主张来源于经济上的缺乏希望，纳粹、西班牙内战、十月革命还有很多历史上的极端时期都可以从 ...

要是Trump有希特勒那样的能力和政治手腕的话，Bannon这套政治和经济政策我觉得是能实行下去的，尽管我的看法是这对美国的长远利益包括我作为一个移民来说是坏事。Trump的问题他对具体政策的实际知识非常浅薄，执政能力极其的差。另一个重要方面是同Bannon很不一样的是，Trump这个人没有什么高一个层次的政治理念，他一生一切行事的核心目的只有一个就是自己，是典型的narcissist。不管什么政策问题，他看的角度就是一个，自己win还是lose。象Bannon主张的对收入在5百万美元以上的人增税，Trump是不可能接受的，尽管这在政治上会很受欢迎，而且显得自己很大公无私。关于中国政策，我觉得中国可能用过一些桌面下的方法，象我们知道的以超快的速度批准Trump和Ivanka的商标申请，可能还有我们不知道的，Kushner和中国的商业关系可能也是不干不净。而且象Kushner以及他的亲信Gary Cohn等，用Bannon的话来说是Globalists（他们也还都是犹太人，Gary Cohn是Goldman Sachs的President）。属于经济全球化的受益者，当然也不希望和中国爆发贸易战。而这些问题上Trump是听Kushner 这一派的。但这并不表明Bannon这套主义在政治上就根本不可能推行下去。在文化问题上，Trump的做法尽管和Bannon很合拍，但其实也很不顺利，穆斯林禁令不仅开始实行的时候导致特别混乱，而且一致受到法院的强有力阻挠。修墙到现在也还没影，Trump现在对国会的要求其实已经很低了，明年的预算只要20亿美元修墙，好像只够修几十英里，纯粹只是对他的支持者做个姿态，但在共和党控制的国会却根本通不过。

Bannon的主张在政治上和经济上的base谈不上脱节，主要都是在全球化浪潮里被甩下的白人，象这次大选Trump获胜的关键就是rust belt的白人。如果Trump的政治手腕高明的话，他的agenda还是能实现不少的，比如今年2月份的时候就力推基础设施建设，还是挺有可能成功的。实现了之后，通过对中产阶级而不是富人减税，他要是再能管住自己，不在twitter上乱发话，加上美国经济现在很不错，那样的话他的支持率可能会比现在高不少。就是同中国的贸易战，民主党的Sanders那翼也是很支持的。他要是政治手腕高明的话，能挑动的民主党分裂，美国政治彻底整合也不是不可能的。当然，Bannon这个人有政治理想，但是具体实现的能力方面欠缺。Trump则是从理想到能力都没有。因此结果是一事无成。


作者: MacArthur    时间: 2017-8-22 00:15
而且他其实挺嫉贤妒能的，以前在接受采访的时候谈自己的用人管理经验就是不要用比自己smart的人。

这个才是最要命 -- 武大郎开店。。。

知道该怎么吆喝才能让大家爽是一回事儿，真正明白自己有几斤几两又是另外一回事儿。

现在已经是蜀中无大将，连个廖化都找不着了 -- 媒体/公众舆论这么起哄，估计也没人敢在风口浪尖上主动前来效劳。。。 这样下去拖也拖死了。。。
作者: 五月    时间: 2017-8-22 09:58
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-22 00:04
要是Trump有希特勒那样的能力和政治手腕的话，Bannon这套政治和经济政策我觉得是能实行下去的，尽管我的 ...
如果Trump的政治手腕高明的话，他的agenda还是能实现不少的，比如今年2月份的时候就力推基础设施建设，还是挺有可能成功的。实现了之后，通过对中产阶级而不是富人减税，他要是再能管住自己，不在twitter上乱发话，加上美国经济现在很不错，那样的话他的支持率可能会比现在高不少。就是同中国的贸易战，民主党的Sanders那翼也是很支持的。他要是政治手腕高明的话，能挑动的民主党分裂，美国政治彻底整合也不是不可能的。


所以说川总是个政治白痴，班总可能经商能力比川总强，但是政治的智商也几乎等于零。川总手里的牌并不差，他本来有机会彻底改变美帝政治版图的，但是按照川总这种极其低下的管理能力，估计好戏不断。

伟大领袖毛主席教导我们，革命的首要问题是敌我问题。分清敌我之后首先要解决干部。但凡川总能读一两篇毛选，也不至于混成这个样子。

布隆伯格和朱里奥尼真是老奸巨猾，一开始跟川总那个亲啊，一口一个小甜甜，可是从川总搬进白宫那一天起就销声匿迹了。看来真正了解川总的其实是这两个家伙。

我开个脑洞：川总竞选前其实已经严重资不抵债，走投无路的时候做困兽之斗，忽然决定参加总统大选，然后忽然赢了。所以他打死也不肯公布税单。

看来所有的各国领导人都是想讨好川总，只有习大最狡猾，上来就走忽悠的路子，结果习大成了川总心目中最好的领袖

天诛美利坚啊



作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-23 16:07
最新的Trump语录


"Clean coal...meaning they're taking out coal and they're gonna clean it...."




[attach]72360[/attach]

作者: 月之悲鸣    时间: 2017-8-23 19:20
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-23 16:07
最新的Trump语录



很好，很淳朴，很精英。
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-8-26 18:58
本帖最后由 Dracula 于 2017-8-26 18:59 编辑

Trump的白宫昨天又开掉一人，Sebastian Gorka是Steve Bannon一派的，也是属于极右。最近1个多月Trump基本上维持了1个星期开掉一人的速度。我数了一下，从7月21日到昨天是35天，5个星期（或者是6个星期五），一共开掉5个人，Spicer, Priebus, Scaramucci, Bannon和Gorka。昨天还传出消息，Gary Cohn（Trump的首席经济顾问，是犹太人）几天前也提出辞职，可能是Trump觉得如果砍人砍得太快，又没有新鲜血液加入白宫剩不下几个人，以致到没法fire人的时候，白宫的戏就会平淡不少，大家的关注度收视率就会下降，没接受Cohn的辞职，说服他继续待在白宫。



作者: profer    时间: 2017-8-26 21:43
川皇可要好好的干八年啊，这么好玩儿的总统估计百年难再现了。
作者: 月之悲鸣    时间: 2017-8-27 03:04
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-26 18:58
Trump的白宫昨天又开掉一人，Sebastian Gorka是Steve Bannon一派的，也是属于极右。最近1个多月Trump基本上 ...

现在美国政府完全由事务官掌控吗?
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-9-1 07:51
刚看到的

Does Anyone on Trump's Team Take Him Seriously?

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/a ... -take-him-seriously

It’s hard to find good help these days, at least if you’re President Donald Trump. People who work for the executive branch — people he’s appointed — feel free to criticize him, distance themselves from him, disagree with him, or just refrain from defending him and his policies.

Writing in Politico Magazine, Rich Lowry says that Trump has an “insubordination problem.” His evidence includes Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s pointed refusal to say that President Trump speaks for American values and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s contradiction of him on North Korea.

Lowry thinks that Trump weakened his sway over his own subordinates by first harshly criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then failing to follow through on that criticism. The original action made his other appointees less inclined to feel loyal, and the subsequent inaction made them less afraid to act on their feelings. Lowry concludes that White House chief of staff John Kelly needs to crack some heads to keep the administration from disintegrating.

The phenomenon to which Lowry is pointing is real. But the root problem isn’t insubordination; it’s a lack of presidential seriousness.

A new example came in recent reports that Trump is angry with his aides over Chinese imports. He keeps telling them he wants tariffs, he reportedly said, and they keep moving forward with milder policies.

Yet it is within a president’s power to make himself be taken seriously by his underlings. Other presidents have all done it — or, rather, they have been taken seriously by default. They have rarely had to exert themselves to make sure their commands are being executed.

In the Trump administration, though, it is not always clear which of the president’s comments are meant to be orders and which of them are just self-expression. When the president says he wants a health policy that covers more people than Obamacare, does it mean his aides have to come up with a policy that accomplishes this goal?

Nobody has taken it that way, and Trump has not done anything about it. The Pentagon is slow-walking Trump’s policy excluding transgender people from the military. If he is planning to do something about it, the news has not come out of his leak-happy White House. (He hasn’t even tweeted a complaint, pathetic as that would be.)

Based on his conduct so far, Trump views the president’s most important role as being commenter-in-chief. Administering the White House and through it the executive branch so as to make his comments reality has not been nearly as high a priority. He hires people who don’t share his views, complains when they don’t act on his views, and . . . that’s all.

If special prosecutor Robert Mueller is really conducting a witch hunt, as Trump claims, and his attorney general is too weak to do anything about it, as he also claims, then the remedy is not to be found on Twitter: Trump has to fire Sessions and replace him with someone who will remove Mueller. But he isn’t willing to do that, perhaps because of the political fallout, so he instead pops off at the cost of his own credibility.

It has become a cliché that many of Trump’s utterances are to be taken seriously but not literally. The consequence is that, more and more, executive-branch personnel are inverting that formula. For them he is literally the president, but not seriously.

作者: 雷达    时间: 2017-9-1 10:01
Dracula 发表于 2017-8-23 16:07
最新的Trump语录

川总说完 clean coal ，下面可还是一片欢呼。

我对所谓民主选举制度的神话开始怀疑是从小布什开始，可没想到还有更神的。这就是美国，倒退20年我们无比跪拜的美国。
作者: 燕庐敕    时间: 2017-9-1 10:52
雷达 发表于 2017-9-1 10:01
川总说完 clean coal ，下面可还是一片欢呼。

我对所谓民主选举制度的神话开始怀疑是从小布什开始，可没 ...

我怎么从来没觉得美国要崇拜呢？那时候，先进确实是，可也不是不可赶超的。
作者: 风起灰扬    时间: 2017-9-1 11:05
看完纪录片《get me roger stone》，对第一点相当认同
作者: 莳萝    时间: 2017-9-1 11:38
就算是经商，核心团队的首要原则也是稳定。
川皇这样一周一炒，得给多少人开权限、锁权限，信息安全要怎么保证呢？
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-9-23 07:09
Steve Bannon held secret meeting in China

Former Trump strategist met second most powerful Communist party official

https://www.ft.com/content/5cdedd84-9f0c-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946




        Steve Bannon flew to Beijing last week for a secret meeting with the second most powerful Chinese Communist party official, less than a month after the former chief White House strategist declared that America was at “economic war with China”.

According to one person in China familiar with the situation, Mr Bannon travelled to Beijing to meet Wang Qishan, the head of the Chinese Communist party’s anti-corruption campaign.

The meeting occurred at Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leadership compound, after Mr Bannon had visited Hong Kong to give a closed-door speech at a big investor conference hosted by CLSA, a Chinese state-owned brokerage and investment group.

“The Chinese reached out to Bannon before his Hong Kong speech because they wanted to ask him about economic nationalism and populist movements which was the subject of his speech,” said a second person familiar with the situation.

Mr Wang, who is seen as the second most powerful person in China after President Xi Jinping, arranged through an intermediary for a 90-minute meeting after learning that Mr Bannon was speaking on the topic, according to the second person, who stressed there was no connection to President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to China.

During the final months of the US election, Mr Bannon ran Mr Trump’s presidential campaign and was widely credited with helping the candidate stay the course with the populist message that catapulted him to the White House. He served as chief White House strategist until August, when he was ousted as part of a reorganisation that occurred after Mr Trump hired John Kelly, a retired general, as his new chief of staff.

After leaving the White House, Mr Bannon returned to head Breitbart News, the rightwing website that he ran before joining the Trump campaign.

In Hong Kong, Mr Bannon said he had left the White House to be Mr Trump’s “wingman” and to campaign on behalf of congressional candidates who would back the president’s “America first” agenda.

Mr Bannon has long argued that the US needs to take a tougher economic stance against China, which he argues is responsible for the hollowing out of manufacturing jobs in the US.

In the early months of the Trump administration, Mr Bannon was widely seen as being the intellectual force behind many of Mr Trump’s moves, earning himself a Time magazine cover with the headline “The Great Manipulator”.

After Mr Trump won the election, China frequently approached Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top aide, to help navigate the US-China relationship. But Mr Kushner has taken much less of a role in recent months. While Rex Tillerson, secretary of state, has been leading efforts to get Beijing to put pressure on North Korea, some Chinese experts have expressed concern that the administration does not have a clear point person to handle the relationship with China.

Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary who worked closely with Mr Bannon to press for tougher trade measures against China, will travel to Beijing this week to pave the way for Mr Trump’s November summit with Mr Xi. The trip comes as the US struggles to engineer some of the measures against China that Mr Trump talked about during the campaign and after his election. Efforts to impose tariffs on steel and aluminium imports have stalled amid concerns about the effect on the US economy.

In July, Mr Ross asked Mr Trump to consider a deal on reducing Chinese steel overcapacity that he had crafted with Wang Yang, a Chinese vice-premier. But Mr Trump rejected the offer and dismissed a second improved version, telling his commerce secretary that he wanted to find ways to impose tariffs on Chinese goods.

The secret meeting between Mr Bannon and Mr Wang will stoke speculation that the Chinese anti-graft tsar, who has purged hundreds of senior government officials and military officers for corruption in recent years, may continue to work closely with Mr Xi during his second term in office.

Under recent precedent, Mr Wang, who turned 69 in July, would be expected to step down from the Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist party’s most powerful body. But his many admirers argue that as China’s most knowledgeable and experienced financial technocrat, he should stay on to help Mr Xi force through a series of stalled financial and economic reforms.

Before his appointment as head of the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Mr Wang was Beijing’s point man for Sino-US relations and has played a pivotal role in most of China’s key financial reforms over the past 20 years.

Though he no longer has an official government position, Mr Wang has continued to meet regularly with international figures such as former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson, International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde and the hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio. Earlier this week Mr Wang also held an unexpected meeting in Beijing with Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong.




作者: 黑洞的颜色    时间: 2017-9-23 07:46
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-23 07:09
Steve Bannon held secret meeting in China

Former Trump strategist met second most powerful Communis ...

Very interesting
作者: 常挨揍    时间: 2017-9-24 09:42
本帖最后由 常挨揍 于 2017-9-24 10:11 编辑
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-23 07:09
Steve Bannon held secret meeting in China

Former Trump strategist met second most powerful Communis ...


似乎只有FT报道
李显龙见73，联合早报还借73的口说：与73见面是李额外提出的
http://www.zaobao.com/realtime/china/story20170920-796773
不知道能不能看，GFW把这条屏蔽了
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-9-24 10:18
常挨揍 发表于 2017-9-24 09:42
似乎只有FT报道
李显龙见73，联合早报还借73的口说：与73见面是李额外提出的
http://www.zaobao.c ...

帮你搬运一下。

李显龙总理与中纪委书记王岐山会面



正在访华的新加坡总理李显龙今早在北京中南海与中共中央纪律检查委员会书记王岐山会面。

王岐山在会见开场白中说：“得知在这个时刻来访问中国提出要见我，我很意外，但是我非常高兴，所以我就经过请示，今天就能够和你和夫人见面。”

他表示，从80年代中国改革开放以后，中方就十分关注新加坡，而他个人和新加坡的交流多多。

王岐山提到已故建国总理李光耀。他说：“特别是当时令尊大人领导新加坡的时候，我有幸和他多次单独见面聊天。他是个充满政治智慧的高人。每次和他交谈，受益匪浅。他和我们毛泽东主席，周恩来总理，邓小平，江泽民主席，胡锦涛主席，包括习近平主席，都多次见过面。他的离世，我感到非常悲痛。他是个伟人。“

李总理说：“非常感谢你能够在中国即将召开十九大之前繁忙的时间，专门拨冗会见我和我的夫人以及代表团。非常感谢中方能够抽时间会见，也感谢你对新中关系的关注，不断提升新中合作。”

李总理这次到访中国，受到高规格礼遇，连同昨晚会见的总理李克强以及今早见到的王岐山在内，他将一共见到四位中共政治局常委，包括中共总书记习近平、总理李克强，全国人大常委会委员长张德江，以及王岐山。

王岐山在2008年至2012年担任副总理期间，曾与我国几任副总理联合主持新中双边合作联合委员会（JCBC），JCBC是两国政府间最高级别的年度双边合作机制。（联合早报北京特派员游润恬报道）


作者: 常挨揍    时间: 2017-9-24 13:20
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-23 07:09
Steve Bannon held secret meeting in China

Former Trump strategist met second most powerful Communis ...

据说纽时说穿线人是布鲁金斯研究院理事会联席主席约翰桑顿
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-9-26 01:01
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-22 15:09
Steve Bannon held secret meeting in China

Former Trump strategist met second most powerful Communis ...

这是聪明的举动，Bannon代表的思潮不会因为他离开政府就不存在了，了解这个思潮的成因和走向是很重要的。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-9-26 01:45
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-23 20:18
帮你搬运一下。

李显龙总理与中纪委书记王岐山会面

为什么特别要见王岐山？是想通过ICBC老关系回暖新中关系？
作者: holycow    时间: 2017-9-26 02:25
晨枫 发表于 2017-9-25 09:45
为什么特别要见王岐山？是想通过ICBC老关系回暖新中关系？

老套的试探吧，当年八平方后，正式发表真人被撸掉之前，还有老挝还是缅甸的党政代表团指明要会见真人
作者: 禅人    时间: 2017-9-26 16:24
晨枫 发表于 2017-9-26 01:45
为什么特别要见王岐山？是想通过ICBC老关系回暖新中关系？

这个时候前排巨头都出来会见了，显然已经开暖气了嘛。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-9-26 21:27
禅人 发表于 2017-9-26 02:24
这个时候前排巨头都出来会见了，显然已经开暖气了嘛。

哈哈，那是你家县长来检讨了，承认错误就是好孩子啦。他想做四两拨千斤的支点，一头挑中国，一头挑美国，没想到，重量太大，把支点压塌了。中国悄悄地支持马来西亚，这对新加坡是要命的。更加要命的是，要了命还不好说，连抱怨都没有说得出口的理由。
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-9-26 21:38
晨枫 发表于 2017-9-26 21:27
哈哈，那是你家县长来检讨了，承认错误就是好孩子啦。他想做四两拨千斤的支点，一头挑中国，一头挑美国， ...

金融时报的解读是19大后，王岐山不会退休，还会留下，说不定职责会从反腐变为别的。对不对，一个月以后我们就知晓了。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-9-26 21:48
本帖最后由 晨枫 于 2017-9-26 07:49 编辑
Dracula 发表于 2017-9-26 07:38
金融时报的解读是19大后，王岐山不会退休，还会留下，说不定职责会从反腐变为别的。对不对，一个月以后我 ...


我也觉得有可能。王岐山的地位和作用太重要了，现在看不出谁能取代他。事实上，政治局里，好像就老大和老王两个人了，小李偶尔唱点配音，其他人不说都想不起来还有谁了。不过他出任总理的传说，个人认为不可能。他要抓经济，在政治局里做太上皇就可以了，没必要搞这个名目。
作者: 常挨揍    时间: 2017-9-26 22:04
晨枫 发表于 2017-9-26 21:27
哈哈，那是你家县长来检讨了，承认错误就是好孩子啦。他想做四两拨千斤的支点，一头挑中国，一头挑美国， ...

云山19-21刚访问柬埔寨，今天柬埔寨副首相又来北京见73.
加上今天鱼头见越南祖国阵线副主席。
这跟东南亚往来频繁啊。
作者: 禅人    时间: 2017-9-27 00:04
晨枫 发表于 2017-9-26 21:27
哈哈，那是你家县长来检讨了，承认错误就是好孩子啦。他想做四两拨千斤的支点，一头挑中国，一头挑美国， ...

还有，看来新隆高铁要让中国造了呢。
作者: 晨枫    时间: 2017-9-27 00:07
禅人 发表于 2017-9-26 10:04
还有，看来新隆高铁要让中国造了呢。

必须的啊，这是投名状嘛
作者: fish97    时间: 2017-9-27 03:35
holycow 发表于 2017-9-26 02:25
老套的试探吧，当年八平方后，正式发表真人被撸掉之前，还有老挝还是缅甸的党政代表团指明要会见真人{:18 ...

和王一起见Bannon 的还有另外两个人，其中一个是给高层选文章的，另外一个没说。
作者: Dracula    时间: 2017-12-22 07:29
本帖最后由 Dracula 于 2017-12-22 07:31 编辑

刚看到的一篇文章


“I HAVE POWER”: IS STEVE BANNON RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT?

DECEMBER 21, 2017 2:15 PM

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/ ... rump-kushner-ivanka





Around the time Donald Trump took off from the Philippines aboard Air Force One at the end of his 12-day Asia tour, Stephen K. Bannon touched down at Tokyo International Airport. It was the evening of November 14, and the president’s former chief strategist flew to Japan to deliver a hard-edged anti-China speech at a conference for human-rights activists. “I’m not really a human-rights guy,” he told me as we boarded the plane in New York. “But this is a chance to talk to them about populism.”

A polite airline representative whisked Bannon and his entourage through the terminal. Tej Gill, a goateed ex-Navy SEAL security guard with tattoo-sleeved arms, stuck close by Bannon’s side. “I’ve had a couple assassination plots,” Bannon told me, “I got it from an intelligence source.” They were trailed by a short, barrel-chested ex-SEAL in a knit beanie cap, by a videographer named Dan Fleuette who co-wrote Bannon’s documentary Clinton Cash, and a redheaded body man, Bannon’s 26-year-old nephew, Sean. In moments we were escorted through a V.I.P. immigration lane and into an elevator that descends to an underground garage, where a motorcade awaited. Bannon climbed into the back seat of a black BMW 7 Series and sped off towards the Peninsula hotel to catch a few hours of sleep. The rest of the staff followed in a pair of minivans.

The next morning, Bannon was pacing in front of a packed auditorium in a squat building on the grounds of the Olympic Village built for the ‘64 Tokyo Summer Games. “I feel like I’m at a Trump rally!” he said, pointing out a young woman sporting a Make America Great Again hat. For the next hour, Bannon held court, microphone in hand. “The elites in our country have been under a very false premise that as China became more prosperous and economically developed that there would be an underlying increase in democracy,” he said. “What we found out over the last decade is the exact opposite has happened.” He speculated that dark unseen forces are at work. “The question has to be asked: Are the elites in the United States that stupid? Did people actually sit there year after year after year and not understand what was going on? Or was something else going on? Were these elites either bought off or did they just look the other way? That question is going to have to be answered.”

Bannon’s core message—a clueless, corrupt ruling class (many of whom, of course, reside in blue states) has sold out American workers to a hegemonic China, and it’s up to a vanguard to take our country back before the world tips toward cataclysm—is the same, whether he’s speaking to Alabamian Roy Moore voters or Chinese dissidents. But he adjusts his vocabulary to fit his audience—here in Tokyo, he was in full prophetic mode.

Bannon is a voracious reader, who sometimes stays up until dawn powering through books, obscure journals, and news articles, scrawling notes in a pocket-size green diary as he goes (during our trip he used downtime to read a Robespierre biography). This was evident as he freestyled about Hillary Clinton, the opposition party media, artificial intelligence, Thucydides, Hollywood, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the opioid crisis, Boeing jets, Brown University, Brexit, the Cloud, the Civil War, the Peloponnesian War, the American Revolution, the Great Depression, Churchill, Napoleon, Hitler, and J.D. Vance. “It’s not going to be O.K.,” he concluded ominously. “The world is on a knife’s edge. We have what I call a long, dark valley ahead of us, like the 1930s.”

The message is that the world needs saving—but who’s going to save it? Looking around, it’s not hard to see Steve Bannon’s best answer. Four months ago, Bannon was a supporting player, with a whiteboard and telephone. Now he’s made himself the star—not only the chief strategist but in many ways the candidate, the frontman of his own movement. With his motorcade, retinue of advisers, and security men, his Asia trip was a mirror of President Trump’s.

When he left the White House in August, Bannon said, “the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” In private, Bannon told people he was disillusioned with Trump’s shambolic governing style. Trump, in turn, sees Bannon as a self-promoter. “The president views Steve as just a guy who works for him,” a White House official said.

While the two men harbor contempt for each other that can ignite into rage, they can’t quit each other, either. Since Bannon left the West Wing, he’s had five phone calls with Trump, most initiated by the president, according to the White House official. “The few conversations Steve and the president have had since he was fired this summer have primarily been opportunities for Steve to beg for his job back,” said the White House official. A Bannon spokesperson countered, “anyone around Steve since he left the White House can see he is very happy now out of the White House!”

Bannon insists that his real opponent is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The G.O.P. establishment, as personified by Mitch McConnell, has not done a good job supporting the president’s agenda,” Bannon told me. During a recent speech he declared a “season of war” on the G.O.P. and he is drafting insurgent candidates to challenge seven of eight G.O.P. senators up for election in 2018. Bannon’s war is just ramping up. Through his nonprofit, Government Accountability Institute, he’s planning to release a Clinton Cash-style book that takes aim at the G.O.P. establishment in general and McConnell in particular.

The primary insurgents Bannon has tried to recruit, dubbed “The League of Extraordinary Candidates” by Breitbart, is a ragtag band including former Arizona State Senator Kelli Ward; Blackwater founder Erik Prince; mega-donor Foster Friess; and Danny Tarkanian, son of U.N.L.V. basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian, all of whom inarguably fall far short of Bannon’s stated populist principles.

And now Roy Moore’s Alabama Senate candidacy was threatening to implode. When I met Bannon at John F. Kennedy Airport, an hour before boarding the Tokyo flight, he’d turned the first-class lounge into a makeshift war room. A few days earlier, The Washington Post published allegations that Moore had pursued romantic and sexual relationships with teenagers in the 1970s while he was an assistant district attorney. One woman told the paper he molested her when she was 14—and he was 32. Moore’s initial response had been a disaster. He came across as evasive during a radio interview with Sean Hannity. A chorus of Senate Republicans, led by McConnell, were calling on Moore to end his campaign; the Republican National Committee severed all fund-raising ties. Most worrisome for Bannon, the White House put out a statement that Moore should leave the race if the allegations were true.

The situation, and the various arrayed forces for and against Moore, closely resembled two earlier crises Bannon had weathered with Trump: the release of the Billy Bush tape and the aftermath of the white nationalist march in Charlottesville. In both, Trump ultimately followed Bannon’s tactical playbook—doubling down at all costs—with large success in the first instance and a highly questionable result in the second.

Bannon huddled over his BlackBerry firing off e-mails to Breitbart reporters he’d dispatched to Alabama to discredit the Post story. “I got my two best guys down there,” he said while waiting for Moore campaign chairman Bill Armistead to call. Bannon’s orders: deny, deny, deny. “One of the things I realized during the campaign is that, like in the military, it all comes down to one or two decisions in the heat of battle,” he said. “You have to double down.” In Moore, he knew he had a less capable candidate. (His first choice had been Alabama congressman Mo Brooks.) “I’m gonna tell Judge Moore to do his thing,” Bannon said. “They’re not cut out for this, though.”

Bannon let the White House know that he wanted Trump to back Moore. But Trump seemed reluctant at first. White House political director Bill Stepien reportedly told Trump to stay out of the race. The conventional wisdom was becoming that Moore was done, and that Bannon was wrong this time.







Bannon’s frenetic pace is part of his strategy. “I realized if you’re not out there for the hobbits, you’re not in their lives,” Bannon said, using his affectionate moniker for Trump voters. During the week I traveled with him from New York to Tokyo to South Florida, for what was Bannon’s first major profile since leaving the White House, he made a half dozen speeches to conservative groups, hosted Breitbart’s talk-radio show, and helped market a new biography Bannon: Always the Rebel. Inside the right-wing echo chamber, Bannon is lionized as a conquering folk hero. Well-wishers flock to snap selfies, press the flesh. At one event I chatted with an elderly man waiting his turn on the receiving line. “If I could ask him one question, it would be, why aren’t you president?’”

That has at least been a passing thought. In October, Bannon called an adviser and said he would consider running for president if Trump doesn’t run for re-election in 2020. Which Bannon has told people is a realistic possibility. In private conversations since leaving the White House, Bannon said Trump only has a 30 percent chance of serving out his term, whether he’s impeached or removed by the Cabinet invoking the 25th amendment. That prospect seemed to become more likely in early December when special counsel Robert Mueller secured a plea deal from former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Bannon has also remarked on the toll the office has taken on Trump, telling advisers his former boss has “lost a step.” “He’s like an 11-year-old child,” Bannon joked to a friend in November.

While Bannon praised Trump during our conversations—he said he’s the best orator since William Jennings Bryan—he doesn’t deny he was unhappy in the White House. “It was always a job,” he said. “I realize in hindsight I was just a staffer, and I’m not a good staffer. I had influence, I had a lot of influence, but just influence.” He told me he now feels liberated. “I have power. I can actually drive things in a certain direction.”

Not surprisingly, the idea of Bannon as a political figure, let alone a presidential candidate, inspires ridicule and venom from the Republican establishment. The Wall Street Journal editorial page called Bannon’s roster of candidates a bunch of “cranks and outliers.” Former McConnell chief of staff Josh Holmes said Bannon is a “white supremacist.” Stuart Stevens, a veteran of five Republican presidential campaigns, told me that Bannon is “an odd, strangely repulsive figure who is trying to use the political process to work through personal issues of anger and frustration.” He added, “like many people in their first campaign, he confused his candidate winning with the fantasy voters supported him.”

A prominent Republican described Bannon’s crusade as a vanity exercise doomed to fail. “I think there was a lot of rage when he was in the White House,” the Republican said. “Steve had to subsume his ego to Donald, who Steve thinks is dumb and crazy. With Steve, it’s not about building new things—it’s about destroying the old. I’m not sure he knows what he wants.” As evidence, he pointed out the recent Virginia governor’s race, where Republican Ed Gillespie got crushed by nine points running on a Bannon-esque platform defending Confederate monuments and inciting fear over illegal immigrant crime. “The issues didn’t just fail, they failed miserably,” the Republican said.

Bannon’s response to all this criticism is a variation on his personal motto: Honey badger don’t give a shit. “I don’t give a fuck,” he told me when I visited him one morning at the Bryant Park Hotel. “You can call me anything you want. Do you think I give a shit? I literally don’t care.”





A few hours after the Tokyo speech, Bannon’s security chief Tej Gill escorted me and a group of Japanese television journalists up to Bannon’s suite. Bannon was padding around the room in a black blazer over two collared shirts, quaffing a can of Pocari Sweat, a popular Japanese energy drink. “Dude, the biggest story out there has got to be Alwaleed and Murdoch. It’s a monster story,” he said, referring to the billionaire Saudi financier, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who’d been arrested on orders from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Until a few years ago, Alwaleed was the largest non-Murdoch voting shareholder of News Corp. “Uhhh, note to self: Alwaleed’s like the 25th richest guy in the world, and he’s going to have his head on the end of the scimitar! Rupert Murdoch does not exist unless this guy was stroking him checks in the 90s.”

Bannon’s nephew Sean cradled a phone asking room service to send up cans of Red Bull, but was informed the hotel doesn’t have any. He asked for Cokes and coffee instead. “We have to get him revved,” he told me.

Bannon was revved already. “The Bush presidency is the most destructive presidency in history. James Buchanan included. It’s not even close,” Bannon said when I brought up the Bushes. “And by the way,” he continued unprompted, “I haven’t even gotten to 9/11. I mean, 9/11! Think about if 9/11 had happened on Trump’s watch. We would have gotten 100 percent of the blame by the Bush guys. And they said, well, we just got here. What do you mean you just got here? That’s what gets me about them coming after Trump. I really detest them. I mean, the old man is a pervert. He’s a pervert. Grabbing these girls and grabbing their asses?”

A few minutes later, the Japanese crew was ready to start taping, but Bannon didn’t like the camera position. “I got the most stunning shot in Japan right here and you want to shoot a wall?” he said, pointing at the postcard view of the Imperial Palace out the window. The cameraman struggled in broken English to explain that shooting in that direction wasn’t possible because of the lighting. “Then why don’t we just go to a Marriott,” Bannon grumbled.

The producers began moving the cameras. Since we arrived in Tokyo, Roy Moore’s prospects had worsened. News outlets reported overnight that Moore had been banned from a shopping mall in the 80s because he cruised for teens. “He’s denied it,” Bannon said. He pulled out his BlackBerry and showed me an e-mail from Breitbart reporter Aaron Klein. “Klein’s on something big,” he said. I catch a glimpse of the e-mail, it said something about the stepson of one of Moore’s accusers claiming she’d made up the allegations for money.

Despite the new headlines, Bannon was confident that his strategy was working. He sensed he had a deep understanding of the electorate. “This is Alabama,” he explained. “The age of consent is 16 for a reason.”

Bannon’s conviction was forged from surviving the darkest moments of the 2016 campaign. “This is exactly like Billy Bush weekend,” he said. “So I’ve heard it all and seen it all.” During our conversations, Bannon proudly told me multiple times how he counseled Trump not to back down after the Access Hollywood tape leaked. He recalled how then-R.N.C. Chairman Reince Priebus told Trump he would lose in a historic landslide if he stayed on the ticket. “It was such an overreaction! I’ve seen the same cast of characters all run for the exits, right? You gotta remember, on Saturday morning of Billy Bush weekend, he tried to pitch Trump to get off the ticket. I’m like, are you insane?”

A producer motioned that it was time to start the interview. Bannon was pleased the camera was positioned as he requested. He excused himself and sat down with a fresh cup of black coffee.





Billy Bush Weekend cemented Bannon’s bond with Trump. But when Trump became Mr. President-Elect, on another plane, the relationship became much more complicated. Trump was deeply galled that the media portrayed Bannon as the wizard behind the curtain. “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the New York Post. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist.” (In fact, Trump had known Bannon since 2011). In July, Bloomberg Businessweek journalist Joshua Green published a best-selling book, Devil’s Bargain, that gave a substantial amount of credit for Trump’s win and overall vision to Bannon. Trump tweeted in response: “I love reading about all of the ‘geniuses’ who were so instrumental in my election success. Problem is, most don’t exist. #Fake News! MAGA . . .”

Meanwhile, Trumpworld, which had been unified by the shared goal of defeating Hillary Clinton, cleaved into warring factions within hours of Trump’s unexpected win. On election night, Bannon said he disagreed with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump over the content of Trump’s victory speech. Kushner and Ivanka wanted it to strike a tone of unity, whereas Bannon wanted to keep up the attack. “I didn’t think it was the right time to talk about uniting,” he said. “I think some of that stuff comes off as phony.”

The battle intensified in the White House. On one side was a group of advisers Bannon dismissively dubbed “the Democrats,” comprising Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, and Dina Powell. On the other were the nationalists: Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, and Peter Navarro (Kushner’s camp called them “the crazies” or “Breitbart”).

The nationalists prevailed in the early days of the administration, as Trump signed a flurry of executive orders on trade and regulations from a list of campaign promises Bannon had scrawled on a whiteboard in his West Wing office. “You had to be a disruptor and keep people on their back heels. That’s why we were doing three E.O.s a day,” Bannon explained. “I told Reince that if you slow down, they’ll pick us apart with the palace intrigue stuff, which is what they really want to write.”

On the afternoon of Friday, January 27, the White House announced a travel ban barring immigrants from eight Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, including all Syrian refugees. It sparked protests at airports nationwide. Bannon explained this was by design. “Why did we drop the travel ban on a Friday evening? Because the resistance is our friend,” he told me. “Our thing is to throw gasoline on the resistance. I love it. When they”—the Democrats—“talk about identity politics, they’re playing into our hands. Because you can’t win [elections] on that.” I asked Bannon about the charges he’s cultivated white supremacist groups. “These guys are beyond clowns,” he said. “It’s the left media that makes them relevant because 25 of them show up, and it’s like a hundred cameras. They’re losers.”

The backlash to the travel ban proved to be a political and legal disaster for the White House and Bannon’s standing in it. As courts blocked the ban and Trump’s poll numbers sank to historic lows, Bannon’s enemies, led by Kushner, moved to marginalize him. (Bannon aided Kushner’s cause by installing himself on the National Security Council, which infuriated Trump, the White House official said.) To Bannon, a former Naval officer who worked his way into Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs, Kushner was a callow elitist in way over his head. “He doesn’t know anything about the hobbits or the deplorables,” Bannon said. “The railhead of all bad decisions is the same railhead: Javanka.” According to a person close to Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law viewed Bannon as a leaker at best, and a racist at worst.

Any chance of Bannon and Kushner salvaging a working relationship collapsed over Kushner’s role in the decision that many see as the possible linchpin of Trump’s downfall. In early May, Bannon and Kushner tangled over Trump’s plan to fire F.B.I. director James Comey.

Over the weekend of May 6 and 7, Bannon was in Washington when Kushner, Ivanka, and Stephen Miller accompanied Trump to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where the decision to fire Comey was finalized. The White House announced Comey’s dismissal on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 9. Bannon was furious when he found out. “It’s the dumbest political decision in modern political history, bar none. A self-inflicted wound of massive proportions,” he later said. “Especially in light of recent news, for the country, the president’s best decision was firing James Comey. His second best decision was firing Steve Bannon, bar none,” a White House official said.

Bannon believed the Russia collusion case was meritless, but he blamed Kushner for taking meetings during the campaign that gave the appearance the Trump team sought Putin’s help. “He’s taking meetings with Russians to get additional stuff. This tells you everything about Jared,” Bannon told me. “They were looking for the picture of Hillary Clinton taking the bag of cash from Putin. That’s his maturity level.”



“Steve Bannon may regret not being in the White House anymore, but that is not an excuse for him peddling false stories about Jared or anyone else,” said Kushner’s attorney Abbe Lowell.

The blowback pitched the West Wing into another crisis. On Wednesday, Bannon was meeting with chief of staff Priebus in Priebus’s office when Kushner walked in.

“We have a communications problem,” Kushner said.

“No we don’t,” Bannon shot back. “We have a decision-making problem. We make a lot of bad decisions, and the bad decisions have to do with you.”

“It got uglier from there,” Bannon later recalled.

“As stated a dozen times, after Jared was told of the decision that had been made to fire director Comey, he supported it,” Lowell said.

Comey’s firing triggered the outcome Bannon was worried about: the appointment of a special counsel. Bannon threw himself into setting up a war room to contain Robert Mueller’s investigation. “Goldman Sachs teaches one thing: don’t invent shit. Take something that works and make it better,” Bannon said, explaining how he consulted with Bill Clinton’s former lawyer Lanny Davis about how the Clintons responded to Ken Starr’s probe. “We were so disciplined. You guys don’t have that,” Bannon recalls Davis advising him. “That always haunted me when he said that,” Bannon told me. Bannon said he grew increasingly disillusioned that Trump wasn’t taking the investigation seriously. He told Trump the establishment was trying to nullify the election and he was in danger of being impeached.

The relationship between Kushner and Bannon worsened through the spring. At one point, Bannon said, Trump called an Oval Office meeting to broker peace. Attending were Bannon, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. She blamed Bannon for the leaks.

“She’s the queen of leaks,” Bannon argued back.

“You’re a fucking liar!” Ivanka said.

Trump tried to adjudicate, but the meeting did little to diffuse tensions.

Bannon was also fighting to save one of his closest allies in the administration. Since March, Trump had been irate at Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation. On the morning of Monday, July 24, hours before Kushner was scheduled to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump called Sessions “beleaguered” in a tweet about his failure to investigate Hillary Clinton. “He hung Sessions out to dry to cover Jared, and the media never covered Jared, and they covered Sessions,” Bannon later said. (A White House official denied this.)

The next day, Bannon said he called Sessions into a meeting. He knew Sessions had already tried to resign once. “Look, I have a question for you,” Bannon said. “Is there any doubt in your mind that it was Divine Providence, the Hand of God that got us this victory?”

“No doubt,” Sessions replied.

“You’re sure?” Bannon continued.

“There’s no doubt.”

“Then where’s your commitment here?”

“I will never leave,” Sessions assured him. “I may get fired, but I’ll never leave.” (A Justice Department spokesperson did not comment.)

By this point it was Bannon who was on the way out. In late July, Trump replaced Priebus with John Kelly and gave the retired four-star Marine general a stated mandate to bring the warring West Wing factions to heel. Among Kelly’s first orders of business was firing communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Another, according to White House officials: telling Bannon he needed to go. Bannon told me he always planned to leave by the one-year anniversary of joining Trump’s campaign, and he told Kelly on August 7 he wanted to resign.

Whatever the case, Bannon said he knew Trump might try to control the narrative of his departure, so he told Kelly not to tell Trump. But later that night, Bannon said Trump called him after learning of the decision from White House lawyer John Dowd. Bannon said he told Trump he wanted to attack his G.O.P. detractors from the outside. “I said the establishment is trying to nullify your election,” he recalls. “Forget the Democrats. We got our own thing with the three committees” investigating Russia collusion. According to Bannon, Trump was reluctant at first to let him leave. And the threat of Bannon turning Breitbart loose on Trump and his family loomed. “He was very nervous about it,” Bannon said. “He just fuckin’ knows I’m a junkyard dog, and I was pissed at the time.” Bannon said Trump told him he needed to think about it.

Trump’s instinct to stoke racial conflict delayed Bannon’s departure. During the weekend of August 12, neo-Nazis marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting “Jews will not replace us” to protest the removal of Confederate monuments. During clashes with counter-protesters, a white supremacist rammed his car into a crowd killing a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer and wounding dozens. Trump fanned outrage by blaming the violence on “many sides.” Kushner and Ivanka implored him to apologize, and other members of the administration contemplated resigning. Bannon told the president on a phone call that apologizing would never satisfy the critics. “I said it’s not enough and it’s too late. Nothing you can say could be good enough.”

As the uproar over Charlottesville grew louder, Bannon quietly plotted his next move. White House officials say Bannon tried calling Trump and lobbied members of Congress to pressure Trump to change his mind. On Thursday, August 17, he held a five-hour strategy meeting with billionaire mega-donor Robert Mercer at his Long Island estate. That same day, The American Prospect published a remarkable score-settling interview Bannon had given to its editor Robert Kuttner. The fact that Bannon spoke to a magazine aligned with the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party got people’s attention. But what likely got Bannon fired were his comments that there was no military solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis. The remark sent the stock market tanking. If Trump understands one thing, it’s money, and he approved Bannon’s dismissal. That night, Bannon left his office for the last time, taking nothing with him.






When news of Bannon’s exit broke on the afternoon of Friday, August 18, he was already back to work at Breitbart’s Washington headquarters, a stately row house blocks from the Capitol known as the Breitbart Embassy. Staffers showered him with a hero’s welcome. “I don’t think Trump understands how dangerous Steve is. He just runs in and conquers shit, like Charlemagne,” a Breitbart journalist told me at the time.

That night, Bannon signaled to Trump he was going to continue the wars he waged in the West Wing from the outside. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he boasted to the Weekly Standard.

Bannon’s campaign role model may surprise you. “It’s the Obama model,” he told me. He wants to bring together a new coalition of evangelicals, libertarians, pro-gun activists, and union members. “Remember when Rudy Giuliani came up on that stage in 2008 and starting mocking Obama and said, ‘What’s a community organizer’? And the whole place roared in laughter. Well, we now know—it’s somebody that can kick your ass.”

But Bannon’s campaign against McConnell complicated his already complicated relationship with Trump. In early September, 60 Minutes asked the White House to book Trump for an interview for the season premiere, but after Bannon did an interview with Charlie Rose, sources said Trump didn’t agree to do it, in part because he didn’t want to follow in Bannon’s footsteps. Breitbart attacked Trump for cutting a deal with Democrats to raise the debt ceiling. In the Alabama Senate primary, Bannon backed Moore while Trump supported Luther Strange. During a phone call in October, according to a source, Bannon and Trump debated for 15 minutes about who should get credit for Arizona Senator Jeff Flake’s decision to retire. The following month, perhaps as an act of trolling, Bannon reportedly encouraged Trump’s nemesis, billionaire Mark Cuban, to run for president—as a Democrat.

Bannon’s own transformation from political adviser to a quasi-politician has also transformed Breitbart; it’s become a site that promotes his campaign. On the day of Bannon’s Tokyo speech, his name appeared in seven different headlines on the homepage. In December, Bannon signed a deal to host Breitbart’s daily satellite radio show. His message, however, isn’t quarantined inside the right-wing media bubble. That’s because Bannon has a canny ability to cultivate mainstream journalists. My own experience with him illustrates how he operates.

In August 2015, I received an e-mail from Kurt Bardella, who at the time handled Breitbart’s public relations. “Thought I’d reach out and just say that if you ever wanted to talk with Bannon on background, I think he’d def be willing to touch base with you,” Bardella wrote. I was shocked by his note—and also intrigued. For the previous three years, Bannon had tried to destroy my professional reputation. During this time I was researching a biography of the late Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. A legendary paranoiac, Ailes waged an elaborate campaign to discredit my book that included having me followed by private detectives and commissioning a 400-page dossier about my life. Bannon and Breitbart played a crucial role in the effort. He worked out of Fox News headquarters strategizing with Ailes about how to attack my book. Breitbart published many thousands of words about me, at turns calling me a “Soros-backed attack dog,” “harasser,” “stalker,” and “Jayson Blair on steroids,” a reference to the former New York Times fabulist. After one Breitbart article, my wife and I received a threatening phone call at home. We called the police.

A few days after Bardella e-mailed, I met Bannon for lunch at the Bryant Park Grill in Midtown Manhattan. I found him at an outdoor table, wearing an untucked shirt and cargo shorts. His hair was a tangled nest of platinum gray and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. If I didn’t know him I’d have thought he just rolled off a bus at the Port Authority. Bannon shook my hand graciously. He told me he enjoyed my book on Ailes. What about all the hit pieces he published? “Ha! Those were love taps, dude. Just business.” We proceeded to have a highly entertaining lunch swapping media and political gossip.

As much as I wanted to loathe Bannon—the Breitbart attacks were genuinely terrifying—I found myself liking him. He was strange and charismatic and slightly unhinged, and he possessed a sophisticated and encyclopedic knowledge of the modern political-media landscape. He personally knew the players, from the on-air talent and programming executives to the candidates and billionaire donors. And he was a gifted talker. He exaggerated but didn’t quite lie (at least most of the time). And during conversations he fired off laser-accurate descriptions of famous people that would make the best insult comics proud. In that way, he was like another New York blowhard: Trump.






"Later Nazi! Have fun at your Klan rally!”

A kid in a green hoodie was heckling Bannon as he led his entourage through baggage claim at John F. Kennedy Airport after touching down from Tokyo.

“That’s what I call a New York good morning,” Bannon said, flashing a satisfied grin.

The siege on Roy Moore’s campaign continued. The previous day, Ivanka Trump told the Associated Press “there’s a special place in hell for people who prey on children.” Bannon was incredulous she’d make the comment. “What about the allegations about her dad and that 13-year-old?” he said, referring to the California woman who alleged Trump raped her when she was a teen (the suit has since been dropped.) “Ivanka was a fount of bad advice during the campaign.”

Bannon was eager to get Trump on the phone. He told me Trump’s presidency was at stake. His theory was that, if McConnell succeeded in forcing Moore out, it would open Trump up to having every sexual harassment and assault allegation against him relitigated in the court of public opinion. “It’s a firebreak,” he later said.

Bannon’s eyes were circled with dark rings and his ruddy nose was approaching Rudolph-level red. But on his campaign schedule there was no time to slow down. We climbed into a pair of black Suburbans and rolled out.

An hour later Bannon boarded a Hawker 850 private jet at Teterboro Airport bound for Florida. He was due in Palm Beach to deliver a keynote speech at Restoration Weekend, the annual gathering of right-wingers hosted by former New-Leftist-turned-conservative provocateur David Horowitz. “The thing about Restoration Weekend,” Bannon had told me earlier, “is you got a lot of Jewish Palm Beach matrons who used to be superhot. They were all left-wing in the 60s. That was before they locked down successful Palm Beach business guys. Now they’re hardcore. You half expect them to throw their panties at Horowitz. They’re all Trump people.”

A pilot climbed aboard and sealed up the door. “We got a planeload of patriots,” he said.

The engines whirred, and as we taxied towards the runway, Bannon explained why, despite his competition with Trump, he needs to defend him at all costs. “Trump’s at war with the permanent political class in D.C. I have this whole theory about the nullification of the 2016 election by the Democrats, the opposition party and the Republican establishment,” he said. “Can you believe they had that Senate committee meeting that talked about the president’s ability to use nuclear weapons? It’s unreal!”

Once we’re airborne I asked Bannon how the presidency had changed Trump. “He’s much more moderate,” Bannon said, sipping a Fiji water. “He’s an accommodationist. Trump’s tendency is to always get Maggie Haberman in there. He reads The New York Times. To him that’s the paper of record.” For a presidency defined by Twitter, Bannon said Trump has a limited grasp of new media. “He doesn’t go online. That’s a huge thing. I mean Orrin Hatch”—who’s 83—“goes online! Trump reads printouts.”

Bannon paused and looked out the window. “I was born down there,” he said, pointing at the hazy Virginia coastline below.

Bannon’s blue-collar upbringing and conservative Catholic faith undergird his populist ideas. He argues that his platform of economic nationalism has been misrepresented by critics that label it racist. Cutting immigration and erecting trade barriers will help people of color by tightening the labor market, thereby raising wages. In the White House, he argued to increase tax rates on the wealthy and has problems with the G.O.P. tax plan (although he ultimately supports it). Bannon also argued to end the country’s decades-long entanglement in Afghanistan and spend the money at home. “You could rebuild America! Do you understand what Baltimore and St. Louis and these places would look like?” And he told me he thinks the government should regulate Google and Facebook like public utilities. “They’re too powerful. I want to make sure their data is a public trust. The stocks would drop two-thirds in value.”

Raheem Kassam, a former adviser to Nigel Farage who now edits Breitbart London and travels in Bannon’s entourage, told me, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see Bannon and Bernie campaigning together in a couple years.”

There’s not much evidence that that notion is more than a fantasy. Not only because of Bannon’s pariah status on the left, but also because it’s difficult to reconcile Bannon’s homilies about helping minorities with a worldview that America is a Western European, Judeo-Christian culture that must close its borders and build a wall at a time when the immigrants are brown-skinned people. “My theory, our philosophy, is that we’re more than an economy. It’s one of the reasons the Republicans and the Paul Ryans of the world and Paul Singers got off track with this Ayn Rand Austrian economics where everything’s about the economy. Well, it’s not the economy. We’re a civic society with borders and values.”

When he’s talking up the virtues of strengthening civic bonds he sounds like Robert Putnam. But Bannon’s Breitbart mobilizes its readers by taunting the left, and can often seem to be the entirety of his program. Rage-stoking is not populism, and politicians Bannon has backed mainly seem interested in pissing off liberals, rather than passing legislation that fundamentally makes America a more equitable society. After all, before Bannon found Trump, there was Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann.

Bannon said his candidates aren’t wing nuts, they’re just regular people. “They’re not blow-dries,” he said. “I don’t want the Marco Rubios that have been in the R.N.C. since they were 9 years old with a briefcase. It’s all bullshit. Our guys can be a little rough around the edges. They’re gonna say some crazy shit, O.K. You know why? Because people are going to identify this guy’s real and he’s a fighter.”







Bannon had been on the radio for nearly two hours when I walked into his Breakers hotel suite in Palm Beach. The room had been turned into a makeshift studio. A soundboard sat on a side table while CNN played on mute. During a commercial break, Bannon sipped black coffee and scanned e-mails on his BlackBerry. Then he was back. “It’s November 17 in the year of our Lord, two thousand and seventeen, as dawn breaks over the greatest country in mankind’s history,” he boomed into a headset. “It is a blistering news day, a lot of news out of Alabama.”

Breitbart’s SiriusXM show gives Bannon a powerful megaphone. And all morning, he was using it to push a narrative that Moore was the victim of an establishment plot to stop his populist campaign.

He had no evidence that Moore’s accusers were politically motivated—in fact, several of them are Trump voters. But it didn’t matter. At that moment, it seemed that Bannon’s tactic was working—as Moore denounced his accusers, his poll numbers went up. After conversations with the White House, Trump came around to endorsing Moore, forcing the Republican Party to reverse itself and support him. In the days leading up to the December 12 election, it looked like Moore would defeat Doug Jones.

Bannon flew to Alabama to celebrate the victory. But when he saw the exit polls, he told me he knew the night wouldn’t go his way. “The percentage of write-ins was at 1.5 percent. I looked at the pollster right there and I said he’s going to lose this,” Bannon recalled. He blamed McConnell for orchestrating Alabama’s senior Senator Richard Shelby to announce on CNN on the Sunday before the election he didn’t vote for Moore. “That was the inflection point,” Bannon said.

Moore’s loss further damaged Bannon’s standing with Trump. “The president was annoyed Steve lost the Alabama seat to a Democrat because Steve thought he was a big shot,” a White House official told me. Meanwhile, Bannon’s critics gleefully framed Alabama as proof that Bannon’s political acumen has been vastly overstated. “Mr. Bannon is for losers,” the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote. Steven Law, the head of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, released a statement: “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the president of the United States into his fiasco.”

Two days after Moore’s defeat, I met Bannon for breakfast in New York before he headed back to Tokyo to give another anti-China speech. A bearded bodyguard sat nearby with a pistol tucked into his waistband. Despite the setback, Bannon was in high spirits. “Dude you don’t know the firestorm that’s coming,” he said, picking over a crumb muffin and sipping coffee. “The civil war will go to an even higher, more intense level.” Bannon said McConnell, in his machinations against Moore, revealed that G.O.P. elites are aligned with Democrats against the deplorables. “The G.O.P. establishment would rather have control and give up seats to the radical progressive left.”

He insisted his Senate candidates in 2018 will be fully vetted to avoid another Moore. He pointed out Montana State Auditor Matt Rosendale, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, and Kevin Nicholson, an Iraq combat veteran with degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard Business School, who’s running in Wisconsin. As we talked, news broke that Paul Ryan is possibly not going to run for re-election in 2018. Bannon saw this as another victory, a sign that the field was tilting in his favor. Bannon said his allies in the House Freedom Caucus will have “a huge role” in picking the next speaker.

And Trump, having flirted with the establishment, has come home. Since Charlottesville, Trump has governed almost exclusively for Bannon’s base. For all the tsuris Bannon causes the president, the two need each other. “He momentarily has lapses when he’s convinced by people around him in the White House to do ridiculous things like support Big Luther Strange, another genius move by Jared,” Bannon said. “But look at how many things he approved right after Alabama to get us back on board. I think the establishment has to understand something. Their day of running the Republican Party is over.”

Moore’s defeat could well be the Waterloo of Bannon’s movement, though it’s far too soon to tell. In his view of history, it’s always 1933, but he projects an unrelenting optimism about his own future and those of his projects. It’s a salesman’s gift, one he shares with Trump. Create enough chaos, and the world will re-align. Or it won’t.

As the White House sinks deeper into scandal, along with Roy Moore’s crushing defeat, it’s hard not to see Trump and Bannon as survivors huddled together on a shrinking spit of dry land. Meanwhile, with 2018 looming, even Bannon recognizes the Democrats’ growing strength. “The reason the Democrats did so well in Virginia is because they’re angry. Anger gets people to do things. I admire that,” he said.

During one conversation this fall, Bannon seemed to accept that his campaign might not succeed. But he said people are mistaken if they equate losing elections with failure. “I’m not a political operative,” he said, “I’m a revolutionary.”

作者: Dracula    时间: 2018-1-10 10:17
The Ideas and the Vessel: Why Breitbart Chose Trump Over Bannon

http://www.weeklystandard.com/th ... non/article/2011083

I always kind of liked Steve Bannon.

Not liked him liked him. I've never met the man. But I liked the idea of Bannon. Or rather, I liked that he had ideas.

Say what you will about Steve Bannon, but he reads books, and knows James Burnham, and rejects the mainstream, country-club-and-Chamber-of-Commerce view of the conservatism. If you squint at him a certain way—and ignore Pepe and Milo and his enthusiastic embrace of an ugly crew—Bannon was almost a reformicon. Or at least what happens when reform conservatism goes on a date with populism, has five drinks too many, and makes some bad life choices.

And for a while, lots of people talked themselves into believing that Bannon's combination of nationalism and reform conservatism was, more or less, what defined "Trumpism."

Not that Trump actually believed in Trumpism, mind you. As a political commodity Trump has always been, like Obama before him, a vessel. People poured their hopes into him. If you were an immigration hawk, you thought Trump was the only one who would secure the border. If you were concerned about the economy, you thought Trump's business background would make him a good president. If you read Breitbart, you thought that Trump believed in what Steve Bannon believed.

For their part, establishment Republicans in Washington decided during the primaries that, if he were elected, Trump, lacking any of his own ideas, would become the vessel for their priorities. Which is why, when push came to shove, The Swamp backed Trump over Ted Cruz.

The Swamp turned out to be correct, of course. Trump has delivered no border wall, but seems intent on extending DACA. He did not repeal Obamacare, but he did pass a giant tax cut favored by big corporations and the Chamber of Commerce. As a matter of policy, his administration has been indistinguishable from what one might have expected from John McCain or Mitt Romney, had they become president. Only with corruption and staff turmoil and a special investigator and Twitter.

So the Republican establishment was able to separate the ideas of Trumpism from the vessel of Trump—and they chose Trump. Not surprising. Politics is about power and ideas are a luxury.

But it was surprising that, when Breitbart was put on the spot, they, too, chose the vessel. Historically, print publications are centered around ideas. That's why they exist. It seems strange—more than strange, really—that when push came to shove, Breitbart picked the president and the corporate tax cut and DACA renewal over the ideas of Steve Bannon. It makes no sense.

Unless, that is, the animating idea of the Breitbart wing of conservatism isn't actually nationalist-populism. It's just power. And then it all makes perfect sense: For Breitbart, power is their big idea.

Which is funny. Because at the end of the day it means the eager little Cossacks over at Breitbart are actually a lot like the bloated, grasping, Washington establishment types they hate so much.

The only difference, really, is that The Swamp always wins.


作者: holycow    时间: 2018-1-10 10:49
Dracula 发表于 2018-1-9 18:17
The Ideas and the Vessel: Why Breitbart Chose Trump Over Bannon

http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-i ...

What's the surprise?  The Mercers are about power, just as Simons is about power, the entire Simons-Mercer Renaissance is about money and power



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