It Was Never About Steve Bannon’s Ideas

Joshua Green: “Bannon was a potent enough figure on the right that he traveled to Europe to spread Trump-style nationalist populism. At the same time, as I reported in 2018, Bannon began scheming to start a new U.S. political party that he planned to call the ‘National Union Party’—the temporary name Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party had adopted in 1864 to attract War Democrats and Unionists—imagining that he could unite disaffected populists on both ends of the political spectrum and make his own run at the White House.”

“Bannon’s fantasy never came to fruition. Instead, as often happened, his indiscretion became his undoing. After the author Michael Wolff quoted Bannon disparaging members of Trump’s family, Trump angrily ostracized him from the Republican Party. This included pressuring Rebekah Mercer, a major Trump donor and backer of Breitbart News, to oust Bannon from his position atop the conservative publication.”

“Once robbed of his influence in the White House and at Breitbart News, Bannon came to understand that it was Trump, not Bannon or his ideas, that excited Republican voters. Furthermore, it became obvious that any hope Bannon had of exerting influence on national politics was contingent on his worming himself back into Trump’s good graces.”