The White House said “the addition of President Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, to regular meetings of the country’s top national security officials was essential to the commander in chief’s decision-making process,” the AP reports.
Press secretary Sean Spicer said ‘‘having the chief strategist for the president in those meetings who has a significant military background to help make — guide what the president’s final analysis is going to be is crucial.’”
Mike Allen: “White House and Hill GOP leaders are astonished by the unambiguous, far-reaching power of Steve Bannon and policy guru Stephen Miller over, well, just about everything.”
“Reince Priebus’ people were feeling like they ‘won November and December,’ having filled the White House with so many loyalists. The spin was that Reince was outmaneuvering Bannon and would be the real power source. But now it’s dawning on them, as Trump makes his early moves, that maybe they spoke too soon.”
White House adviser Stephen Bannon is apparently registered to vote in two places, New York City and Sarasota County, Florida, according to the Sarasota Herald Tribune.
“It was an unvarnished declaration of the basic principles of his populist and kind of nationalist movement. It was given, I think, in a very powerful way. I don’t think we’ve had a speech like that since Andrew Jackson came to the White House.”
— White House strategist Stephen Bannon, quoted by the Washington Post, on Donald Trump’s inaugural speech.
Stephen Bannon tells the Wall Street Journal not to expect to see him much on television while he works in the White House.
Said Bannon: “People say get out there. But I see no purpose in trying to convince a bunch of media elites who only ever talk to themselves. I never went on TV one time during the campaign. Not once. You know why? Because politics is war. General Sherman would never have gone on TV to tell everyone his plans. I’d never tip my hand to the other side. And right now we’ve got work to do.”
Stephen Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter that conservative Republicans won’t like everything President-elect Donald Trump has planned.
Said Bannon: “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement. It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
“Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing.”
— Trump strategist Stephen Bannon, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Playbook: “Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s controversial senior adviser, has been making calls to senior Republicans on Capitol Hill in an attempt to build relationships with aides and lawmakers. The message taken away from the calls — which have come over the last few days — is that Bannon’s days as chief provocateur toward Republicans are over, and he and Trump expect an extremely close relationship with Capitol Hill Republicans, according to those who have received the calls or have been briefed on them. The calls have been not only to figures in and around the leadership, but to the rank and file as well.”
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New Republic: “There’s been much dispute about whether Trumpism is a passing fad or will have staying power. Trump himself is a senior citizen and has, at best, one more presidential run in him. It’s not clear whether any of his children have the political charisma needed to take over the movement, or whether other politicians (Tom Cotton? Ted Cruz?) would be prepared to remake themselves in Trump’s image.”
“But there is ample reason to think that Trumpism will continue to be a powerful force in the Republican Party simply because Stephen Bannon will be around to promote it. Over the last two years, Bannon has proven himself to be a formidable figure on the right, with both the means and the ambition to alter the political landscape.”
Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon says Donald Trump is “the master of the head fake,” CNN reports.
Bannon said the news that President Obama’s Trump-supporting half-brother Malik Obama is attending tonight’s final presidential debate is “just an appetizer.”
He added that Trump will be bringing guests who “expose Bill and Hillary’s sordid past.”
“A year before Donald Trump hired Breitbart News’ executive chairman to be his presidential campaign’s CEO, Stephen K. Bannon boasted, ‘I’m Trump’s campaign manager’ via email,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Breitbart’s ties to Trump were long suspected before Bannon was brought aboard the campaign following the ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort in August 2016. Breitbart News, a website beloved by the so-called ‘alt-right’, had been a Trump’s staunchest ally in the media. Breitbart was so loyal to Trump that it even took the campaign’s side when then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski lied about bruising Michelle Fields, then a Breitbart reporter.”
“Donald Trump’s campaign CEO Stephen Bannon was branded an anti-Semite by the same ex-wife who claimed he choked her, court documents reveal,” the New York Daily News reports.
“Mary Louise Piccard said in a 2007 court declaration that Bannon didn’t want their twin daughters attending the Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles because many Jewish students were enrolled at the elite institution.”
Said Piccard in a court statement at the time: “The biggest problem he had with Archer is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews.”
“Donald Trump’s new presidential campaign chief is registered to vote in a key swing state at an empty house where he does not live, in an apparent breach of election laws,” the Guardian reports.
“Stephen Bannon, the chief executive of Trump’s election campaign, has an active voter registration at the house in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which is vacant and due to be demolished to make way for a new development.”
Politico: Bannon was charged with domestic violence in 1996.
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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