Donald Trump vs. the Koch brothers: A major rift -- or a stunt staged by Steve Bannon?
Steve Bannon is back, almost — and is likely pulling Trump’s strings in his supposed feud with the Koch brothers
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
AUGUST 1, 2018 12:00PM (UTC)
The last we heard of Trump's former "populist" muse Steve Bannon, he was across the Atlantic, plotting with Britain's recently departed foreign secretary Boris Johnson about plans to challenge Prime Minister Theresa May and enact a "hard Brexit" plan. He's turned up all over Europe the last few months, talking up far-right politicians and lending his support to anti-immigrant platforms. He's even started an official nationalist movement which he's cleverly called "The Movement."
Bannon's just following through on what many of us assumed was his long-term goal after Donald Trump's likely defeat in the 2016 presidential election. When Bannon and his team unexpectedly pulled off the win, he was elevated to one of the most powerful jobs on earth and then, months later, was banished for speaking out of turn about the president. That has not stopped him from pursuing his own agenda, which is global "disruption" on a grand scale to usher in the "Fourth Turning," described by the authors of the book that dramatically shaped Bannon's thinking this way:
That sounds a bit like the premonition of a doomsday cult, but Bannon thinks it's a good thing. The political movement he sees as the instrument of this necessary destruction is right-wing white nationalism, which is an emerging force in Western Europe and already has a foothold in the rest of the world. He's been over in Europe learning from these emerging political forces, and let's just say they have a long and relevant history from which to take lessons.
Now Bannon's back home, road-testing a bunch of new ideas and sharpening up the old ones. According to Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair, he's slowly worming his way back into favor by running an informal outside advisory group consisting of Trump campaign veterans who still have the president's ear. Unsurprisingly, he's recommending a scorched-earth strategy focusing on bringing out the Trump base to save their hero from the threat of impeachment. He has named Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, along with (inexplicably) former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, as the targets for Trump's ire. Oh, and also Nancy Pelosi, whom Bannon notes is as close as they can get to Hillary Clinton.
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https://www.salon.com/2018/08/01/donald-trump-vs-the-koch-brothers-a-major-rift-or-a-stunt-staged-by-steve-bannon/
