Trump extracts: 'Take a shower, Bannon. You've worn those pants for six days'

[DonViejo]

In his book, whose veracity has been challenged by Donald Trump and the White House, Michael Wolff reveals how the president maligned his chief strategist at every opportunity

Michael Wolff
January 6 2018, 12:01am,
The Times

By ten weeks in, Steve Bannon’s mastery of the Trump agenda, or at least of Trump himself, appeared to have crumbled. His misery was both Catholic in nature — the self-flagellation of a man who believed he lived on a higher moral plane than all others — and fundamentally misanthropic.

As an antisocial, maladjusted, post-middle-aged man, he had to make a supreme effort to get along with others, an effort that often did not go well. Most especially, he was miserable because of Donald Trump, whose cruelties, always great even when they were casual, were unbearable when he truly turned against you.

“I hated being on the campaign, I hated the transition, I hate being here in the White House,” said Bannon, sitting one evening in Reince Priebus’s office, on an unseasonably warm evening in early spring. But Bannon was, he believed, here for a reason. And it was his firm belief — a belief he was unable to keep to himself, thus continually undermining his standing with the president — that his efforts had brought everybody else here.

The idea of a split electorate — of blue and red states, of two opposing currents of values, of globalists and nationalists, of an establishment and populist revolt — was media shorthand for cultural angst and politically roiled times, and, to a large degree, for business as usual. But Bannon believed the split was literal.

The United States had become a country of two hostile peoples. One would necessarily win and the other lose. Or one would dominate while the other would become marginal. This was modern civil war — Bannon’s war.

Trump rationalised his early embrace of Bannon by heaping scorn on him — and by denying that he had ever embraced him. If there was anything wrong with his White House, it was Steve Bannon. Maligning Bannon was Trump’s idea of fun.

more
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/trump-extracts-take-a-shower-bannon-youve-worn-those-pants-for-six-days-0d7gnrsdc

[underpants]

1. Email wall. Bannon's a big boy and frankly made his media political career doing the same thing

attacking people,or having Breitbart scum attack them.

He's not stupid but he believes a fourth turning is in progress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/us/politics/bannon-fourth-turning.html

[Mc Mike]

2. Is 'reich' the german word for 'turning'? nt

[GreenEyedLefty]

3. I read the article above, and it's not quite the same

I actually agree with Bannon that history tends to be cyclical but unlike him I believe (and have concluded through a lot of reading) that, for most societies, the net result of crisis is improvement. I tend to follow MLK Jr's adage that the arc of history is long but it bends toward justice.

Bannon is a third-rate amateur historian who has been given a megaphone and hitched himself to a crazy, but powerful, train. There is a difference between studying and observing history and trying to influence forces that would make his own twisted world view come to fruition. THAT is the danger, in my opinion, and exactly what Adolf Hitler tried to do.

[Mc Mike]

4. Interesting academic questions, Green.

Cyclical history, improvement via crisis, and arc of history.

My hot take is that bannon is a sig-intel guy who comes from the psy ops end. Whether he's an a-religiously and amorally non-aligned pro-nazi operative like Stone and Manafort, or an Opus Dei sheisskopf, or a bircher like his master Mercer is immaterial. The resulting aims are the same. Garbage in, garbage out.

He's a cheap hood with more hair tonic than brains. He's definitely a nazi and anti-semite. I bet he got where he is because of his daddy. Like der dRumpfenfuhrer.