Steve bannon

Steve Bannon is out. H.R McMaster is in. It's now starting to dawn upon some of Donald Trump's most ardent admirers that they've been had. The main accomplishment of the Trump revolution has not been to forward populism. It has been to devour its own children. Trump entered office declaring that 'this carnage ends now'. Not so. He's been producing it in the form of lopping off the head of one adviser after another. Bannon is now promising 'war' against the 'New York Democrats' that he says are running the White House. If so, it will be a fratricidal one. Bannon was of course the brains behind Trump's defeat of Hillary Clinton, something that the president could never entirely forgive. Trump wants all the credit for himself.

Ding dong Steve Bannon is gone – and all the liberal world order is cock-a-hoop. As Democrat congressman Tim Ryan said, ‘Good. He had no business being there to begin with.’ Or as Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. put it, ‘Steve Bannon should have never been a White House official.’ Maybe it is a good thing that Steve Bannon, an apocalyptic thinker better suited to Breitbart and Talk Radio agitation than real power, is gone. And yet and yet – in the craziness that is Trumpland, Bannon was the closest thing to a coherent strategic thinker in the White House. Who is there now? Bannon had principles – mad ones, perhaps – but a thought-through worldview. I'm not convinced anybody else in the White House does.

Sebastian Gorka is a big man. He has a powerful handshake, a deep voice, and a serious goatee. He’s also deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, and known as the most influential Brit in the White House. He was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and grew up in Ealing. Yet he seems to identify more with America and Hungary than with Britain. When I ask him if he feels British, he says, ‘As a good friend said to me, and I think this is a quote from someone else, possibly Hayek, “You were always American, you were just born in the wrong country.”’ Nevertheless, the British government, desperate to form bonds with a Brexit--friendly Trump administration, has been eager to claim him as one of us.

There were three reasons why I so badly wanted Donald Trump to win the US presidential election. One was that the alternative was Hillary; another that I knew it would annoy all the worst people in the world; but the third was a positive one: I genuinely believed that as an independently wealthy, outsider candidate with no loyalties to the DC establishment, Trump was going to be the revolutionary hero who would finally free the people from the shackles of a corrupt, sclerotic and self-serving ruling elite. Some may scoff at my naivety. But there was evidence to support my view. Brexit had just happened and what seemed clear from Trump’s embrace of Nigel Farage was that he saw himself as part of the same populist wave.

Steve Bannon fast became the most powerful person in the world you’ve never heard of. The man behind the Breitbart website became Donald Trump's chief strategist and was credited with both Trump’s presidential victory and his wholehearted embrace of an America First, nationalist position in his first month in office. But Bannon’s influence has been on the wane in recent weeks. He’s got into a power struggle with the President’s beloved son-in-law Jared Kushner; despite one of the rules of Trump world being that family always wins. The ‘establishment’ have also gained at his expense.

Perhaps Steve Bannon isn’t quite as all-powerful within the Trump administration as everybody believed. He’s just been removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. This news has been understood as a sign that Trump’s new National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is now calling the shots on foreign policy. The spin in Washington is that Bannon’s role on the NSC had been to act as a ‘check’ on the now disgraced former advisor Mike Flynn, who resigned in February, and with the more level-headed McMaster in charge he's no longer needed. It’s also emerged that Bannon has kept full level national security clearance. So what’s changed? Something, clearly, for all the naysaying of White House insiders.

‘Plan, prepare, and train for the outbreak of chaos,’ says al Qaeda’s handbook, The Management of Savagery, a blueprint for building the Caliphate through what might be called creative destruction. ‘At the outbreak of chaos, the onset of jihad: ride the wave…exploit the situation.’ Did Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s new chief strategist, read The Management of Savagery? He has been accused of implementing a ‘chaos theory of government’. Create chaos. Destroy the old order. Build paradise. The Trump administration has seemed busily engaged in phase one during its first two, hair-raising weeks in office.

For all the top jobs being dished out by Donald Trump, there’s one figure close to the president-elect that worries me more than the others. Steve Bannon’s appointment as Chief Strategist might have fired up the Twitter mob, but it’s the elevation of Jared Kushner as Trump's unofficial chief consigliere which seems most troubling of all. After all, however you spin it, having your son-in-law apparently calling the shots means Trump is following in some worrying footsteps. While some have cheered Trump’s victory for the rude awakening it gave to soft-hearted liberals, Kushner popping up at Trump Tower for the Donald’s first meeting with a foreign leader – Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe – should be a wake-up call.

Donald J. Trump always keeps everyone guessing. Is the president-elect ditching his crazy act in order to bring in a conventional Republican government? Or ditching conventional Republican government in order to bring in his crazy act? Is he bringing together the anti--politics outsiders and the Washington insiders? Or is he playing them against each other? Are we witnessing the usual scramble for power that accompanies every incoming administration? Or is the Trump transition a new kind of shambles? The answer to all these questions is yes, probably. Take the role of Steve Bannon, executive chairman of the right-wing website Breit-bart (aka ‘Trump Pravda’), who served as the Donald’s campaign manager in the run-up to the election.

The news that Donald Trump has appointed Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, as his Chief of Staff is shocking -- shockingly conventional. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Trump made it clear that he felt he owed Priebus a lot for his campaign's success. 'Reince is really a star,' he said. 'And he is the hardest-working guy.' So arguably the appointment is not a surprise. As usual, however, Trump seems to be playing a cleverer game than his opponents realise. His administration team seemed happy to let the media believe that he was going to give the Chief of Staff job to Steve Bannon, his campaign manager and the head of Breitbart news. This would have been a much more Trumpist, less Republican, choice.