Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview with Steve Bannon provided the most insightful education on American politics in years. What is most significant about the interview is not so much what Bannon said, but what was behind what he said; what he didn’t say; and how Charlie Rose utterly embarrassed himself and demonstrated (again) that the media cannot be trusted.
Right off the bat, viewers were schooled because Bannon defied expectations. Those who don’t know him assumed he’d savage the Left on national television.
He didn’t.
Instead, he went after the real threat to Trump’s presidency – the Republican Establishment. The Left isn’t a threat. The Democrats and the Left have become a laughingstock. As they lurch from outrage to outrage, always screaming, always with the hyperbole that is the hallmark of Trump Derangement Syndrome, normal Americans tuned out long ago. Democrats were soundly pummeled in 2016, and they still don’t get why.
Bannon wants McConnell out. He wants Ryan out. Because they are inhibiting the one thing President Trump needs to move America forward – improve the economy. All Trump has to do, Bannon said, is do what Trump said he would do, and re-election is assured.
The reason Trump’s approval ratings are so low is that he hasn’t accomplished any of these things, and much of it has to do with the Establishment’s blockade.
Moreover, Bannon astutely says that it is also the Democratic Establishment that stands in the way of that party moving forward. His best quote of the evening was that Bernie Sanders had the Democratic Establishment, and Hillary Clinton nailed, regarding how the Wall Street power structure controls the party, but Sanders couldn’t close the deal. That’s partially due to the corrupt party structure of “super-delegates,” a system designed to keep the Establishment in power.
He even complimented Chuck Schumer and Sherrod Brown, saying that even they understood that the party had to move away from identity politics.
Then, for every unsophisticated goon who thinks that the only way to solve the North Korea problem – a problem resulting from twenty years of appeasement and extortion – is military action, Bannon rightly points out that the key to North Korea is China. We are not at economic war…
