Trump and Bannon - We didn't Win the 2016 Battle Just So We Could Lose the 2020 War

Ever since Steve Bannon was removed from his place on the National Security Council, the ariwaves have been burning up with analysis. Is Bannon alive or dead in the Trump White House? And, does it matter. • THE NSC REORGANIZED. General HR McMasters was surely the deciding factor in the April 5 revelation that President Trump had reorganized the NSC. The cascade of articles read along the lines of 'Trump's chief political strategist Steve Bannon stripped of national security council role -- April 4 memorandum also restores traditional roles on council of chairman of joint chiefs of staff and director of national intelligence.' • A presidential memorandum dated 4 April took Bannon, the former Breitbart News executive and chief White House link to the large majority of Trump supporters, off the country’s main body for foreign policy and national security decision-making, and it restored the traditional roles of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence to the NSC. The reorganization was instantly 'analyzed' by mainstream media Trump-haters and political pundits as 'a victory for Trump’s second national security advisor, Army Lieutenant General HR McMaster.' Most analysis went on to say that the substantive impact of the shakeup 'remains to be seen.' • Occasionally, someone who had actually done some investigating reported that a parallel security structure in the Eisenhower executive office building, known as the Strategic Initiatives Group, reports to Bannon, whose close relationship with Trump suggests continued influence in this administration. The White House immediately pushed back against the perception that Bannon had been demoted. McMaster’s allies, described Bannon’s removal and the restoration of joint chiefs chairman General Joseph Dunford and intelligence chief Dan Coats to the NSC as a key objective for McMaster. At least one 'unnamed' McMaster ally told the media the Bannon ouster was : “Huge. That’s a big deal.” • The media and their go-to political pundits saw the move as McMaster establishing his influence with the President. McMaster was neither part of Trump’s election team nor even his second choice to run the NSC. The McMaster ally described Bannon’s removal as a “priority” for senior advisors “both in and out of the West Wing,” including Defense Secretary James Mattis. Bannon’s presence on the NSC, which considers itself above partisan politics, was considered troubling to those aligned with McMaster. In addition, McMaster “absolutely” wanted Dunford and Coats clearly positioned as permanent members of the NSC, a step that the memorandum restored. The April 4 Trump memorandum also gave McMaster dominance over the Homeland Security Council, giving him the power to determine the agenda for both bodies. It also empowers Homeland Security chief Tom Bossert and economic policy chief Gary Cohn to prepare Trump for key decisions requiring presidential action “at the sole discretion of the national security advisor.” • • • THE FEDERAL BUREAUCRACY FOLLOWS MILITARY ORGANIZATION. If all this sounds rather military, it is. If there is one thing that unites every senior military officer in any country you choose to look at (North Korea excepted), you will find the straightest of lines drawn between the military role and the commander-in-chief they are supporting, coupled with precise chain-of-command graded "sign-off" authority. And, that is as it should be. Further, if you review the organization and flow charts of the federl bureaucracy, you will find this same military straight-line everywhere. So, when McMaster took the NSC job on February 20, it was inevitable that he would draw that straight line to President Trump and clear the NSC deck of any lateral branches -- Steve Bannon, in effect. A foreign-policy traditionalist close to Mattis, McMaster has slowly installed similarly minded people, such as Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution for the Russia portfolio and Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation for the South Asia director. The memorandum also states that Bannon rival Reince Priebus, the White House Chief of Staff, along with counsel Don McGahn and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney are “invited as attendees to any NSC meeting.” So is Jon Eisenberg, the deputy counsel to Trump for national security. The importance of the NSC is also likely to grow by default. Neither Mattis nor Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have most of their deputies, undersecretaries and assistant secretaries in place, meaning that critical policymaking work on global crisis – from Syria to North Korea – will be in the hands of NSC staffers tasked with coordinating policy on those fields. • • • IS THE MEDIA TRYING TO CAUSE TROUBLE FOR TRUMP? Last Sunday, on Fox News, General McMaster was pretty outspoken about the Bannon move : "Steve Bannon provides the President with advice on a broad range of issues and will continue to do so. This is not as significant as it appears, I think. I think what the President was doing was making clear that he is going -- in terms of permanent membership on the National Security Council -- (to) have those permanent members who are there for every meeting, every official meeting of the National Security Council, to be those who will give him their advice on the long-term interests of the American people. He asks a broad range of people whom he trusts, and Steve Bannon's one of them, about policy decisions and about the risks and opportunities involved with each of these. And, so none of that has changed." • That is Pentagonese for 'you fellas are wrong.' • To prove the point, Bannon, in his role as White House chief strategist, attended a NSC meeting shortly after the news broke that he had been removed from the council by President Trump, according to CNBC. A White House official told CNBC : "He is off the memo as a member of the principals committee, but the President or McMaster can invite him to attend at any time. He is one of the President's closest and most trusted advisors." Asked whether Bannon would continue to regularly attend NSC meetings, the source told CNBC : "I don't know. It's going to be ad hoc, I think." • Last Thursday, Newsmax quoted Axios comments about Steve Bannon's demise being greatly exaggerated. Axios said that Bannon told his allies that the multiple reports that he was close to quitting are "100 percent nonsense. I love a gunfight" -- yes, but picking it with the husband of beloved daughter Ivanka may not have been the best strategy for Bannon. • And last Wednesday, Pete Hoefstra, a retired House member who chaired the House Intelligence Committee, told Newsmax that Steve Bannon might have been removed from his permanent seat on the National Security Council, but President Trump's chief strategist will still have plenty of influence : "I wouldn't read too much into it. Steve Bannon is well entrenched in the Trump White House. I was in the White House recently. I talked with Steve Bannon. He's doing just fine. He's got plenty of things to do. There will be some who will try to read a lot into this as a shift and who's on the way up, who's on the way down. I wouldn't read much into it." • • • WHO IS STEVE BANNON? Bannon -- blue-collar background, Navy service, Harvard Business School, Goldman Sachs investment banker, founder of his own investment banking firm, former Breitbart News executive chairman and Hollywood movie producer -- has been considered one of the most powerful members of Trump's inner circle. He is certainly Trump's single most important political strategist, although that chafed at Trump when he was asked about Bannon being the key to his election victory : “I had already beaten all the Senators and all the Governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary." • But, the battle, occasionally breaking out into the media, between Steve Bannon and Jared Kuschner, Trump's son-in-law and advisor, has continued. The mainstream media reports that Bannon sees Kushner as a roadblock to his populist platform, which propelled Trump into the White House, while Kushner sees Bannon as an ideologue. According to Axios, "the hatred between the two wings is intense and irreconcilable." Irreconcilable?? Not likely. Last week, Trump told them to 'make nice.' And, at a meeting chaired by White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Bannon and Kuschner supposedly buried the hatchet. • The key to the efficient running of the Bannon side of the White House is that his decision-making is made in close collaboration with Trump. Bannon continues to have that proximity. While Trump has made his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a point person on initiatives ranging from Middle East peace to Mexico to criminal justice overhauls -- Joint Chiefs Chariman General Dunford recently included Kushner in a trip to Iraq in what Pentagon officials have described as a concerted effort to cultivate the true power centers in the Trump administration -- Bannon is always in the White House at Trump's side. • • • QUO VADIS, STEVE? American Thinker' April 11 article, If Trump Loses Bannon, Trump Loses the Presidency, by Robert Barnes, is a fascinating conservaative view of the Bannon effect in the Trump phenomenon. Barnes says he "bet big on Donald Trump in the 2016 elections, rather famously. Now I will be shorting Trump stock for the foreseeable future until Bannon, and Bannon-ism, returns to policy dominance in the White House." That is surely the widespread view of the Tea Party and grassroots organizations and individuals who put Donald Trump into the presidency. One line in the Barnes article says worlds : " Should Trump ever lose Bannon entirely, Trump is a lame duck. Some media suggest that Trump could replace Bannon with Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner is to Steve Bannon what Dan Quayle was to JFK." • OUCH... • Barnes' argument is hard to rebutt : "Bannon -- uniquely among the Trump team -- threads together the policy weaves of the Trump electoral majority, a majority dependent upon newfound GOP support from the working class, especially in the northern half of the country, but also the southern upcountry and Appalachia." Barnes cites the issues that allowed Trump to distinguish himself, both in the GOP primaries and in the general election, to appeal to these GOP skeptic voting constituencies : (1) No preachy politics -- No dumb wars -- Christian values -- No more job-killing deals. Trump, says Barnes, : "came from the East Coast economy of finance and real estate enriched at the expense of the rural- and middle-America small-town heartland, who make our food and make our products; but, Trump, despite profiting from that largely coastal port-city world, promised to reverse that economic bargain. Trade, immigration, and infrastructure all allowed him to carve out distinguishing traits, while also promising a protective government that does not over-rely on regulatory bureaucracy in areas of health, education, and energy. Tax reform took its role, as did Obamacare reversal, but it all fit into a different fabric of policy ideals from traditional Republican economics, meant to appeal to a GOP-skeptic northern working class rightly skeptical of Ryan economics and McCain foreign policy." • Barnes believes that Bannon "understands, intricately, each of these issues and, as important, the intimate way each of these issues connects the new constituencies of the Trump electoral majority. Bannon also understands the adversary -- an alliance of Deep-State, administrative-regulatory-state, professional-class career bureaucrats and their media lapdogs and allies. Bannon also enjoys another unique attribute : actually overcoming them, in the public area of persuasion (the extraordinary rise of Breitbart against a media blackout of the site) and the electoral arena of actual elections (feeding the Tea Party, then fueling Trumpism)." • If, as Barnes argues, "Bannon politically is to Trump what Carville was to Clinton, Atwater was to Poppy Bush, and Kevin Phillips was to Nixon," he also has a skill for "actual policy that gives strategic substance to Trump's gut-driven, emotive decision-making" -- this for Barnes is the key "Trump's instinctive ingenuity and persuasive mastery cannot substitute for Bannon's integration of policies and constituencies in actually governing." • • • DEAR READERS, Jared Kushner's apparent deference to the war-trending elements of the national security establishment and the financiers of Wall Street who love banks, suggests that he suffers from the same wrong-headed understanding of politics and policy that got the GOP into serious hot water own base to begin with. Kushner may seek approval from Goldman Sachs, but Bannon seeks approval of those who hate Goldman Sachs. As Barnes concludes : "Lose Bannon, lose the country. Lose Bannon, lose the presidency. Trump needs to bet on Bannon, or it will be time to no longer bet on Trump." • The Barnes argument is correct in many ways, but it misses the critical components needed to get Trump to a second term -- legislative and mid-term electoral success. Steve Bannon lost the only visible battle he has entered -- the temporary immigration delay executive order. Kuschner was involved, as were many Trump advisors, but it was apparently Bannon's idea. To be fair, his idea was excellent. It was political savvy that was missing. Without Gorsuch safely sworn in as the fifth conservative Supreme Court Justice, Trump's EO was dead on arrival. Attacked by leftist federal judges, it had nowhere to go for protection. Any political staffer on the Hill could have told the White House that. Bannon didn't get that advice because he isn't 'plugged in' to the Hill. Neither is Kuschner. Those who are -- Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, and Kellyanne Conway, notably -- seemed to sit back and watch the show. GOP Speaker Paul Ryan apparently gave no advice. So, Trump was left to turn in the wind. • If there is to be a second Trump term, the work should already have started -- immigration, border control, support for police, Obamacare, budget shrinking with increased military spending, tax reform with lower taxes -- these are the bread-and-butter issues for Trump's base. They may applaud the Syria strike against a butcher who uses sarin and chlorine gas on his own people. They may cheer on Secretary Tillerson as he does battle with Russia and tries to bring Putin onboard. They may find it comforting that Trump is willing to wrestle China to the ground over the North Korea disaster left behind by Obama. But, in their hearts, they want lower taxes, smaller government, a bigger military, protected borders, and some order made in the healthcare mess. They are "American nationalists" -- anti-establishment, intent on reinforcing America's borders and strengthening the police -- and Steve Bannon connects with them. Kuschner, Ivanka, Tillerson do not. And Trump himself has been lax lately on connecting with his base. • I don't hold any particular brief for Steve Bannon. I like the youthful enthusiasm of Ivanka. I wish Jared could show a little of that and smile occasionally. But, we are talking real politics here -- gutter-tough, knives always out, smear-campaign-specialist poliitcs, and maybe Ivanka and Jatred are just not experienced in that toughest of all games. It is led by Progressive Democrats whose continued existence depends on destroying President Donald Trump. Trump won the election because what he was saying was working, so he stuck with it as any candidate would. He is still trying to find the right overall foreign-domestic balance as President, but he also continues to talk about giving Americans what they asked him for. Trump is a new kind of US President -- maybe he's “populist” but I would guess that labels really don't matter to him -- and the people who thought they could box him in using his campaign promises and positions are in for some rough times -- not the least, Steve Bannon. It will be approval ratings, not doctrines, that carry the day for President Trump. • The odd thing is that if we look at the 'gimme list' of the Trump base, a lot of it is being done already. Where is the White House PR? Who is reponsible for telling America that their President is on the job 24/7 FOR THEM??? That is Politics 101. And nobody is doing it for Trump. So, if Bannon is not the right political guru to lead Trump into 2020, let's get on with finding the person who is...NOW. There is no time to lose. We did not win the 2016 Battle just so we could lose the 2020 War.