Bye bye Bannon

Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, August 19th, 2017 - 26 comments
Categories: Donald Trump, International, Politics, us politics - Tags:

Steve Bannon is gone from his position as White House Chief Strategist.  He joins a whole parade of people who have been hired and shortly thereafter fired or who resigned before they were pushed.  People like the following:

  • Michael Flynn, former national security adviser, fired for lying about his close links to the Russians amongst other things.
  • Katie Walsh, former deputy chief of staff, fired because Trumpcare was such a mess.
  • James Comey, ex CIA director, fired because he showed signs he might do his job.
  • Walter Shaub Jr., former government ethics director, who resigned because he was worried that Trump’s conflicts of interest put the US at risk of being seen as a kleptocracy.
  • Reince Priebus, former White House chief of staff , effectively fired by Trump and replaced by homeland security secretary, Gen John Kelly.  The Republican party at that stage clearly concluded that it was dealing with a maniac.
  • Sean Spicer, former Press Secretary,  who resigned because Anthony Scaramucci aka “the Mooch” was appointed Director of communications.
  • Funnily enough Anthony Scaramucci, fired before his position even had formally started for being a real dick head and amongst other things claiming publicly that Bannon was leaking confidential information to reporters and that he was capable of engaging in extremely challenging anatomical activity.

The only two original senior members of the White House team that remain are Trump himself and Vice President Mike Pence and there are all sorts of legal steps required to get rid of them.

And now the history rewrite is occurring but you have to wonder what Bannon went.  Was it because of the utter confusion and absurdity of the President’s response to the Charlotsville crisis?  Bannon has claimed that he tendered his resignation before the riots occurred but you have to wonder.

Because like everything else Trump’s handling of the crisis was both terrifying and inept at the same time.  To continue to achieve this status week after week after week requires a special skill.

The terrifying aspect of it all is that Trump did not come out straight away and say that Nazism is an appalling evil movement and should not be tolerated under any circumstances.  The absolute best that a Nazi can expect in a free society is permission to talk quietly about the subject on the basis that free speech should protect all speech no matter how vile and hateful.

But to allow mass rallies and idiots dressed in military outfits brandishing semi automatic weapons should not be something that a tolerant society should ever do.  And all strength to those who stood up and opposed the Nazis.  That one of them was killed protesting is appalling.  This is the sort of a crisis a President would consider sending the National Guard in.

But how did Trump respond?  Initially by saying that nazis and those opposed to the nazis should share the blame.  Somehow both groups were responsible for what happened.  A more stunning example of false equivalence I am sure you will never seen.

Then a couple of days later he was forced begrudgingly to make a clarifying statement.  From the Guardian:

Donald Trump has bowed to overwhelming pressure and directly condemned the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists, two days after violent clashes left one woman dead.

“Racism is evil,” the US president said at the White House. “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

The explicit remarks came after a storm of criticism – some from prominent figures in his own party – over Trump’s decision not to criticise head-on the white supremacist groups that targeted Charlottesville, Virginia, at the weekend.

He returned to Washington from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Monday and discussed the tragedy with attorney general Jeff Sessions and new FBI director, Christopher Wray.

Reading from a teleprompter, Trump then confirmed that the justice department has opened a civil rights investigation into the car attack that killed one woman and injured 20 others. “To anyone who acted criminally in this weekend’s racist violence, you will be held fully accountable,” he insisted. “Justice will be delivered.

“As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America.”

So far so good.  But Bannon must have got to him because two days later he reverted back.  Again from the Guardian:

Donald Trump has once again defended far-right protesters at the Charlottesville rally, saying they were not all neo-Nazis and white supremacists and laying the blame for the violence equally on what he called the “alt-left”.

The remarks – made during a rowdy press conference in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York – were Trump’s latest switch in stance since Saturday, when the civil rights activist Heather Heyer died after a white nationalist allegedly drove his car into a crowd in the Virginian city.

The US president was fiercely criticised for failing to condemn white supremacists in his initial response to Charlottesville, when he blamed the violence “on many sides”. On Monday, after a chorus of disapproval, he gave an apparently reluctant statement denouncing racism as evil.

But on Tuesday he reverted to drawing a moral equivalency between the far right and the counter-demonstrators.

“I’m not putting anybody on a moral plane,” he said. “You had a group on one side and group on the other and they came at each other with clubs – there is another side, you can call them the left, that came violently attacking the other group. You had people that were very fine people on both sides.

“Not all those people were neo-Nazis, not all those people were white supremacists. Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E Lee. So this week, it is Robert E Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

Trump also said that Steve Bannon is not a racist.  Remember this guy holds the nuclear codes.

The alt right is trying to say that Bannon going will give him greater power to attack Trump’s enemies.  As if.

It looks like Trump’s family, who are venal but at least have somewhat human characterists are now in power.  The world might be a little safer with Bannon’s resignation.

26 comments on “Bye bye Bannon ”

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  1. tracey 1
    19 August 2017 at 2:54 pm

    Or Brannon is going back to how he best served Trump; trumpetting Fake News through his blogsite?

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    19 August 2017 at 3:00 pm

    The terrifying aspect of it all is that Trump did not come out straight away and say that Nazism is an appalling evil movement and should not be tolerated under any circumstances.

    There was/is powerful backing for the Nazism in the US political scene: Trump’s big business CEOs are horrified by his Confederate excuses — but his religious advisers have nothing but praise

    Corporate CEOs aren’t exactly regarded as bastions of morality but it’s notable that more than a few of President Donald Trump’s economic advisers have decided to cut ties with him after his repeated defenses of racists in Charlottesville, Virginia. By contrast, as of this writing, literally none of Trump’s religious right allies have decided to cut ties.

    Incredibly, some of these Christian nationalist advisors have actually praised Trump for words that even his fellow Republicans have been condemning in droves.

    On Thursday, Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University tweeted out that he was “so proud” of Trump.

  4. roy cartland 4
    19 August 2017 at 4:18 pm

    I can’t keep up! Is that lamentable Mike Pence still ‘in’? He was the other “real president”, wasn’t he?

  5. Andre 5
    19 August 2017 at 4:29 pm

    No matter how Bannon plays it from here, I reckon this significantly ups the chances of an early Chump exit.

    I’ve long thought the Chump was well-insulated against impeachment by the fact he’s got a solid base of rabid supporters that won’t turn on him no matter what. Those rabids would viciously turn on any Republicans that participated in removing the Chump, so very few Republicans would risk the eternal wrath of the Trumpkins by trying to remove the Chump. But my sense is that those deplorables are mostly also strongly tied to Bannonism.

    So if Bannon had a hostile exit and goes to war agaianst Trump, then a hefty portion of the Chump’s solid base just got burned.

    On the other hand, if this is some sort of charade to give Bannon a free hand to go after the establishment Repugs still in the WhiteHouse and congress, then it’s still turning up the pain level for the establishment. That pain level may get high enough that they break and say fuck it, we’ll dump the Chump, and accomplish what we can with Pence until 2020. By which time they may have accomplished enough voter suppression measures to have a chance of another term even without the support of the Trumpkins.

  6. Ad 6
    19 August 2017 at 7:23 pm

    Hang in there Trump – still over 3.5 years left of your term and the Democrats will need all of that time.

  7. Sabine 7
    19 August 2017 at 7:34 pm

    seriously wishful thinking here.

    1.The alt right is trying to say that Bannon going will give him greater power to attack Trump’s enemies. As if.

    2. It looks like Trump’s family, who are venal but at least have somewhat human characterists are now in power. The world might be a little safer with Bannon’s resignation.

    1. yes, he now has greater power. He is still getting his money from the Mercer Family, he still has his megaphone Breitbart and he still has a hard core of about 30% support in the US. What he does not have anymore is the constraints of the white house and their need to ‘appeal’ to the masses.

    2. Trumps family has been in power since Daddy became presnit of the larges nuclear arsenal in the world. They too now can simply stop pretending to be held back by the restraints of office and can’t not give a shit, cause frankly they don’t give a shit. they are here to loot the treasury, make money for themselves and the few that ‘supported’ them. De Vos, Price, Mercer, Adelson and the likes.

    What you are going to see is that nothing has changed, in fact the kids gloves have been taken off.

    Why is it that educated people can’t see the obvious. Trump is not going to be impeached, he is not going to resign, and if he were to loose the next election i doubt that there would be a peaceful hand over of power. Heck i don’t even see mid term elections.

    History, no one ever seems to learn anything.
    As for those that say he has nothing achieved?
    Deportation already bad under Obama are up. Afghanistan is going to become a private war. Someones gonna make money.
    Private Prisons are having a good time. Thanks Sessions.
    Health insurance costs are up, the ACA is useless if people can’t afford it. And they can less and less.
    Segregation of schools is underway as public schools are literally run down into closure. HEy Hey charter schools. Profit!

    You need to look at it from a different view point. Its time to take of the sunnys.

    Same here in NZ.
    The brighter future National promised, it realised, just not for you and me.

  8. millsy 8
    19 August 2017 at 11:10 pm

    Bannon = Whaleoil with 100x more funding

  9. Neil 9
    20 August 2017 at 10:29 am

    I will probably get banned for this, but Trump was absolutely correct laying blame on both sides. MSM in America is only reporting one side of the story, what about the ANTIFA flyers that they were handing out that calling for the eradication of white folk, MSM have totally ignored that. I can see faults on both sides & faults with MSM in not reporting both sides of the story.

    • lprent 9.1
      20 August 2017 at 11:20 am

      Offhand, I’d say that is almost certainly to be false fact made up by some idiot propagandist, and then inflated like their dick and weapon size myths by the sad, sad folk of the alt-right bigot factions. After all they were the ones in Charlottsville who spent the days on camera fondling their semi-automatic weapons. You really do have to wonder about perverts like that. Including the more familiar people of the same ilk that we have here.

      The MSM don’t exactly have a clamp on dispersing eye witness accounts. There are adequate means for the people of Charlottesville receiving these mythic pamphlets to credibly share them with their connected people. Instead, the only place you find this type of tale (I had a look) is amongst the pathetic circles of of the alt-right male weapon fondlers.

      Perhaps you should link to where you fondled found this claim of yours? Then others can look at where and from whom it came from.