From A Small Balcony In Rome

“Sloppy” Steve Bannon, who was unceremoniously swept out of the White House after his incendiary quotes about Donald Trump, Jr. appeared in Michael Wolfe’s book “Fire and Fury”, is currently traveling throughout Europe “lending a hand to the populist forces now on the rise.”

You’ll recall Bannon called Donald Jr.’s meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with Russian individuals “treasonous” and said Special Counsel Robert Mueller would “crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV.”

A recent interview published by the British magazine, The Spectator, has quoted Bannon praising Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. "He was clearly loved by women. He was a guy’s guy. He has all that virility. He also had amazing fashion sense, right, that whole thing with the uniforms. I’m fascinated by Mussolini."

Holy hell.

Bannon’s defenders say he is a brilliant man.  I vehemently beg to differ.  When stupid things fall out of Bannon’s mouth like the bullshit in The Spectator interview, the left pounces on it.  They eat it up.

In August of 2016, The Atlantic’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat noted, “Fascism has been back in the news with Donald Trump’s candidacy for the American presidency…Trump is not a Fascist. He does not aim to establish a one-party state. Yet he has created a one-man-led political movement that does not map onto traditional U.S. party structures or behave in traditional ways. This is how Fascism began as well.”

Ghait concludes her diatribe writing, “There’s no need to see a trajectory to dictatorship to recognize that Trump is testing American decency and the strength of U.S. democracy. The history of Mussolini’s rise coincides with the fall of what had been Italy’s version of a Grand Old Party: the liberal factions that had ruled Italy from Unification onward. They never recovered from their acquiescence to Il Duce. Of the many lessons the GOP can take from its experience with Trump so far, this might be the most valuable.”

Later in Nicholas Farrell’s Spectator interview he asks, “Can the West live with Islam?”  Bannon answered, “Yes. Islam not only will survive, it can have a place in the West and there is nothing about banning Muslims. Now the radical jihadist part — the supremacist Islam part — is a different deal, but no, we can live with Islam, we’ve got to live with Islam.”

I am convinced “Sloppy” Steve is a dangerous man.  I note the steady stream of leaks emanating from the White House while he was in the West Wing have slowed to a trickle.  His brash comments and his strategy to dominate White House policy did severe damage to President Trump’s first year in office.

.@TGowdySC on Steve Bannon's credibility: "This is the same witness that said members of @POTUS' family committed acts of treason. So, he's got a credibility issue. If they're hinging the entire case on Steve Bannon's credibility, good luck to the prosecution." pic.twitter.com/lvNHSEOi3J

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 18, 2018

Mussolini used a small balcony overlooking the Piazza Venezia in Rome to deliver his megalomaniac, fascist ideology to starving, impoverished Italians.  The arrogant dictator who fancied himself the second coming of Julius Caesar would be shot by communist partisans somewhere along the Italian countryside and his corpse hung in the same plaza from which he preached his misguided imperial dreams.

Bannon, who I believe is suffering from delusions of grandeur, was ill-advised to crow about Mussolini.  Doing so has only made those who hate this President question his prior association with this bizarre nut job. 

The Extinction Of House Bannon

But now the rains weep o'er his hall,
With no one there to hear.
Yes now the rains weep o'er his hall,
And not a soul to hear.

Good grief.  I left the house to run errands and stock the pantry and fridge in preparation for the “bomb cyclone” expected to punish the East Coast from Georgia to Maine with ice and snow.

I was astonished when I saw the Intertoobs had exploded over statements made to Michael Wolff for his book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

Bannon called a meeting between President Trump’s son Donald Jr. and a group of Russians “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” according to a report Wednesday.

The guy who wears three shirts at the same time, looks like he rarely bathes and has been on a three-week bender is someone I have never liked or trusted.  My suspicion he had to be at the center of the leaks emanating from the White House have been confirmed in a statement issued through White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders:

From press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

Statement from the President of the United States

Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.

Read more here.

Trump apparently has a button to release nuclear statements as well.

— The Truth Monkey (@TheTruthMonkey) January 3, 2018

NOTE:  Bannon has yet to make a comment regarding today’s White House statement.

UPDATE

Lawyers for @realDonaldTrump to Bannon after tell-all book: "Legal action is imminent" pic.twitter.com/sUq2CX2oln

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) January 4, 2018

He’s Going To Go Medieval On Their Ass

The quake you felt Friday afternoon came on the heels of the White House announcement that Chief Strategist Steve Bannon was leaving the Trump Administration.

When I heard they were throwing Bannon to the lions, I thought to myself--the poor lions.

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) August 18, 2017

Pundits were quibbling over whether Bannon resigned or was fired.  The question of tantamount importance is with whom will Bannon go to war now that he has been “unshackled.”

Writing at Daily Wire Ben Shapiro pointed to something he said one year ago:  “Bannon understands that in the game of thrones, you win or die; he doesn’t intend to die.” Now that he’s been beheaded by Trump, look for him to try to become the Night King, leaving destruction in his wake.

At 10:18 AM, Joel B. Pollak, Senior Editor at Breitbart Media, tweeted the hashtag #WAR.

In his first public remarks since his ouster, Bannon told Joshua Green, Senior National Correspondent at Bloomberg and author of “Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency”, he will be “going to war” for Trump, warning that he will continue to press the populist cause against the political and corporate establishment. “If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up:  I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents—on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.” 

“Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Breitbart station.” https://t.co/nkKeUrWLr0

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) August 18, 2017

Gabriel Sherman, Special Correspondent for Vanity Fair and NBC/MSNBC contributor was evidently so excited this villain was gone he tweeted: “Bannon friend says Breitbart ramping up for war against Trump.  “It is now a Democrat White House,” source says. [emphasis mine]

David Bossie, a long-time Republican operative, former deputy campaign manager for the Trump campaign and Chairman of conservative advocacy group Citizens United appeared on Fox News Special Report to allay any fears Bannon would turn on Trump.

UPDATE:  Welcome readers of Adrienne’s Corner.  We greatly appreciate the linky-love Miss A.

Corralling The National Security Team After Removing Steve Bannon

Over the President’s Day holiday weekend in February, President Trump met with candidates to replace disgraced National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fl. 

Four very able men were at the top of the president’s list for the cabinet-level post:  Vice Admiral (Ret.) Robert S. Harward, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster and former UN Ambassador John Bolton.

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, an Army veteran who served under McMaster, suggested him to the White House as well as Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

McMaster was announced as Trump’s top pick when Harwood turned down the position.  McMaster took over a rattled and demoralized National Security Council apparatus that bristled at Flynn’s leadership and the foreign policy interests of chief strategist Steve Bannon the former Breitbart News Chairman.

On Wednesday, Trump’s National Security Adviser reportedly insisted on purging Bannon from the Situation Room and restored Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats to the NSC and added Energy Secretary Rick Perry who controls the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and the Homeland Security Council.

According to a published report by The New York Times Karl Rove, who was a senior adviser to President George W. Bush, said it was a move back to a better process.  “It was wrong for him to be added in the first place and it was right to take him off.”

Addressing Bannon’s public statement that he was “put on the NSC with General Flynn to ensure that it was de-operationalized” Rove added the end result was a victory for General McMaster. “It’s either a sign of McMaster’s strength or the result is it strengthens McMaster.”

But leave it to Chris Cillizza, CNN’s Editor-at-Large, to paint a dire picture of the announcement:

“It's hard not to see the Bannon move in the broader context of Trump's first 75 days in office, which has been, to put it mildly, chaotic. The attempt to overhaul the Affordable Care Act ended before it ever started, an 18-day debacle that showed that Trump's challenges within his own party were far larger than he seemed to believe. He continues to labor under a self-inflicted controversy regarding his unproven allegation that President Obama wiretapped him during the 2016 campaign. The numerous ties between senior campaign aides and Russian intelligence officials—as well as the ongoing Justice Department investigation into these ties—show no signs of being knocked off front pages.”

Apparently Mr. Cillizza insists on keeping his head buried in his ass given the exploding revelations surrounding Susan Rice’s unmasking of the identities of individuals in intelligence reports associated with President Trump and growing calls for her to testify under oath about her unprecedented violation and abuse of power.

It was his cable network that on Monday night instructed its viewers to ignore the Rice story like its viewers ignores CNN.

Take Him To The Pit Of Misery

Breitbart News announced today Steve Bannon had “stepped down” as Executive Chairman, the job he’d held since 2012. The New York Times reported Bannon’s departure wasn’t exactly voluntary; instead, he was rushed out the door by one of the site’s major funders, Rebekah Mercer, who had publicly washed her hands of Bannon last week.

The explosive disintegration of his relationship with President Trump came on the heels of the release of excerpts of Michael Wolff’s new book “Fire and Fury”.  The book went to press earlier than planned after the President’s attorneys sent a cease and desist letter to the publisher.  The result has been a source of anguish for “Sloppy Steve” ever since.

Adding insult to injury, Sirius XM issued a statement saying the pariah would no longer host Breitbart’s radio show on the satellite radio network.  Ouch.

Jonah Goldberg, a Never Trumper with whom I rarely agree, penned a piece at National Review that hit the nail on the head:

“No personality in modern political history has so completely squandered an opportunity to be an influential force in American life, particularly in so short a period of time. Bannon may still think that the route to political success lies in heightening social tensions, polarizing American life, and declaring war on political institutions and politicians for sport, but it won’t matter. He is without troops, funders, or a platform now. And while I can almost feel sympathy for a man so thoroughly defenestrated by former friends and allies, that sympathy is tempered by the fact that he brought it all entirely on himself. I hope he finds peace in his well-deserved exile.”

Sloppy Steve’s Got Himself A #War

Photoshop by Matt's Idea Shop

“Sloppy Steve” Bannon is in serious trouble now that he and President Trump are waging a war of words. He just may not be very competent.

In the video embedded below, PJ Media’s Andrew Klavan noted, "You cannot lose Alabama to the Democrats.  It's almost impossible to do and yet Bannon helped do it."

Let’s be honest with ourselves here.  Roy Moore was embroiled in a sexual misconduct scandal that raged on for weeks.  Before any of us learned of his alleged mistreatment of young girls we already knew he’d been tossed from office twice before for his constitutional ignorance.

Klavan postulates the President bit his tongue for a long time before eventually issuing his brutal statement against Bannon.  “Trump is looking forward and thinking ‘I do not want this guy losing any more of my majority’ in the 2018 midterms.”

Klavan mentions a tweet from Mona Charen, Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center:

Utah senate update: Hatch retiring. Likely Romney run. Bannon recruiting in prisons, psych wards.

— Mona Charen (@monacharenEPPC) January 3, 2018

At Least He Still Has His Looks

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon apologized to President Trump and his son, Donald Trump, Jr. on Sunday, feeding quotes to the website Axios.

Battered by the backlash from Michael Wolff's book and the knowledge that President Trump has directed those who appear on television to “bury” him, Steve Bannon is trying to make amends with the Trump family, providing a statement to Axios that expresses "regret" to President Trump and praises his son, Donald Trump Jr.

"Donald Trump, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man. He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around."

"My support is also unwavering for the president and his agenda—as I have shown daily in my national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama."

"President Trump was the only candidate that could have taken on and defeated the Clinton apparatus. I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of Trump and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breech for this president's efforts to make America great again."

"My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval Officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of the ‘evil empire’ and to making films about Reagan’s war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in selling uranium to them.”

"My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr."

"Everything I have to say about the ridiculous nature of the Russian 'collusion' investigation I said on my 60 Minutes interview.  There was no collusion and the investigation is a witch hunt.”

"I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr. has diverted attention from the president's historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency."

Isn’t There A Zebra Carcass Chuck Todd Should Be Hovering Over?

After the release of the fantasy book by Michael Wolff, NBC’s Chuck Todd reported, "Welcome to a five-alarm dumpster fire for the White House or shall we call it Bannon’s rebellion? The Russia investigation has been blown open in dramatic fashion. Not by the ‘fake news media,’ not by the ‘deep state Justice Department,’ but by Steve Bannon!"

The nation's journalists cover this obvious nonsense because otherwise, they'd have to enter what to them is uncharted territory: the truth.

If there's anything substantial in Wolff's tales of chaos in the early Trump White House, it shows nothing more than this:  Those of us who thought the political neophyte Trump was unprepared to take office in January were correct, and Trump’s response—that he would learn in office and appoint the "best people" to help him—was equally correct.

We are watching our mainstream news media collapse. They leap with reckless abandon on any fake news that might make Trump look bad and then are forced to retract it. They are, at least to this observer, not reporting actual news but their own sick and twisted fantasies.

We were also treated to CNN’s Brian “The Nation’s Hall Monitor” Stelter’s declaration Trump’s latest tweets were “madness” and asserted as fact that the President is mentally unfit to serve. Stelter’s evidence of Trump’s mental health was not based on medical evidence, but solely on the President’s tweets.

How, for the love of God, can anyone take this dolt seriously? I ask this because in 2016 Stelter agonized over concerns that were raised when his Queen exhibited a pattern of documented medical episodes, including a concussion and a “life-threatening blood clot”.  When more questions arose in August 2016 after her prolonged public coughing fits it was Stelter who dodged the issue strongly suggesting the state of her health should be referred to her doctors.

A couple of days ago, Newt Gingrich penned an op-ed for Fox News.  In his piece Gingrich noted:

There could be no greater contrast in leadership on the world stage and in interpreting reality than President Obama’s “lead from behind” model in Iran versus President Trump’s “lead from the front” model.

When the Iranian people demonstrated against the nation’s dictatorship in 2009, President Obama was weak and quiet. He was so interested in getting a nuclear arms deal with the dictatorship that he did not want to irritate Iran’s leaders.

President Trump represents a remarkably different view of reality. He believes weakness begets weakness. He believes bad regimes are bad. He believes leaders look for opportunities and move aggressively and courageously to advance their vision of the world. He believes America is big enough and strong enough to provide real leadership.

In his address to the United Nations in September, President Trump said: “The entire world understands that the good people of Iran want change, and, other than the vast military power of the United States, that Iran's people are what their leaders fear the most. This is what causes the regime to restrict Internet access, tear down satellite dishes, shoot unarmed student protestors, and imprison political reformers.”

Note that President Trump, who the elite left insists is ignorant and dangerous on national security and foreign policy, was describing the potential for the current popular demonstrations three months before they started.

Now that as some courageous Iranians have risked prison and even death by standing up to the dictatorship, President Trump is once again proving that he represents the opposite of President Obama’s passivity and weakness.

[SKIP]

David Ignatius, one of the most respected columnists on foreign affairs and national security, wrote a recent column in The Washington Post headlined: “Trump is right to tell Iran the world is watching.”

When President Trump starts getting “Trump is right” headlines in The Washington Post, you know something big is happening.

If Comey Had Thrown The Election To Hillary We’d Be In The Middle of Her Impeachment Trial Right Now

All last week President Trump worked to bolster his White House staff’s morale in the wake of raging denigration over his firing of FBI Director James Comey.

Democrats want Trump impeached.  Can we be honest here?  Trump is an equal opportunity wrecking ball.  Don Surber noted in his book Trump The Establishment, “He destroyed the political parties.  Both were stuck in the past.  Democrats in the 1960s and Republicans in the 1990s.”  If Trump had come out in favor of Obamacare, the Democrats would move to impeach him for colluding with Blue Cross Blue Shield.

I was deeply angered back in July of 2016 when Comey announced, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information (in Hillary’s use of a personal email system), our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.”

Comey deserved to be fired. The manner in which he was fired was, in a word, dirty.

The New York Times, Associated Press, CNN and The Wall Street Journal are predicting a “shake-up” in the White House communications team is looming.  The “shake-up” could take out everyone from Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon to White House Counsel Don McGahn and “Spicey”.

I said all that to say this:  the sleazy snipers in the press do not take kindly to the bluntness with which the Trump Administration scolds them for their blatant attacks and bias in their reporting.

Admittedly, “Spicey” hiding in the White House bushes after the Comey firing made him the target of Internet memes including a skit on SNL.

Spicey among the bushes. #SNLLiveCoastToCoast pic.twitter.com/gn5MxwuIW9

— Saturday Night Live (@nbcsnl) May 14, 2017

The Interwebs are rife with speculation Fox News' Kimberly Guilfoyle is once again on a list of possible replacements as WH Press Secretary.

If Trump does, in fact, boot Spicer what will become of the most hilarious parody Twitter account “Sean Spicier”?  The account has fooled Yahoo Style, Univision News, Bill Kristol, Gateway Pundit and Biz Pac Review.

I guess Sean Spicier will become Kimberly Guilfoiled.  The upside:  it’ll put Melissa McCarthy out of a job. 

“Moscow Mike” And The Bloodthirsty Democrats

When news broke that Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn had resigned as National Security Adviser I felt disquieted and uneasy.  That’s because the media latched on to the story portraying the young Trump Administration as being thrown into chaos. They wanted me to feel that way.

Democrats were emboldened by Flynn’s departure. “The reality is General Flynn was unfit to be the National Security Advisor, and should have been dismissed three weeks ago,” Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the top-ranking Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, wrote in a joint statement.

“Now, we in Congress need to know who authorized his actions, permitted them, and continued to let him have access to our most sensitive national security information despite knowing these risks,” they added. “We need to know who else within the White House is a current and ongoing risk to our national security.”

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), the top Foreign Affairs Committee Democrat, called for a “thorough, bipartisan investigation to get the complete picture of Russia’s interference” in the US presidential election following Flynn’s resignation.

The gloriously crushed Democrats haplessly cling to the notion President Trump’s Electoral College thumping of Granny Clinton was the direct result of Russian spies and the hacking of the DNC.

 

The Trump Administration poses a mortal threat to their entrenchment in government, and so has enlisted an army of Democrats, some Republicans, the "never Trump" die-hards, leftist thugs and anyone else they can browbeat into participating in what can reasonably be defined as an insurrection. They mean business.  They are the embedded political enemy—the Dark Lord of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings.

I defer now to Michael Walsh’s piece in National Review:

Make no mistake about what's happening here: this is a rolling coup attempt, organized by elements of the intelligence community, particularly CIA and NSA, abetted by Obama-era holdovers in the understaffed Justice Department (Sally Yates, take a bow) and the lickspittles of the leftist media, all of whom have signed on with the "Resistance" in order to overturn the results of the November election. 

Mike Flynn, a good man who saw the enemy clearly, and had the courage to name it, saw Russia not as an enemy but a geopolitical adversary with whom we could make common cause against Islam—and who also vowed to shake up a complacent and malfeasant Intelligence Community—was its first scalp, and an object lesson to new CIA Director Mike Pompeo should he have any reformist notions. As for the media, having previously failed to take down Trump aides Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway, Flynn was the next best thing; their joy today is unbounded. 

[SKIP] 

So what must Trump do now? First, complete his cabinet. Second, fire every fireable federal employee in the leak-prone agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency. Third, start taking operational security seriously. Fourth, assume everything you say will leak to the media and be spun as malevolently as possible. Fifth, trust nobody.

Finally, it is being widely reported that Vice Admiral Robert Harward was offered the job of National Security Adviser.  If Harward accepts, he is likely to bring in his own team, from deputy on down, with a focus on national security types with some experience under their belts.

According to Foreign Policy, Harward thinks of himself as a national security professional—and indeed once served on the National Security Council staff, during the Bush Administration. Before that, early in the Afghan war, he headed the Special Operations task force in Kandahar.

Harward also would work well with Defense Secretary James Mattis. When Mattis was chief of Central Command, Harward was his deputy. Mattis trusted him enough to put him in charge of planning for war with Iran. Mattis has urged Harward to take the NSA job.

Remember- a precedent has been set:
outgoing White House used classified leaks to press to bring down an incoming National Security Advisor

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) February 14, 2017

our own intel apparatus going rogue against the President

Is less troubling to the media

than a foreigner posting podestas gmail account

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) February 15, 2017

UPDATE February 16, 2017 @ 6:15 PM: 

.@johnrobertsFox: "According to the @FT, Vice Admiral Robert Harward has declined to be the next National Security Advisor." #SpecialReport pic.twitter.com/x9sc88nhAS

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 16, 2017