Of course I think that Donald Trump should fire Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions. I just don’t focus on any of those #FireThatGuy campaigns because A) I don’t think much will come of it and B) it’s like shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted. The jig is up: the only people enthusiastically working for Donald Trump are the ones who share his views about everything. Firing Steve Bannon or Stephen Miller wouldn’t solve the fundamental problem that a neo-Nazi (or, at the very least, a neo-Nazi sympathizer) is the president of the United States. This has been my fundamental argument about Trump’s bitchfest about Jeff Sessions too: let him fire Jeff Sessions, let him try to get another attorney general confirmed by the Senate, let him nominate someone even more deplorable. It will all be the same, because Trump is the cancer on the republic, and until he’s gone, he will metastasize, spreading his evil on everyone around him, and on the country as a whole.
Now, all that being said, I find it interesting that there’s a renewed interest in firing Steve Bannon specifically this week. Many have claimed that Bannon is the one whispering white supremacist sweet nothings into Donald Trump’s ear. That may be the case, but we should also acknowledge: Trump had been a racist jackass long before he ever met Steve Bannon. Axios has a new story about what Bannon’s reaction has been to this week’s unfolding neo-Nazi catastrophe. Apparently, Bannon is totally jazzed. Shocking, I know.
On Tuesday night, Steve Bannon was excitedly telling friends and associates that the “globalists” were in mass freakout mode. Wednesdayy, Bannon reveled in the disbanding of the president’s business council, seeing this as yet more evidence that the Trump administration is at odds with the “Davos crowd,” as Bannon often calls these corporate elites, in a voice dripping with contempt. Bannon saw Trump’s now-infamous Tuesday afternoon press conference not as the lowest point in his presidency, but as a “defining moment,” where Trump decided to fully abandon the “globalists” and side with “his people.” Per a source with knowledge: “Steve was proud of how [Trump] stood up to the braying mob of reporters” in the Tuesday press conference.
Bannon has not meaningfully advised the president about his response to Charlottesville. He’s still on the outs with Trump, who has been calling him a leaker for weeks, though the president described Bannon as a good person on Tuesday. They spoke by phone on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, according to a source with knowledge of the calls, but the response to Charlottesville has been all Trump, and Trump at his purest. On the phone to Bannon, Trump asked his chief strategist “where does it end?” according to a source with knowledge of their conversations.
Trump wasn’t referring to the white supremacists, but to the counter-protesters whom the president believes are on a slippery slope towards “changing history” by tearing down monuments of Confederate heroes and potentially, he has said, the Founding Fathers like George Washington, who owned slaves. Unlike some of Trump’s other top aides — who have varied on a spectrum between frustration and disgust since the president’s Charlottesville remarks — Bannon has unapologetically supported Trump’s instinct to apportion blame to “both sides.”
Sources who’ve spoken with Bannon since Charlottesville say he views this moment as analogous to the campaign moment when Hillary Clinton condemned half of Trump’s supporters to a “basket of deplorables.” Bannon believes that if Trump condemned all the people who protested the pulling down of the Robert E. Lee statue then he’d fall into a trap set by leftists, the establishments of both parties, and the mainstream media.
Bottom line: Both Trump and Bannon are of one mind, and, within the White House at least, theirs is a minority view. They saw the backlash to Charlottesville as an example of political correctness run amok and instinctively searched for “their” people in that group of protesters. Bannon has told associates that Trump, on Tuesday afternoon, took it to the next level for the country by asking where does it end? He especially loved Trump’s line: “I wonder, is it George Washington next week?”
What else is there to say? Granted, I’m not sure if Donald Trump really cares about the “Deep State” conspiracies or even acknowledges the “Davos crowd.” Those are more of Bannon’s pet projects – all Trump knows is that people don’t like him, and that he’s just being himself, and that leads him to feelings of pettiness and contrarianism. He’s very much like the “very fine” neo-Nazis he defended on Tuesday: angry, sad, confused, bitter, hateful, ignorant and convinced that he is the most misunderstood and most aggrieved person in the world. All Bannon has to do is stroke those feelings which already exist within Trump.
Also: Bannon did an “interview” – he claims not to know he was on the record – with the American Prospect, a left-leaning magazine. Go here for the piece. It’s quite… something.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Well he’s a Nazi so…not shocking
I don’t have verbiage strong enough for the way I feel about Steve Bannon.
Neither do I.
I know. I read a piece about him during the campaign and it scared the bejeezus out of me, sending real chills down my spine. He is truly twisted.
My BF just finished the book about him, “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency“.
His conclusion was that Bannon is a very interesting but extremely terrifying guy.
On a similar note, I watched the Roger Stone documentary on Netflix last night and I had terrible, terrible dreams. I’m still really disturbed by that movie and the people featured in it. Sadly, most of the people featured are now part of the current administration.
It’s like this administration is influenced and controlled by the worst of the political (and non-political) sphere: Neocons like the current incarnation of the GOP, crazy nut-job ideologues/outsiders like Bannon and Stone, straight-up criminals like Manafort and Lewandowsky and greedy corporate shills like Tillerson and Cohn.
It’s like the trifecta of awfulness, like a gang of supervillains coming together to destroy the country.
I’m sure this all sounds extremely hyperbolic but this is where I’m at today, this is how I’m feeling.
@kitten sometimes the truth is hyperbolic.
No hyperbole detected at all. I feel the same way. Add insomnia to the mix and I’m feeling pretty shaky. Hoping to get out for some hikes in the woods and beach this weekend to try and regroup.
Kitten, I wish you were being hyperbolic, but you are just describing our current reality. It’s tragic.
He’s a monster. May the heart attack that’s waiting to destroy that piece of coal that is his heart hit sooner than later. And let it be painful.
Of course he agrees.
And he wants to keep his job. So the best way to do that is praise the Dear Orange Leader.
I can’t do this anymore. This is our country? I feel so many awful things on a daily basis: shame, fear, crippling anxiety, unstoppable rage… How can we do four years of this?
I am so ashamed of my country and many of the people within it. Can this be over now?????????
I feel for you and the American people who didn’t elect this bunch of racist asshats.
The ones feeling ashamed aren’t the ones who should be ashamed….
I’m no American citizen but commenters here on Celebitchy give me hope for your country. Stay strong!
My paternal grandfather was killed in Belgium fighting nazis. My grandmother was left a 20-something widow with two small children. They struggled and sacrificed for this country in very real ways.
My grandmother is now in her late 90’s and it breaks my heart that she has to see this. Trump has done a lot of terrible things, but upsetting my grammie is just so dispicable.
@Megan I hate it for my older relatives too. America’s history welcoming Jews fleeing from the Holocaust isn’t stellar and that is putting it mildly but some made it. They deserve peace and not this anxiety.
Your Grammie deserves peace too.
I had someone tell me on FB yesterday that black people shouldn’t be offended by confederate statues because they weren’t personally enslaved.
I then asked her if she feels the same way about Jewish people who might not want to see a swastika or a statue depicting Hitler. She was appalled that I would compare slavery to the Holocaust. Sigh.
I linked this article in response: http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/charlottesville-nazis-germany-communists-monuments-trump-20170817.html
And her response was: “Seriously? Another country? No I don’t need to read that. We are not Germany. We are a country that everyone wants to live in, that everyone wants to be.”
I just..I just cannot.
Once again, I barely slept at all last night and woke up wanting to move to Canada or anywhere but here, really. I’m not just fantasizing. I have dual citizenship with France–I have options.
I don’t recognize the US anymore and my love for this place is rapidly disappearing. I just don’t want to be a part of this anymore and I don’t want to live side-by-side with these ignorant assholes.
My cousin posted a video equating BLM and the Nazis. I took the bait and had to say that I strongly disagree and the reasons why. I know I won’t change his mind, and this will lead to stupid back and forths all day…but I couldn’t let that stand. Ugh, people disappoint me.
I’ve taken to telling people like that to get back to me when BLM murders 7 million people and starts a war that kills an additional 60 million. Then we can consider them the same.
@lightpurple I will be borrowing that response.
Yeah I’ve been using that one too, LP.
Also did everybody see this?
http://www.snopes.com/antifa-member-photographed-beating-police-officer/
Yes! There are very few entities that should ever be compared to the Nazis. Unless they are committing genocide where many millions of people die, there is no comparison.
Oooof. It’s turned into a pile on. My friends have started arguing with him as well. He posted an article about how claims of police brutality aren’t really a thing from the National Review. :: insert depressed, down looking emoji here ::
@kitten – don’t you just love Snopes! I have shot down many people with articles from Snopes that disprove what those people are trying to say.
Yeah, I don’t get all the stories about Bannon’s supposed imminent firing. To me it looks like he’s one of the only ones that has played the game correctly-he’s getting his Nazi agenda pushed through and when he started getting more attention than 45, he slid more to the background. Which only helps him slime his way around more, really. I can’t see him getting dumped when he’s helping to rally the only base his boss can depend on these days.
I think Trump spreads rumors someone is going to be fired as a way to punish them for what he perceives as misdeeds. Bannon isn’t going anywhere, he is Trump’s Rasputin.
@megan
Perfect analogy and I’m terrified to say I think you are right.
Last night I got home late and turned on CNN to see what outrage I missed. They were showing the students at UVA holding a candlelight vigil and singing spirtuals. I immediately broke down in tears. This just hurts.
I cried, too. They apparently kept all the planning off social media to keep the neo-Nazis away. I’m glad they succeeded in keeping the hatred at bay, at least temporarily.
The only way Orange Voldemort fires Peter Pettigrew is if he murders Princess Nagini in front of him.
We can’t forget to give Gorka a swift kick out of Washington too. These people are so ignorant and disgusting
And vile Stephen Miller needs to be shown the door
The first thing I do each morning is check CNN to see if he’s been fired. This pustule must be removed from ever representing or working for the USA. Send him back to the gamer world where he came from, thanks!!!
He’s a hideous dangerous troll who needs to be put back under his bridge.
It’s pathetic that repub talking heads blame this clown for trump’s behavior..he’s just the idiot that tells him he’s always right. Everyone who voted for him knew his racist past behavior–from forbidding his casinos to hire African American dealers, refusing apartments to minorities, the birther tale–and now they’re feigning horror that he’s exactly what everyone knew all along. This sudden phoney concern is sickening.
I try to ignore him as much as possible, but this am I saw this big size picture of him in an article. It kinda stroke me to see how sick he looks – sick as in illness, not gross – he is gross, among other things, don’t get me wrong !!!! He might have some liver disease, he is bloated and his skin looks bad from the inside. Or his kidneys, I don’t know.
He literally looks like he is rotting from the inside out.
I saw a photo of Bannon yesterday and he had blood dripping from the side of his mouth or maybe it was a huge sore. But then, drump and his creepy followers in the WH all looked embalmed at this point.
The pic was photoshopped from “The Onion” but I have no doubt he is rotting inside, from all that hatred
@Tiffany27 “rotting from the inside out”are the exact words I used when I showed my sis his picture yesterday. It’s like his human husk is disintegrating and he soon has to murder someone and find a new host
Seriously. He looks like he has grayscale.
Strange how those white supremacists who are so proud of their DNA are often particularly repulsive.
I love Aussie journalist Jonathan Swan from Axios. He reports with a lot of passion and calls out the absurdity of drump.
Bannon thought drump’s comment “I wonder if it will be George Washington next” was a great touche towards to reporters? Bannon et al really are just little scum bags with zero intellectual depth.
I had never read Axios until I read this article about Bannon last night, and I was really impressed! They have really cool way of summarizing what you need to know without writing it all up into a 1000 word piece. Very efficient, but not dumbed-down.
I was listening to the Codeswitch podcast last night and they had a great overview of the Charlottesville events. They delved into the George Washington stuff and said it was something that’s often argued in those circles…the good old slippery slope argument.
Their take was that ALL Lee is known for is for being a general in the confederate army, and that’s why his statues should be removed. They also said that these statues all went up in the 1920’s (I didn’t know that).
@Emma33
I’ve been trying to do research when these Dixie statues were erected and you’re right that many if not most were put up in the 1950s in response to the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement.
If I remember correctly from the podcast, they said that most went up in the 1920’s, around the time that the KKK started to really rise up.
Yes, during Jim Crow. You are correct.
The only reason Grand Wizard Donnie doesn’t wear the hood is that orange stains are extremely hard to get out of white clothing.
👏👏👏👏👏
No one is interested in removing statues of the founding fathers. Statues dedicated to Jefferson, Washington, etc. are erected to honor those who helped establish the country. There’s no equivalency between their statues and those of Confederate traitors who committed treason against the country and were only erected years after the Civil War as displays of white supremacy. The Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama stated he didn’t see a reason for the confederate statue in his city cause Birmingham didn’t exist until after the Civil War. He had the statue covered and is now being sued by the state. The only proper place for any confederate statues is in truly historical sites such as Gettysburg….where both sides of history are presented and there is a direct correlation to the events that happened there.
31 states have statues honoring confederate generals. There were 11 states in the confederacy. The only reason to erect a momument to the losing side in a war you didn’t fight is because the momument symbolizes something else. It is ridiculous to suggest conferate momument are anything other than symbols of white supremacy. It’s time for them to go.
Civil War battles were not contained and fought only in the states of the Confederacy. There are historical sites that honor both confederate and union soldiers. IMO those sites are the only sites where both sides of the story can be told. I have no problem with any historical site wherever it is located displaying both statues as long as an actual historical event occurred there.
In Los Angeles, there was a monument at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It wasn’t because a battle was fought there, rather, soldiers who were in the civil war went to California to live after the war, and when they died, they were buried at that cemetery.
Regardless, I don’t think they deserve a monument.
That’s not 100% true. I am from northern Virginia and attended Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology–one of the best high schools in the country. In the wake of the Fairfax County school board voting to change the name of JEB Stuart HS (new name undetermined) there have been discussions among our alumni about if such a prestigious school should be named after Jefferson.
I am of the “primary legacy” mind–Jefferson’s primary legacy is Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, etc., and he deserves to be honored as such. There is no question in my mind that white supremacy is bad, JEB Stuart HS should be renamed, and the statues should at least be relocated to museums if not flat out torn down. But there are others who argue that Jefferson lived in a forced rape relationship with Sally Hemmings, who as an enslaved woman had no agency and was a teen when their relationship started, and he should be remembered as a racist, slave-owning, sex offender. There are also groups at UVa that have asked the president of the university to not quote Jefferson in university communications because of their feelings about him.
Something that I have noticed is that the more extreme someone is, the more attention they pay to the more extreme on the other side and think that everyone has that viewpoint. Someone who thinks Jefferson was a sex offender is more likely to think that all Conservatives–even those who are taking a stand against what happened this weekend and things related to it–are secret neo-Nazis who are just a tiki torch away from Charlottesville. Someone who yielded a tiki torch in Charlottesville isn’t interested in a more moderate argument about relocating a statue or renaming a school. Which is why calls for unity don’t work. We can’t come together if we don’t want to be united. It is up to the rest of us to condemn white supremacy and forge forward. The Jefferson haters are the least of my concerns–but they do exist.
@Megan @Casi…I’m referring to actual physical memorials/statues built on historical sites where actual events occurred. Schools, buildings, streets, etc. named in honor of Confederates should be renamed. But sites such as Appomatax, Gettysburg, Bull Run, etc, should accurately reflect the history that occurred there and include both sides of the story.
It’s a fair criticism to point out those same founding fathers were also slave owners, though not comparable to monuments built for individuals who are known purely for their Civil War exploits in the South – especially in areas that didn’t even exist when the war occurred. This being said, I suspect that if we were more honest about who and what kind of hypocrites our founding fathers were, we’d stop thinking of the Constitution as an object of unalterable reverence and consider it more productively as a set of guiding principles that evolve with the times. By sanitizing them, we effectively turn them into living gods whose legacies uphold white male hierarchy instead humanizing them as brilliant but deeply flawed figures whose choices created problems we’re still grappling with today.
So, this is his way of letting us know that he is going nowhere and General Kelly is useless. Got it.
Bannon is not getting fired. He knows all of Trumps dirty secrets. Trump is scared of him. Plus Bannon is actually the President.
He doesn’t care about this country. He only cares about proving he is more than a fringe dweller and is some sort of Nazi puppet master who will change the course of history.
Bannon still runs Breitbart, even if he lies and says he doesn’t. He knew he was on the record in that interview. I think he is sending messages out to: 1) his fat cat detractors like Rupert Murdoch who want Trump to fire him, 2) the GOP Congress and Senate who are neutered by their lack of action so forced to participate in the destruction, and 3) the Judiciary, Intelligence services, Mueller’s team and those ordinary Americans who are working to lawfully remove this regime. Bannon’s message is essentially a nose thumbing at us all. He’s not going anywhere. Even if he is “fired,” it’ll just be an act and he’ll still be at the helm. Trump is hapless without him. He needs Bannon to complete the coup they are carrying out. Absolute destruction of our republic is their goal. He’s gloating, and just thrilled that Heather Heyer was killed and we are all upset. He thinks our grief will turn into an angry race war while he then takes power and enslaves us all for real. Ain’t gonna happen, freak boy! We can grieve and fight you at the same time!
Bannon sounded unhinged in that interview. Notice how he tries to use reverse psychology? In an attempt to make people stop talking about racism, he argues that talking about racism is helping him because it distracts the Democrats. How? What kind of logic is that? He just doesn’t want to admit that what happened in Charlottesville and the meltdown hurt him greatly. On Saturday, the WS made an attempt to divide us and it backfired big time. Instead of causing a war, it resulted in unity, CEOs resigning from the WH council, public statements from GOP admonishing WS(I also think that its time for the GOP to put their words into action, it’s not enough to just say that WS are bad, something needs to be done) and the increase in the removal of the statues. He wasn’t expecting that. That is why he is trying to save face with this nonsense interview, which should have never happened.
Bannon is definitely running this county and whispering in The King of Lies and Fake News ear. Just look at the policies that are being created by this administration. This looks like damage control. There was this huge call to fire Bannon and now Bannon is trying to diminish the role he is playing because he thinks it will save his job. I don’t think that The King of Lies and Fake News will fire Bannon because he needs the money that Bannon and his BB friends bring to the WH and his needs Bannon’s fanbase.
Why does the press pretend that The King of Lies and Fake News is writing these speeches? That meltdown that he had was the work of Stephen Miller. It feels like the press is being played by Bannon and Miller. Shame on Axios. This was just an attempt to normalize Bannon and save his job. It worked.
But that’s just it, these things do matter. We cannot erase history, but we can make history by being real about how prevalent and a slap in the face it is to have slave owners as statues, pictures on money etc. Equal representation with taxation my hiney.
Did you read the latest interview? It’s quite interesting. What Bannon seems to care the most about is an economic race with China. He seems to want us to keep talking about identity politics so the republicans can maneuver without us being aware of it. So let’s keep our eyes open about this.
“But Bannon was critical and dismissive of the white supremacist groups whose rally left one woman dead and 19 people injured, telling The American Prospect, “ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.””
““The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.””
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/17/steve-bannon-interview-american-prospect-241729
A bit OT, but Trump just tweeted about the terrorists who drove a van into a crowd in Barcelona. What is just off putting is that he called the act in Barcelona terrorism, but can’t call the act in Charlottesville terrorism. SMH
Charlottesville was completely different from Barcelona because….erm….well…it just was. Barcelona was extremists wanting to damage and kill those they hate and Charlottsville was….well anyway….I am struck by the fact that Bannon called white supremacists “losers”: hardly a ringing condemnation of neo fascists, more the sort of mild insult a teenage boy would say to a friend who jostled them after hockey practice. What a gang of ghastliness trump has assembled around him. Sympathy to the families of everyone murdered or hurt in Bacelona.
“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
This particular quote really stood out to me, especially given the context of Breitbart’s obvious White Nationalist agenda. While I still believe Steve Bannon genuinely subscribes to this very twisted and hateful way of thinking, I also can’t wholly dismiss the notion that, a lot like Trump, he could simply be an empty vessel, devoid of any true emotion or caring for others. Someone who sees the incitement of race wars as a legitimate and effective means to meet his ultimate end goal — the complete and utter destruction of government and civilized society. Sadly, we’re f****ed either way.