Steve Bannon这是要干吗?

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Washington (CNN) Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon claimed "the Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election" in an interview that aired on CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night.

Naming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan specifically, Bannon told CBS's Charlie Rose: "They do not want Donald Trump's populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It's very obvious."

Bannon recalled a meeting with McConnell in Trump Tower, when the Kentucky Republican asked Trump to clamp down on his "drain-the-swamp" rhetoric.

"Oh, Mitch McConnell when we first met him, I mean, he said -- I think in one of the first meetings in Trump Tower with the President -- as we're wrapping up, he basically says, 'I don't want to hear any more of this 'drain-the-swamp' talk,'" Bannon recalled. "He says, 'I can't -- I can't hire any smart people,' because everybody's all over him for reporting requirements and -- and the pay, et cetera, and the scrutiny. You know, 'You gotta back off that.'"

Asked about attacking the very people Trump needs to enact his agenda, Bannon said GOP leaders won't provide such help "unless they're put on notice."

"They're going to be held accountable if they do not support the President of the United States," he said. "Right now there's no accountability. ... They do not support the President's program. It's an open secret on Capitol Hill. Everybody in this city knows it."

Neither McConnell nor Ryan's offices immediately responded to CNN requests for comment about Bannon's remarks.

Bannon criticized the House and Senate leadership for what he said was their overpromising and underdelivering on health care, saying they told the White House that they would repeal and replace Obamacare in the first few months of the administration and the new Congress before moving on to a tax overhaul by summer and infrastructure legislation by year's end -- none of which, as of yet, has happened.

While Bannon said he does not entirely blame the Republican leaders for their inability to move such major legislation, he said they were unaware of the divisions within their own party.

"There is wide discrepancy in the Republican Party, as we know today, now that we're in it," Bannon said. "But I will tell you, leadership didn't know it at the time. They didn't know it 'til the very end."

Bannon was ousted in mid-August amid a reshuffling of power within the White House, just a few weeks after retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff with a goal of instilling order in a chaotic operation beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a storm of controversies.

Bannon has since returned to his role as executive chairman at the conservative online publication Breitbart News, a job he held before joining Trump's campaign. Sunday's interview is the first time has spoken out publicly since his firing.

His exit meant one of the White House's most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump's "nationalist" ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.

 

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WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) – Republican infighting over the fate of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children could be so vitriolic that the party loses control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, said in an interview airing on Sunday.

Bannon, whose far-right views on immigration, climate and trade helped shape Trump’s presidential campaign and his first months in office, was fired by the Republican president last month in a push to end factional fights within the White House.

In an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes,” Bannon predicted Republicans could lose control in the House in the 2018 congressional elections because of a looming battle over what to do about 800,000 immigrants known as “Dreamers.”

Trump said last week he would scrap a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that allowed the young immigrants to live and work in America.

Bannon supported ending the program, which had been put in place by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

Trump gave the Republican-controlled Congress six months to come up with an alternative, saying he would “revisit this issue” if lawmakers could not agree.

“I’m worried about losing the House now because of this,” Bannon told CBS.

“If this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party,” he said. “And to me, doing that in the springboard of primary season for 2018 is extremely unwise.”

Republicans are divided over the Dreamers. Some believe they are illegal immigrants who are taking American jobs, while others say they contribute to the country and deserve compassion.

Bannon, who said he left the White House on his own terms, lashed out against “establishment” Republicans who have at times grappled with Trump, a real estate celebrity who had never before held elected office.

“The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,” Bannon said, saying it was an “open secret on Capitol Hill” that many Republicans did not support Trump’s agenda, and singling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for criticism.

“They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented,” Bannon said.

He called Republican national security officials who had served in the George W. Bush administration “idiots,” including former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt,” Bannon said, blaming them for U.S. trade problems with China and involvement in Iraq.

“They’re idiots, and they’ve gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump,” Bannon said.

 

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Bannon: Russia investigation 'a waste of time'
By Daniella Diaz, CNN
Updated 7:01 PM ET, Sun September 10, 2017

Washington (CNN)Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said in an interview aired Sunday that the investigation into whether then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia to influence last year's election is "a waste of time."

"There's nothing to the Russia investigation. It's a waste of time. It's a total and complete farce," Bannon said in an interview on "60 Minutes." "Russian collusion is a farce."

Pressed by CBS's Charlie Rose on whether he believed Russia tried to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and sway the election in Trump's favor, Bannon said that he has seen the intelligence reports about Russia.

"And are you saying to me those intelligence reports do not suggest that the Russians tried to influence the election?" Rose asked."

"I would never devolve classified information on this show," Bannon answered. "But let me tell you, I think it's far from conclusive that the Russians had any impact on this election."

"Well, that's not the question," Rose responded. "Did they try to influence the American election? That's what the investigation is about.

"We'll have to wait 'til the investigation is finished," Bannon said.

Asked why the President seems to find it hard to criticize the Russians, Bannon disagreed with the characterization.

"He criticizes the Russians all the time," Bannon responded. "He knows the Russians are not good guys. We should be focused on how we bring the Cold War to an end."

Bannon also slammed national security officials in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations who denounced Trump as President.

"This is once again where the narrative is dead wrong," Bannon said, adding that it was the "geniuses" of the Bush administration that helped cause the trade imbalance with China and the US involvement in Iraq.

"That's the geniuses of the Bush administration," Bannon said. "I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt."
"They're idiots, and they've gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump," he added.

Pressed for names, Bannon listed several members of Bush's foreign policy and national security team, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and foreign policy adviser Brent Scowcroft.

"By the way, the Obama crowd, almost the same," he added. "Clinton crowd, almost the same. It's three administrations."
Bannon said his one criticism of Trump, whom he still supports, is that he said Trump has believed that changing "personalities" could help him effect his agenda.

"I think if there's one criticism or one observation is that the President in coming here, right, has still thought -- at least in the beginning of his administration -- that it's about personalities and 'If I can change this personality' or 'If I can get this guy on my side, I can do that. And it's not what the institutional logic is."

"I think some of that was with the FBI and others in the State Department and how his foreign policy is playing out," Bannon said. "But I believe you're going to see over time, he's going to have a greater appreciation that this is a city of institutions, and you must engage them as institutions, not just as personalities."

Bannon was ousted in mid-August amid a reshuffling of power within the White House. He has since returned to his role as executive chairman at Breitbart News, a position he held before joining Trump's campaign. Sunday's interview is the first time he has spoken out publicly since his firing.

 

[ottawa_tj]

这就是Bannon之前说的: 'I've got my hands back on my weapons'? 保卫trump。

 

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我怎么看着他有点儿像个不得志的怨妇，谁都骂，骂完共和党人骂前面三任总统。

 

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我怎么看着他有点儿像个不得志的怨妇，谁都骂，骂完共和党人骂前面三任总统。

那个 Peter Navarro 到哪去了，好像还没出场捏！

 

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那个 Peter Navarro 到哪去了，好像还没出场捏！

在后台出主意搞中国贸易问题?

 

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在后台出主意搞中国贸易问题?

总统身边除了“半个儿”，没其它人了

 

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总统身边除了“半个儿”，没其它人了

非得把特朗普逼疯不可。现在总统跟民主党议员玩儿起来了。

 

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Most coverage of this has focused on the newsworthiness of Bannon questioning President Trump’s less-than-impeccable judgment. But the real news here is that Bannon’s perspective suggests that people very close to Trump believe that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III could destroy this entire presidency.

Here’s the key exchange with Charlie Rose:

BANNON: I don’t think there’s any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired we would not have a special counsel, yes.

ROSE: So we would not have the Mueller investigation.

BANNON: We would not have the Mueller investigation, we would not have the Mueller investigation in the breadth that clearly Mr. Mueller is going. … Because I think directionally it’s a very different investigation.

Keep that idea of “the breadth that clearly Mr. Mueller is going” in the back of your head. Now here’s more:

ROSE: Someone said to me that you described the firing of James Comey — you’re a student of history — as the biggest mistake in political history.

BANNON: That probably would be too bombastic even for me, but maybe modern political history.

ROSE: The firing of James Comey was the biggest mistake in modern political history.

BANNON: I think, if you’re saying that that’s associated with me, then I’ll leave it at that.

In modern political history, if we’re just sticking to presidential scandals (and not policy decisions such as George W. Bush deciding to invade Iraq), then we have some pretty big mistakes. There’s Bill Clinton’s decision to have an affair with Monica Lewinsky. There’s Ronald Reagan’s decision to sell arms to terrorists so the profits could be used to fund an illegal war in Central America. Then there are any number of decisions Richard Nixon made — authorizing a coverup of the Watergate break-in, putting a recording system in the Oval Office — that led him to resign.

If firing Comey was bigger than all of them, what does that mean? It can only mean that it could end Trump’s presidency. Anything less would make it a big mistake, but not the biggest. Bannon’s unspoken logical chain goes like this: Trump fires Comey, which leads to the appointment of a special counsel, which leads to the discovery of terribly damaging information about Trump, which brings him down, either through resignation or impeachment.

We should say that it’s possible that a special counsel would have been appointed even if Trump had not fired Comey, though it certainly made it much more likely — particularly after Trump went on national TV and said that he fired Comey in order to shut down the Russia investigation, then reportedly told the Russian ambassador and foreign minister the same thing. If that winds up becoming the core of a case that Trump committed obstruction of justice, then Bannon would be right.

Now, it’s of course possible that Bannon didn’t mean to imply any such thing. After all, Bannon also insisted in this interview that there was absolutely nothing to the Russia scandal. Even with what we know so far, that’s not true. There’s copious evidence of Russia’s efforts to manipulate our election in order to help Trump win, and at the very least we know that key members of Trump’s inner circle — his first-born son, his son-in-law and closest adviser, and his campaign manager — were eager to meet with people connected to the Russian government in the hopes that they could provide dirt on Hillary Clinton that the campaign could deploy against her. We’ll probably find out even more about what went on during the campaign.

But Bannon said something else here that is suggestive: He noted that the “breadth” of Mueller’s probe is now a lot wider than it otherwise might have been. Which means the Russia story may not be what Bannon is really worried about. He surely knows that there is equal if not more danger to Trump in the likelihood that the special counsel’s investigation will go beyond questions about the election. He’s saying that the Comey firing opened up the investigation to go into areas where it otherwise wouldn’t have.

If in the course of his investigation Mueller comes across evidence of a crime, he’s permitted and even obligated to pursue it, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the questions about the campaign that were the initial justification for the investigation. And because investigating the Russian connection to the election requires an examination of Trump’s intricate web of financial connections with Russian interests (including a colorful collection of oligarchs and mobsters), the chances that Mueller will find something fishy or even criminal are very high indeed. No one who has carefully followed Trump’s business career believes that there isn’t some very shady stuff lurking about there.

After all, this is likely one of the main reasons Trump was willing to endure so much criticism over not making his tax returns public. Those returns, which detail the income he gets from hundreds of different sources, are essentially a gigantic pile of threads; start pulling on them one at a time and there’s no telling what you might find.

Bannon may not know where all of the bodies are buried (so to speak) in Trump’s long and varied career in real estate and casinos, or exactly why it is that Russian interests have showered Trump with hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. But he knows enough to know that if you have a special prosecutor with ample resources and authority and a team of specialists in financial crimes rooting around, they’re going to find something. Maybe a lot of somethings. And Bannon knows, or at least appears to believe, that it could bring this presidency down.

 

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WASHINGTON — The just-departed chief White House strategist referred to the firing of FBI director James Comey as perhaps the biggest mistake in modern political history, commenting in his first televised interview since leaving government.

Donald Trump’s ex-strategist and campaign manager insisted he will continue to support the president’s agenda against the pro-trade, pro-globalization Republican establishment they both deeply disdain.

But Steve Bannon made clear his view that Trump set in motion a damaging chain-reaction by firing the former FBI director this spring. He offered a no comment when asked whether the firing was supported by one of his political nemeses: Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“The media has reported I was adamantly opposed to that,” Bannon told a “60 Minutes” interview, in an exchange left out of Sunday’s broadcast.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired we would not have a special counsel… We would not have the Robert Mueller investigation. We would not have the Mueller investigation in the breadth that clearly Mr. Mueller is going.”

When asked about media reports that Bannon supposedly viewed the firing as the biggest mistake in political history, he at first called that slightly bombastic, then added a caveat: “Maybe modern political history.”

The tumult caused by the FBI director’s firing prompted Justice Department officials to name a special investigator. The investigator, Mueller, is now reportedly examining a range of alleged incidents including obstruction of justice and money-laundering, and numerous White House staff and presidential associates have hired lawyers.

Bannon was asked whether he agreed with some Trump allies who want to try firing Mueller. He said: “No, I do not.” When asked about media reports that Kushner pushed for Comey’s firing, he said: “You will have to find that out either through the media or through the investigation.”

Kushner is among the numerous rivals he clashed with in the White House.

In the “60 Minutes” interview, he sought to settle scores with a few of them. He suggested economic adviser and Democrat Gary Cohn should resign, rather than complaining publicly about the way Trump handled the racial incident in Charlottesville.

He also accused the Republican party leadership of trying to block Trump’s agenda.

The congressional wing of the party is more supportive of trade deals like NAFTA, more favourable to immigration, and less supportive of funding a wall with Mexico, than Trump is.

“The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,” Bannon told the interviewer Charlie Rose.

“That’s a brutal fact we have to face… I think (Senate Leader) Mitch McConnell, and to a degree, (House Leader) Paul Ryan, they do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious.”

He suggested a current split over undocumented children could rip the party apart. He predicted a nationalist, populist movement will prevail in American politics — but it’s not yet clear whether it will be of a left-wing or right-wing variety.

Bannon said that depends on whether Republicans or Democrats take up the cause of trade-skepticism.