The New York Times really does not know what to do with Stephen Bannon. The knowledge that a white supremacist has been put close to the top of the White House pecking order is at war with the impulse to make everything a president-elect does into business as usual, and the result is … bizarre.
The headline (and, therefore, the tweet) falls on the business as usual side: “Trump’s choice of Stephen Bannon is nod to anti-Washington base.” That could mean a lot of things, but the opening paragraphs start to spell it out a little. Trump’s choice of Bannon “elevated the hard-right nationalist movement that Mr. Bannon has nurtured for years from the fringes of American politics to its very heart.” Under Bannon, Breitbart News has “repeatedly published articles linking migrants to the spread of disease. Its authors have criticized politicians who do not support a religious test for immigrants to screen out potential jihadists.”
Okay, so it’s hard-right nationalist and that hard-right nationalism seems to center on ethnic issues. But! Fear not, for, talking to the New York Times, Bannon himself “rejected what he called the ‘ethno-nationalist’ tendencies of some in the movement.”
He added, “It’s not that some people on the margins, as in any movement, aren’t bad guys — racists, anti-Semites. But that’s irrelevant.”
“Some people on the margins.” “Irrelevant.” Or, you know, the guy at the president’s right hand in the White House. But the Times article can’t quite commit to pointing that out. It sidles up to the truth—“that nationalist movement—which has promoted and enabled anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and racist sentiments—will now have a champion at Mr. Trump’s side in the West Wing”—and then it scurries away:
His appointment was intended to be a reassuring signal to the vocal and restive members of Mr. Trump’s populist, anti-Washington base who are suspicious of power and anyone who holds it. Mr. Trump is their champion, but Mr. Bannon is their check against the Washington establishment and any efforts it makes to soften the new president’s resolve.
Bannon’s appointment isn’t a signal to just any fraction of Trump voters. It’s a signal to the racist ones. If you voted for Trump because he said he was going to bring jobs back and you really just filtered out all the racist appeals in your single-minded economic focus, Bannon means nothing to you. But his elevation to chief strategist shows that Trump knows just how important the explicitly white nationalist (AKA white supremacist AKA racist) vote was.
Media, you’re going to need to do better. I see you trying to go beyond what you’d normally say about a top White House appointee, but this is not a normal top White House appointee, and it’s not going to be the only time you need to break through your usual sense of decorum. Get good at bluntness and honesty now, fast, right away.