One of the important things that happened in the last 48 hours is that it’s no longer possible to hide Steve Bannon’s malignant role in the Donald Trump chaos machine. That’s good because internal power struggles are easier to track than subterfuge. Make no mistake, Trump and Bannon are joined at the hip, wedded by Jeff Sessions. Separate them and both are weakened. That’s why he’s there and why he won’t be going anywhere without a fight. But Bannon is the heart of the chaos.
This was the Daily Beast in August 2016:
Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State’
The Breitbart executive director turned GOP leader boasted at a party about his goal of destroying the conservative establishment.
Bannon doesn’t belong at NSC, so this could be huge. Let’s have him attend Senate hearings. Let’s ask him questions about his political views.
EJ Dionne/WaPo:
Let me begin with a word of thanks to Stephen K. Bannon, the chief White House strategist. With a single interview, he dispelled any illusions that normal or productive relations with the media will even be possible under the Trump administration.
True, the new president’s modern predecessors in both parties all tangled with the media. And the claim that traditional news outlets are “liberal” has long been a marker of conservative faith.
But where other chief executives saw the Fourth Estate as a legitimate institution to be dealt with (and, where possible, manipulated), Trump sees reporting purely in terms of his own power. “I want you to quote this,” Bannon told the New York Times. “The media here is the opposition party.”
Bannon went further still. In his ideal world, the media would remain silent, which is pretty much its posture under autocratic regimes.
NY Times:
In theory, the move put Mr. Bannon, a former Navy surface warfare officer, admiral’s aide, investment banker, Hollywood producer and Breitbart News firebrand, on the same level as his friend, Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, a former Pentagon intelligence chief who was Mr. Trump’s top adviser on national security issues before a series of missteps reduced his influence.
But in terms of real influence, Mr. Bannon looms above almost everyone except the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in the Trumpian pecking order, according to interviews with two dozen Trump insiders and current and former national security officials. The move involving Mr. Bannon, as well as the boost in status to the White House homeland security adviser, Thomas P. Bossert, and Mr. Trump’s relationships with cabinet appointees like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have essentially layered over Mr. Flynn.
The Upshot/NY Times (read this and the next one together, both can be true at the same time):
Although some Republicans may fear a voter backlash in the midterm election, the greatest threat to re-election for most G.O.P. members of Congress is still a primary challenge. That’s what many legislators probably fear they will get if they oppose Mr. Trump, who is viewed overwhelmingly favorably among their partisan base, according to polling data.
There have been several Trump policies once opposed by top Republicans that many now support or at least will not actively resist. House Speaker Paul Ryan said in 2015 that a proposed Muslim ban “is not what this party stands for, and more importantly, this is not what this country stands for.” He now backs the current executive order; all seven affected countries have Muslim majorities.
Jason Sattler/USA Today:
Time for outrageous obstruction against Gorsuch
It’s time for the sweet resistance we’re seeing in the streets to start showing up in the U.S. Senate.
Democrats in the chamber have the votes to hold up exactly one major appointment from President Trumpwithout any Republican help. And they should fight Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court with every vote they’ve got — even if it means ending the ability to filibuster any high court nominations in the future.
They have no other choice.
SCOTUS is hugely important. But not as important as having a white supremacist in the WH. Neither is a ‘distraction’. Don’t go there. It’s all important.
Stuart Rothenberg:
President Donald Trump is off to a fast start, but that aggressiveness could produce the same sort of reaction that Barack Obama’s fast start did in 2009: It could lead to a midterm election in which voters apply the brakes.
In 2010, voters told President Obama that he had gone too far, too fast, with health care reform, a $787 billion economic stimulus package, the bailout of the banks, cash for clunkers and a generally liberal agenda.
The result was a GOP landslide – an outcome that did not surprise readers of The Rothenberg Political Report, which projected Republican House gains of 55 to 65 seats. The final result was a Republican gain of 63 seats, a number unimaginable a year earlier.
Trump’s supporters surely are pleased with his populist rhetoric and actions, and relieved that he is keeping his campaign pledges. But others, who opposed him or voted for him only because they disliked Hillary Clinton, will find his agenda and approach disturbing, even alarming, and they will likely turn out in November 2018.
Trump’s fast start almost guarantees that the midterm will be about him – about how comfortable voters are with his accomplishments. The more successful he is, the more easily his party will navigate those elections.
The president’s party has lost seats in 18 of the last 20 midterm elections, so it is likely that Democrats will gain House seats next year. How vulnerable will the GOP be? Much more than you think now.
Democrats need to gain 24 seats to win back the House – a relatively large number given the way districts were drawn at the beginning of the decade. But if the outlook is challenging for Democrats, it certainly isn’t impossible.
Brian Beutler/TNR:
The Case for Pessimism
What will America look like after four years of Donald Trump? The emerging picture is ugly.
The Sessions Justice Department will likewise oversee a witch hunt Trump has ordered into voter impersonation fraud in states Hillary Clinton won. Vice President Mike Pence told Republican members of Congress that the administration will “initiate a full evaluation of voting rolls in the country and the overall integrity of our voting system in the wake of this past election,” after which Sessions could feasibly attempt to purge legally registered voters in Democratic precincts.
Trump is questioning the legitimacy of an election he won, to claim more public backing than voters gave him. Should the groundswell of opposition to his presidency sustain itself through his first term, and cost him a bid for reelection, it is easy to imagine him calling the validity of the returns into question and refusing to initiate a transition process. That Trump managed to win this election despite a huge popular vote deficit has both prolonged our reckoning with his threat to the integrity of our democratic elections and given us new reasons to suspect he will make good on that threat.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
Republicans made a power play because it was technically legal and they figured they could get away with it. The fact that their gamble paid off doesn’t make it any less reprehensible, and Democrats should take a simple stand: This seat was Barack Obama’s to fill, and Merrick Garland should be the one occupying it. This nomination is fruit of a poisoned tree, whether the nominee is a fine fellow or not.
And to repeat: They have nothing to lose. We can be honest and acknowledge that a filibuster won’t stop Trump’s nominee from getting to the court. We know what will happen if the Democrats go through with it. Republicans will express their outrage. Mitch McConnell will say that much as he regrets it, he has no choice but to call a vote to change Senate rules to forbid filibusters of Supreme Court nominees. That vote will succeed, and the nominee will then be confirmed on a party-line (or nearly so) vote.
Yet according to this report from CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett, some Senate Democrats are nervous about what the consequences of getting too tough might be. Some of them fear that filibustering now “would mean Democrats could lose leverage in the next Supreme Court fight if Trump were to replace a more liberal justice, since the GOP now has 52 seats in the Senate.”
Andrés Miguel Rondón/WaPo:
Don’t feed polarization, disarm it. This means leaving the theater of injured decency behind.
That includes rebukes such as the one the “Hamilton” cast gave Vice President-elect Mike Pence shortly after the election. While sincere, it only antagonized Trump; it surely did not convince a single Trump supporter to change his or her mind. Shaming has never been an effective method of persuasion.
If you listen to Kagro in the Morning with David Waldman and me, this is a familiar theme. Forget Trump voters, concentrate fire on the WH.
Jacob T Levy:
Walls work in both directions—they keep people in, as well as out. The administration’s decision to suspend reentry for lawful residents who were abroad at the time of the order tells non-citizens in the United States—permanent residents, long-since admitted refugees or those granted asylum, spouses and students and H1-B visa holders doing highly skilled work that the country needs—that they travel outside the United States at risk of not being allowed to return. Even the eventual decision to allow permanent residents to re-enter on a case-by-case basis was presented as an exercise of agency discretion, not a disavowal of the tactic. The word of the United States isn’t good anymore—“permanent” resident now means something much less than that, and refugee status once granted might be revoked with no notice. Henceforth, peaceful, law-abiding residents will be much more afraid to leave the country. The barriers to letting people in thus act as a kind of cage to keep people in. Caged people aren’t free.
We need to be building bridges, not walls. Ask the people in Berlin.
Adam Jentleson/WaPo:
Senate Democrats have the power to stop Trump. All they have to do is use it.
We're inclined to compromise. But if we want to hold this administration accountable, we'll need to play hardball.
Senate Democrats have a powerful tool at their disposal, if they choose to use it, for resisting a president who has no mandate and cannot claim to embody the popular will. That tool lies in the simple but fitting act of withholding consent. An organized effort to do so on the Senate floor can bring the body to its knees and block or severely slow down the agenda of a president who does not represent the majority of Americans.
The procedure for withholding consent is straightforward, but deploying it is tricky. For the Senate to move in a timely fashion on any order of business, it must obtain unanimous support from its members. But if a single senator objects to a consent agreement, McConnell, now majority leader, will be forced to resort to time-consuming procedural steps through the cloture process, which takes four days to confirm nominees and seven days to advance any piece of legislation — and that’s without amendment votes, each of which can be subjected to a several-day cloture process as well.