Last night on All In with Chris Hayes, Steve Kornacki sat in for Chris and interviewed Michael Wolff, the reporter who wrote, Ringside With Steve Bannon at Trump Tower as the President-Elect's Strategist Plots "An Entirely New Political Movement" (Exclusive), forThe Hollywood Reporter.
Wolff credits Bannon with keeping Trump focused on talking about jobs while the media and liberals kept talking about distractions:
It's the economy, stupid. We once heard that and understood it and knew it, but I think we, and I mean the liberals and the media forgot that.
Back in Trump World, Bannon must have been thrilled when the media and liberals became obsessed with Trump’s misogyny, and list of isms that he’s been labeled with. It made us take our eyes off of what was really going on. As President Obama said precisely during his press conference with Chancellor Merkel on Thursday:
In an age where there is so much active misinformation, and it's packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page, or you turn on your television, where some over zealousness on the part of a U.S. Official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same, and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect. We won't know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we've gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we've come to take for granted.
Let’s take Bannon at his word, and believe him when he says he’s not a white supremacist. Consider the idea that he’s not, but only used the rhetoric of white supremacists to get different factions fighting among themselves and against each other. The Hollywood Reporter articles says:
"Darkness is good," says Bannon, who amid the suits surrounding him at Trump Tower, looks like a graduate student in his T-shirt, open button-down and tatty blue blazer — albeit a 62-year-old graduate student. "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they" — I believe by "they" he means liberals and the media, already promoting calls for his ouster — "get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing."
While we’re busy arguing with Trump supporters over the white supremacist, racist, misogynistic, fascist that is the president-elect, or with each other about who is to blame for Hillary’s loss and whether or not Bernie Sanders would have won, Bannon must be constantly laughing out loud as he plans the next stage of the Trump Revolution. When Kornacki asked how the Trump-Bannon relationship works, Wolff said,
I think Steve Bannon is Donald Trump's brain. I mean I think it's a very, very important, fundamental, close relationship, and I think it's a relationship that will be at the center of the next stage of the Trump Revolution, if you will.
If we know and understand that all these sensational stories that we keep getting drawn into are part of a Master Plan to keep us busy, while the next stage of the Trump Revolution is being enacted, then shouldn’t we be trying to figure out what that plan really is? Take today, for example. DailyKos, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the Internet, is all abuzz because last night Brandon Victor Dixon from the cast of Hamilton, publicly asked Mike Pence to have an inclusive government. The hashtag #BoycottHamilton was trending on Twitter earlier today. Here at DailyKos there have been three diaries on the recommended list dedicated to the Hamilton incident. (1) Donald Trump demands Hamilton cast 'Apologize!' for enlightening Mike Pence after show, (2) Trump is going on a very presidential twitter tantrump right now over Hamilton, and (3) Hamilton cast apology should come right after Conservatives apologize to Obama for everything.
Think about this for a minute. Boycott Hamilton? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get tickets to see that show? Secondary-markets tickets cost over $1,000 each. What if Trump didn’t have a tantrump over the comments directed at Pence last night? What if it wasn’t a flareup of Trump’s temper? What if Trump’s Brain, Bannon, was the one who suggested the tweets to keep us busy?
Bannon also despises the “Republican establishment.” Before he signed on as Trump’s campaign chairman, Bannon wanted Paul Ryan “gone by spring.” We have to wonder what Bannon’s long-game is because it most probably still includes destroying Paul Ryan and the other Republican establishment officials once they are not useful tools for whatever his ultimate scheme is.
Bannon is a master of misdirection, and has used Breitbart to hone his craft. He’s way ahead of the rest of us in cultivating his craft, and we better start paying attention because if we keep allowing him to distract us with Fake News and Intentionally Generated Outrages, then we’re not going to know what hit us when finally find out what he really is about, and what his master plan is.
The media, including social media, is starting to wake up to the fact that Fake News and propaganda is a bigger problem than anyone had envisioned. Facebook and Google are kicking Fake News sites out of their ad networks, that will cut-off the incomes of the players who are only in it for the ad revenues. It won’t stop Bannon. He’s got bigger fish to fry. It was also reported today that Mark Zuckerberg has outlined plans to tackle Fake News on Facebook. You can now specifically report Fake News (Just Click the Grey Down Arrow in the top right-hand corner of the post. Select REPORT POST. Select "I think it shouldn't be on Facebook" and finally on the next screen, report the FAKE NEWS!)
Bannon is an opportunist and a master manipulator. He sees all of us, the media, liberals, establishment Republicans, as his puppets. We need to cut those puppet strings and start paying better attention and figure out what this really is about. It seems like most of the worries I’m reading about are fears about losing some, if not all, of our First Amendment freedoms. What else could Bannon be targeting?
Here is the video of the Steve Kornacki’s interview of Michael Wolff. My apologizes to those of you who can’t see it on the device you are using to read this. I tried to add a link, but there is a glitch at the MSNBC site. Usually, I chose to email the link and get the url that way, but when I tried that all it says is, “Bannon speaks: undefined.” I did transcribe the entire clip so if you can't watch it, you can read it below the fold.
One last thing. Something else we should be trying to figure out is what the motivations of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is also said to have a lot of influence with Trump. I started reading about Kushner in this Vanity Fair article last night, which lead me to a very long 2009 biography of him in New York magazine. From all indications, Kushner, as well as his father, were generous donors to Democrats until this election. While going back and searching for those two articles, I found a follow-up from Vanity Fair that I haven’t read yet, How Jared Kushner Became Donald Trump’s Mini-Me. Why is Kushner consulting with lawyers to figure out a way to bypass the nepotism laws?
Steve Kornacki (SK): For the first time since president-elect Donald Trump won the election last week, Steve Bannon his campaign chairman and now the new chief White House advisor, is breaking his silence. Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, which he once called the platform for the alt-right spoke with The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Wolff this week. I'm quoting from Wolff's article, Darkness is good," says Bannon... "Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That's power. It only helps us when they... get it wrong. When they're blind to who we are and what we're doing. And by "they" there, Bannon is talking about the media and the left.
And Michael Wolff, columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, joins me now. Michael, thanks for taking a few minutes.
Michael Wolff (MW): Thank you for having me.
SK: You've got quite an interview here. This guy's name is all over the news. He's been called a white supremacist, a racist, an anti-Semite. You got to sit down and talk with him after he's heard all of these accusations for the last week. What does he say to those major allegations against him; accusations against him?
MW: He dismisses them. I don't think he sees those as germane to who he is or what he stands for. I think he sees that as part of liberal media's failure to understand who he is and what he's about.
SK: So what does he say he is? He says he's a nationalist, not a white nationalist. What's the distinction he's drawing there?
MW: He's a ... And I don't want to be in the position to ... I'm not defending his views. I am ...
SK: So you're explaining what he told you ...
MW: I was just there to listen to what he had to say. And what he has to say is that he is about jobs for Americans. That is exclusively his focus. Jobs for Americans. That makes him a nationalist in his view, and it makes him a very astute political figure in his view. That giving jobs to voters is the way you get elected.
SK: I'm curious about this, one of the ways this issue was raised within the idea that he might be a white supremacist, a white nationalist, whatever term you want to use, is one of the reasons for that is not so much what he said himself, but what he's allowed the Breitbart site to become through some of the articles, through the comments, through sort of the culture that it's fed, that it's sort of fed on the right. Is that something that he acknowledges at all, that he grapples with at all?
MW: I certainly don't think that he grapples with it in the least, and he acknowledges it only to the extent that he believes that he's created a voice and a media product that speaks to a good part of his country, enough of the country that he goes to the White House and the liberals don't go to the White House. So I think that he very clearly sees this as a profound split. "You people, the media, the liberals, have no idea who I am and the who Trump campaign is and who it represents." And to continue to use these kinds of descriptions is not going to help you understand. It's divisive and paralyzes the discussion.
SK: What is your sense, just sort of getting a view on the inside there a little bit. Obviously, Donald Trump appointing him to this top White House position. Being willing to absorb all of this sort of blowback that comes with that from the media. What's your sense of how that relationship works? The Bannon-Trump relationship?
MW: I think Steve Bannon is Donald Trump's brain. I mean I think it's a very, very important, fundamental, close relationship, and I think it's a relationship that will be at the center of the next stage of the Trump Revolution, if you will.
SK: And what is it that Trump sees in him? It's such a unique person to bring into a campaign. Nobody with a background like that that I can think of has ever come into a campaign. What drew Trump to him in the first place?
MW: You know, I don't really know the answer to this. I don't know how far their relationship goes back. I think he was drawn into the campaign because the campaign was floundering at a certain point during the summer. He came in. He gave it focus and he gave it this fundamental idea. I think from August on the thing that that Trump really spoke about ... as the media and the liberals were talking about pussygate and all of the other things that we were talking about with great relish ... Donald Trump was going out with Steve Bannon at his side, talking about jobs. It's the economy, stupid. We once heard that and understood it and knew it, but I think we, and I mean the liberals and the media forgot that.
SK: Okay, Michael Wolff, Hollywood Reporter with the interview of Steve Bannon. Fascinating stuff.