Inside the "Shakespearean Irony" of Trump and Bannon's Relationship
Fresh Air (NPR)
July 18, 2017
In August, 2016, three months before the presidential election, Republican nominee Donald Trump was behind in the polls.
Instead of staying on message, the candidate was engaged in a politically damaging fight with the parents of an Army captain killed in Iraq.
On August 17, in an effort to change course, the Trump team appointed Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of the ultra-conservative Breitbart News, to lead the campaign.
Journalist Joshua Green of Bloomberg Businessweek says the switch would be a turning point.
"Trump was headed toward a pretty serious loss, and Bannon brought his wealth of anti-Clinton knowledge into the campaign and managed to keep Trump on a target," Green says.
Green argues that Bannon's experiences with Breitbart gave him a framework for mobilizing dissatisfied young white male voters who were attracted to Trump.
Without such guidance, Green says, "I don't think that Donald Trump would have been elected president."
Despite Bannon's success in the campaign, Green says that the adviser's nationalist vision remains largely unfulfilled:
"The kind of tragic, Shakespearian irony of the Donald Trump-Steve Bannon relationship is that Bannon finally did find the vessel for his ideas who could get elected president...
(but who) now doesn't have the focus, the wherewithal, the self-control to even do the basic things that a president needs to do."
More:
http://www.npr.org/2017/07/18/537885042/inside-the-shakespearian-irony-of-trump-and-bannons-relationship
Joshua Green's new book is
"Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, And The Storming Of The Presidency"
"Double Haters went for Trump and not Clinton"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10029340604
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