Steve Bannon Leaves the White House

“The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em,” Steve Bannon told the American Prospect. “I want them to talk about racism every day. If the Left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.” You can probably count on one hand the number of Republican office-holders who think clearly and strategically like that. Or maybe one finger. It is because Bannon understands the civil war which has now engulfed the political life of this nation that the secessionist left has focused its most vicious attacks on him, calling him a white nationalist, a white supremacist and an anti-Semite. Such attacks are transparently false, but they are in line with the left’s attacks on all their opponents as racists and fascists. These are the verbal equivalents of a nuclear option in political warfare and they reflect the existential nature of the conflict that is upon us. It is existential because the left has aimed at nothing less than the foundations of our democracy. This was not a battle that could be fully engaged from the White House itself because so many people including the mainstream of the Republican Party are not yet awake to the nature of the conflict. They are too eager to seek approval from progressives who hate them. Some on the right are concerned that without Bannon’s White House presence, Trump will become a prisoner of the globalist tendencies inside the administration and the appeasement instincts of the Republican in Congress. But they are wrong. Trump will still be Trump. He is not going to abandon the agendas or bury the instincts that made him endure the most hate-filled campaign in the history of American politics because he loves this country and wants to restore its greatness.

Although conservatives may thrill to the president’s frequent street fights with the Left, a president cannot be a relentless rebel. He has to put together a non-ideological majority and pick his fights shrewdly. Trump has already expressed his appreciation for the asset Bannon will be to him outside the White House. “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews...maybe even better than ever before,” Trump tweeted Saturday. “Fake News needs the competition!” Yet, it’s more than fake news organizations that better look out when Bannon gets going. Despite the departure of their hero, Bannon, Trump’s political base will not desert him because Bannon is gone. Trumpers appreciate the seditious nature and also the daunting magnitude of the forces ranged against his presidency. They will stick by him should he stumble or tack too precariously to the center. They are not fooled by progressive subterfuges and know where the violence and hate and lies are coming from, and the threat they are facing. Ultimately, the success of the Trump mission and the survival of his presidency will depend on this popular army he has called into being. This is the plus side of Bannon’s departure, and his liberation from the constraints of being tied to closely to the Oval Office. He will now be a general to the troops on whom Trump’s future depends, and with the enormous platform that Breitbart represents – with perhaps a TV channel to amplify it – he will be in a prime position to mobilize the support that Trump needs, and to take on his enemies within the Republican camp. In short, this is the beginning of a new phase of the ongoing war to save our country. And Bannon’s role in this war will be even more important now. “Now I’m free,” Bannon said after he left. “I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built an f---ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.” We at Frontpage and our friends at Breitbart have been fighting this war for twenty years and more. We were excited when Trump appeared as a champion of the cause, and even more when he recruited our friends Bannon and Steve Miller and Jeff Sessions to fight by his side. That’s why we are excited by Bannon’s return to Breitbart and look forward to joining him in the trenches of the battles to come.