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You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition - April 14, 2017
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This is the April 14, 2017, edition of an email sent from November 2016 to September 2017 that covered Donald Trump's presidential transition, cabinet appointees, and the different policy positions of those individuals who may have had an effect on the new administration. Previous editions of "You're Hired" can be found here.
White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been the subject of a number of stories this week which suggest his job role is shifting or that his time in the administration could be coming to an end. In today’s edition of You’re Hired, we’re going to run through Bannon’s role, telling you what he does, why he’s been a fixture in the media as of late, and what a shift in his role could mean politically.
Who is Steve Bannon?
Bannon is currently the chief strategist for President Trump’s administration, but he came to Trump in August 2016 during the presidential campaign when Trump donor Rebekah Mercer suggested hiring both Bannon and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway to run the campaign’s final months.
Bannon was previously the CEO of Breitbart News and co-founded the Government Accountability Institute. He’s had a varied career, having worked in the Navy, as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, as the owner of his own boutique media investment firm, and as a film producer.
What are Bannon’s politics?
Bannon’s political perspective is a bit difficult to pin down. According to a 2015 Bloomberg feature, the kind of conservatism that drives Bannon’s thought and his work at Breitbart is “as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton.” Politico Magazine has also described Bannon’ s public remarks as suggesting “a sense that humanity is at a hinge point in history” and that “only a shock to the system can reverse [Western civilization’s] decline.”
In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Bannon described his politics, saying, “There is a growing global anti-establishment revolt against the permanent political class at home, and the global elites that influence them, which impacts everyone from Lubbock, Texas, to London, England. … We look at London and Texas as two fronts in our current cultural and political war.”
What does he do at the White House?
Bannon was appointed chief strategist on November 17, 2016, the same day that Reince Priebus was appointed chief of staff. According to the news release from Trump, the two were hired to work "as equal partners to transform the federal government." Bannon’s role in the administration has been to find policy solutions that can help Trump deliver on promises made during the campaign. His office, which he calls the war room, features an enormous whiteboard with all policy pillars of the Trump campaign in a checklist.
Bannon and his deputy Stephen Miller were the two primary authors of Trump’s first executive order concerning immigration and refugee admission in the United States. Bannon was also the one who organized the administration’s strategy of attacking the media when leaked information was being reported daily.
So why is Bannon in the news so much lately?
Bannon’s point of view has clashed with a number of more moderate White House aides, most notably the president’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner. In early April, an unnamed administration official told The Daily Beast, "There’s a big fight [going on]. ... It’s all about policy. There’s tension [between them] on trade, health care, immigration, taxes, [terrorism]—you name it." Another official told the site the tension was due to what Bannon saw as Kushner's more moderate positions. The official said, "[Steve] has a very specific vision for what he believes, and what he shares [ideologically] with Trump. And he has for a long time now seen [Jared] as a major obstacle to achieving that."
More recently, The New York Times reported that the advisors' disagreement "reflects a larger struggle to guide the direction of the Trump presidency, played out in disagreements over the policies Mr. Trump should pursue, the people he should hire and the image he should put forward to the American people."
On April 7, 2017, Trump ordered Bannon and Kushner to work out their differences in a sit-down with chief of staff Reince Priebus.
These events, along with Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council’s principals committee on April 5, have led to speculation that Bannon is being sidelined in the administration or that he is close to having his role there terminated.
What does the president have to say about all this?
Trump has commented little on Bannon’s presence during his first months in office but has generally supported Bannon up until the past two weeks or so.
This week, Trump gave two interviews that hinted Bannon’s position in the White House had changed. On April 11, 2017, Trump gave an interview with the New York Post, in which he discussed Bannon's role. Trump said, "I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late ... I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve. I'm my own strategist and it wasn't like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary. ... Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will."
The next day, Trump told The Wall Street Journal that Bannon was "a guy who works for me."
According to Mike Allen of Axios, Trump is still not pleased with the headlines early in the administration suggesting Bannon was the mastermind behind Trump’s policy agenda. This morning, Allen wrote, “[Trump] made it clear to a recent visitor that Steve Bannon on the cover of TIME two months ago still sticks in his craw. Friends say Bannon is stubborn and a survivor, and plans to fight to stay.”
Why does this matter politically?
If Bannon’s influence in the administration is indeed lessening, this has two major implications for Trump politically.
First, Bannon is seen as the administration’s highest-profile representative of the nationalist policies Trump has promoted as “America First.” To sideline Bannon could, in a sense, sideline the influence of these policy positions and promote a more moderate presidential agenda. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) told Politico yesterday, “A lot of us look at Steve Bannon as the voice of conservatism in the White House.”
The second consequence has to do with potentially marginalizing influential donors. Bannon first came into Trump’s political circle via Robert and Rebekah Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and his daughter. They had helped to fund Breitbart News and the Government Accountability Institute—both of which Bannon ran. The Mercers were also Trump’s largest financial backers, having spent $13.5 million supporting his candidacy during the 2016 campaign, according to Vox.
See also
- You're Hired: Tracking the Trump Administration Transition
- Donald Trump presidential transition team
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