Vox - Steve Bannon is out as the White House chief strategisthttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2017-08-21T12:10:02-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/159349312017-08-21T12:10:02-04:002017-08-21T12:10:02-04:00Steve Bannon’s “economic nationalism” is total nonsense
<figure>
<img alt="President Trump Leads a Cabinet Meeting" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_UG_jiSN1yqiI2LKhB3mQN1y9lA=/0x0:3824x2868/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56287557/695244664.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump recognizes exactly what a good con is worth.</p> <p id="Xcuv9O">Former chief strategist and campaign manager Steve Bannon’s departure from the Trump White House surely does not mean an end to the demagogic racial politics in which Donald Trump has trafficked for decades. </p>
<p id="PAF8da">It does, however, seem to mark the final eclipse of the notion that Trump would move <em>beyond</em> demagoguery and construct a vision of “nationalist” economic policy that would differ in a meaningful way from standard-issue pro-business Republicanism. Bannon, on his way out the door, appeared serious about this idea — <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant">phoning up progressive magazine editor Robert Kuttner</a> to try to find common ground on trade policy and explain that “to me, the economic war with China is everything.”</p>
<p id="Zc7sia">Kuttner’s view of why this is unworkable stems from skepticism that “possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.”</p>
<p id="vR1Iqn">Julius Krein, who tried to position himself as a rare pro-Trump intellectual who favored the then-candidate’s brand of nationalist politics during the 2016 campaign, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/sunday/i-voted-for-trump-and-i-sorely-regret-it.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-contributors&action=click&contentCollection=contributors&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=28&pgtype=sectionfront">gave up the ghost in a New York Times op-ed last week</a>. He denounced “never-ending chaos” inside the administration and “unforced errors,” arguing that Trump’s “only talent appears to be creating grotesque media frenzies — just as all his critics said.” </p>
<p id="AO0d1y"><a href="https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/letting-trump-be-trump/?mcubz=1">Ross Douthat as early as May</a> flagged indications that Trump “never really believed in Trumpism himself.” As Ramesh Ponnuru and Rich Lowry wrote that same month, the president certainly <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447932/donald-trump-voters-populisms-false-start-2016">never seems to have taken the time to flesh out</a> what “a Trumpist philosophy” that would feature skepticism of trade, immigration, and foreign intervention, a moderate social conservatism, and support for government activism to benefit the working class” would look like in details. </p>
<p id="xsIfiF">The reality, however, is that “economic nationalism” has grave flaws as an ideology beyond Trump’s racism, lack of policy knowledge, and personal indiscipline. The idea that the United States as a whole is locked in zero-sum economic competition with other countries or that average Americans could become wealthier at the expense of foreigners is simply wrong. </p>
<p id="6ga1o0">At best, it’s an analytical error born of bias or confusion about relative versus absolute living standards. At worst, it’s a con job — an effort to distract middle- and working-class Americans from very real questions about the domestic distribution of economic resources by casting aspersions on foreigners. </p>
<h3 id="IzuvdP">Globalization makes most Americans better off</h3>
<p id="nZCPoW">The media, for understandable reasons, likes to cover controversy more than consensus. But attention to controversy can in its own way be misleading. And the extent of expert consensus on the economic impact of both trade and immigration is important to understand. </p>
<p id="8IcNgm">Probably the most prominent highly credible critique of China trade policy comes from<strong> </strong><a href="http://www.ddorn.net/papers/Autor-Dorn-Hanson-ChinaShock.pdf">David Autor</a>, an economist whose work with David Dorn and Gordon Hanson argues that the impact of trade with China was much bigger and in some ways much more negative than experts predicted before the fact. </p>
<p id="yuItPl">Their argument is, specifically, that the impact on manufacturing workers and heavily manufacturing-focused communities was too big for them to successfully adjust. The result was a “China Shock” that was large and semi-permanent, rather than small and transitory as previously thought. But even if that’s true, the fact remains that <em>most</em> Americans don’t work in manufacturing or live in heavily manufacturing-focused communities, and we’ve benefitted from trade with China. </p>
<p id="3b9UqW">“It doesn't mean the aggregate gains aren't positive,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/3/29/15035498/autor-trump-china-trade-election">Autor told my colleague Zeeshan Aleem in March</a>. “Your and my cost of living might be a couple hundred dollars a year lower because of China.” The problem is that these are small gains spread across hundreds of millions of people counterposed against much larger losses for a much smaller group of people. </p>
<p id="pPjbsB"><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2920188">Jonathan Rothwell of Gallup and the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy has some contrary research</a> that says this is wrong and doesn’t properly account for weak overall macroeconomic conditions in the mid-aughts. </p>
<p id="tDlOXW">It’s a fascinating and in some ways very important dispute, but <em>both sides of the argument agree</em> that the typical American was made better-off by trade with China. By the same token, the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/23/15855342/immigrants-wages-trump-economics-mariel-boatlift-hispanic-cuban">entire bitter argument among labor economists about immigration and wages</a> is about whether or not immigrants have depressed the incomes of native-born high school dropouts. This is another fascinating, and in some ways very important, dispute. But, again, <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf">only 8 percent of the native population lacks a high school diploma</a>. Both sides agree that <em>most</em> Americans are benefitting from immigration. </p>
<h3 id="L33zpx">Better globalization wouldn’t immiserate foreigners</h3>
<p id="vOOEBn">None of that is to say that American public policy with regard to trade or immigration has been perfect over the past generation or so. <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/why-is-it-so-hard-for-intellectuals-to-envision-alternative-forms-of-globalization">Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research</a> argues that “globalization, meaning the greater integration of economies across the world, could have been designed an infinite number of ways.”</p>
<p id="vWZggW">In particular, he argued, it could have been designed in a way that was less beneficial to the upper classes in the United States and more beneficial to the working and middle class. </p>
<p id="FufhJy">For example, policymakers could, and he argues should, have “focused on removing professional licensing barriers to make it as easy as possible for doctors, dentists, and other highly paid professional to train to U.S. standards and practice in the United States.”</p>
<p id="kJfr8l">These are critically important ideas to debate and consider. Globalization is, fundamentally, an enormous opportunity for almost everyone in the world. But the United States has, thus far, primarily taken advantage of it in order to obtain cheaper manufacturing goods for domestic consumers. That’s fine as far as it goes, but fundamentally, inability to afford manufactured goods is not a big problem for more Americans. Deploying the power of globalization to make health care services cheaper and more convenient, by contrast, would be a huge win for the vast majority of the population. </p>
<p id="S1s647">But note that just as manufacturing-focused globalization hasn’t been bad for most Americans, shifting emphasis to professional services would hardly <em>hurt</em> foreigners. Creating broad and clear pathways for foreigners to train to US standards and then move here to work as doctors, dentists, and nurses would be great for most Americans while <em>also</em> creating great new economic opportunities for foreigners. All policy choices involve winners and losers, but the tradeoff is almost never the kind of strict country versus country battle that Bannonism implies. </p>
<h3 id="KNlLYW">Domestic distributional conflicts are inescapable </h3>
<p id="7uEjrq">The concept of “economic nationalism” is, fundamentally, a dodge. The substantive promise and political peril of reengineering globalization is that it would alter the domestic distribution of wealth and income. Keeping doctors scarce and manufactured goods plentiful is good for doctors, and if you try to change it the American Medical Association will try to stop you. </p>
<p id="vGxEBM">In that sense, the economic aspects of globalization are fundamentally similar to domestic economic controversies over taxes and spending. Either you believe in trying to <a href="http://rooseveltinstitute.org/rewrite-rules">rewrite the rules of the economy</a> so that the gains from growth are <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/12/15942870/class-warfare-upscale-suburbs">less hyper-concentrated among one or 2 percent of the population</a> or else you’re not. And here, tellingly, Bannon has very little to say on this. And what he does have to say would be devastating to the interests of most Americans. </p>
<p id="oPvRaT">When complaining in his Weekly Standard exit interview that his former colleagues in the White House are “going to try to moderate him,” Bannon predicts that among other dire consequences, Trump will likely “sign a clean debt ceiling” without agreeing to the Freedom Caucus’s extreme fiscal policy. This means that despite his occasional flirtations with <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/07/27/steve-bannon-wants-facebook-and-google-regulated-like-utilities/">antitrust regulation for big tech companies</a>, he’s happy to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/18/15983410/republican-civil-war-budget-resolution-tax-reform">embrace draconian austerity budgets</a> that would drastically increase child poverty and eviscerate the American educational system. </p>
<p id="aXHdgo">To the extent that there’s any heterodoxy about domestic economic policy from Bannon, it’s simply as an extension of culture war posturing — a way of lashing out at Silicon Valley’s “woke” pretenses — rather than any vision of economic uplift. </p>
<p id="VwKXuj">Possessing as he does the soul of a con artist rather than the pretenses of an intellectual, Trump himself is much better positioned than Bannon to recognize the full potential of “economic nationalism” as a useful distraction tactic but not much more. </p>
<h3 id="tZa4eF">Trump knows how to work a good hustle</h3>
<p id="MMR2YW">While Americans who follow politics were obsessing over the latest ups and downs of the Trump Show this summer, real policy changes that are important to wealthy business interests continued to roll out of DC. In late July, for instance, the Senate confirmed David Bernhardt to serve as deputy secretary of the interior. Bernhardt was previously a lobbyist with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where he represented, among other clients, Nestlé Waters. Nestlé is not particularly nationalistic, but they do enjoy selling bottled water. Luckily for them, last Thursday the Interior Department decided to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/08/17/national-parks-banned-bottled-water-to-ease-pollution-trump-just-sided-with-the-lobby-that-fought-it/?utm_term=.1f8f383afc91">reverse restrictions on bringing bottled water into national parks</a>. </p>
<p id="JpS6n8">The Trump administration was also hard at work last week on making it easier for <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/us/politics/trump-impedes-consumer-lawsuits-against-nursing-homes-deregulation.html?mcubz=1&_r=0">nursing homes that provide substandard care to avoid legal liability</a>. Like Trump’s effort to let <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/how-a-conservative-tv-giant-is-ridding-itself-of-regulation.html?rref=collection%2Fseriescollection%2Ftrump-rules-regulations">Sinclair Broadcasting violate longstanding media concentration rules</a>, make <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/05/business/under-trump-worker-protections-are-viewed-with-new-skepticism.html?rref=collection%2Fseriescollection%2Ftrump-rules-regulations">workplaces less safe for the people who work in them</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor-overtime-idUSKBN1AA2DZ">reduce workers’ overtime pay</a>, and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleaebeling/2017/05/23/dol-fiduciary-rule-officially-kicks-in-june-9-with-no-bite/&refURL=https://www.google.com/&referrer=https://www.google.com/">make it easier for financial advisers to rip off their clients</a>, there hasn’t been a lot of tweeting about these two regulatory actions. </p>
<p id="VS876z">Instead, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/14/16139440/trump-racism-plutocracy">Trump feeds the public a steady diet of racial conflict</a> hoping that if he punches nonwhite America hard enough, white America will be so busy gawking they won’t notice their pockets are being picked too.</p>
<p id="W6SDwF">This is a time-honored hustle in American politics, and Trump grasps its operation intuitively. And he also grasps in a way that Bannon may not that “economic nationalism” is useful as an extension of the hustle and no further. Adding immigrants and the Chinese to the scapegoat list alongside the traditional African-American targets makes for a more compelling narrative, and it’s let him bring the scam to parts of the urban North that have traditionally been too overwhelmingly white for the standard race hustle to seem compelling. </p>
<p id="MJa6FG">Bannon’s pretension to constructing something larger than that failed mostly because of his own interpersonal conflicts with other members of Trump’s team. But there’s nothing to mourn in the failure to build a more substantive vision of “economic nationalism” because the vision itself never made sense. </p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/21/16165348/steve-bannon-economic-nationalismMatthew Yglesias2017-08-18T16:38:25-04:002017-08-18T16:38:25-04:00Steve Bannon tried to destroy “globalism.” It destroyed him instead.
<figure>
<img alt="President Donald Trump Makes Statement On Paris Climate Agreement" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/uaD00nw-zN2Cx8esbfm9CCaS6u4=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56263209/691278358.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="cbeaYp">Steve Bannon’s hatred for “globalists” has done him in.</p>
<p id="A2whQs">The controversial senior strategist was pushed out of the White House late on Friday, according to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resigns">multiple reports</a>, chiefly due to his constant feuding with his rivals inside the administration — people like National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn. </p>
<p id="I70Pix">Bannon opposed them for essentially ideological reasons: He saw them as being soft on China, on Islam, and on immigration. He waged war against these so-called “globalists” in the press, developing a reputation for frequently leaking damaging stories to conservative media outlets — and was eventually pushed out when the president grew tired of Bannon getting so much attention and Chief of Staff John Kelly grew tired of the infighting.</p>
<p id="bpLYlr">That Bannon’s attempt to take power eventually led to his downfall is a funny irony. But it also means that Bannon’s crusade against globalism is on the verge of total failure.</p>
<p id="25TWDW">Bannon fought so hard, by his own account, because he wanted to reshape the world, starting with the United States. This is a tremendously tough task: When you try to “drain the swamp,” the swamp creatures are going to fight back. He positioned himself against the ideas that had dominated official Washington, and indeed much of the world, for decades — and didn’t even come close to changing that consensus.</p>
<p id="hjdawD">Trump does not have the discipline and policy knowledge to make this kind of radical change alone; he needed a figure like Bannon at his side. Now that Bannon is gone, the idea that Trump was going to radically reshape American foreign policy — what he promised during the campaign — looks vanishingly unlikely. </p>
<p id="xthxzU">In short? If there’s no Steve Bannon, there’s no Trump Doctrine.</p>
<h3 id="24CUZJ">Bannon had a radical vision for the world</h3>
<p id="LXHUaX">Bannon’s project centered on opposition to what he derisively called “globalism”: the idea of tearing down borders and linking countries through trade, immigration, and international institutions like NATO and the United Nations. He believed that Brexit and Trump’s rise in particular showed the way for a global uprising of so-called “nationalists” or “populists” against the status quo.</p>
<p id="qEVVlc">“We believe — strongly — that there is a global tea party movement,” Bannon said in <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/this-is-how-steve-bannon-sees-the-entire-world?utm_term=.xx9BBmDp4#.xb188nlwo">a 2014 speech</a>. “The central thing that binds that all together is a center-right populist movement of really the middle class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos.”</p>
<p id="3AAUAx">Bannon sees this movement’s central demand, sovereignty, in a disturbingly ethnonationalist way. He warned of an <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/13/14559822/trump-islam-muslims-islamophobia-sharia">“invasion”</a> of Europe by Muslims; he emphasized the need for countries that have a “Judeo-Christian” heritage to band together to fight radical Islam. The scale of the threat, Bannon has suggested, is akin to what the West faced in the 1930s.</p>
<p id="ORWCse">“This is when Europe’s looking down the barrel of fascism — the rise of Mussolini in Italy, Stalin and the Russians and the communist Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. And obviously Hitler and the Nazis,” he said in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/31/bannon-odds-islam-china-decades-us-foreign-policy-doctrine/97292068/">a 2016 radio show</a>. “I mean you’re looking at fascism, you’re looking at communism. And to say that — what so blows me away is the timing of it. You could look in 1938 and say, ‘Look, it’s pretty dark here in Europe right now, but there’s something actually much darker. And that is Islam.’ ”</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="b5Idda"><q>“That’s a fight I fight every day”</q></aside></div>
<p id="FNH8Gu">China, in Bannon’s eyes, was also a fundamental threat. He has predicted an outright war between the United States and China — two nuclear-armed powers — <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/31/bannon-odds-islam-china-decades-us-foreign-policy-doctrine/97292068/">in under 10 years</a>. In a recent interview with the American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, one of the attention-hogging stunts that allegedly contributed to his departure, Bannon described the world as a zero-sum competition between the United States and China.</p>
<p id="UsNoUD">“We’re at economic war with China ... the economic war with China is everything,” <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant">he said</a>. “One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path.”</p>
<p id="NfP6tY">This apocalyptic vision of global conflict really did drive Bannon’s behavior in Washington. His view of Muslim immigration as an “invasion” manifested in the Muslim ban, the initial draft of which was written entirely by Bannon and White House aide Stephen Miller. His fear of China, he told Kuttner, led him to push for harsh restrictions on trade with that country. It also was the motivation behind much of the infighting that got him fired, as he wanted to replace career officials who wanted to work with China with those who shared his aggressive worldview.</p>
<p id="gw7XkD">“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State,” Bannon said in the Prospect interview. “That’s a fight I fight every day here.”</p>
<h3 id="wTNye4">Bannon’s ideas aligned with Trump’s </h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="President Trump Meets With Cyber Security Experts At White House" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/OYUajt-78RO0bUFaWPawrgtRJpg=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9075943/633191646.jpg">
<cite>(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)</cite>
</figure>
<p id="RlUsnG">This dark vision — of a Judeo-Christian, Western alliance squaring off against China and the Islamic world — gave an ordering principle to the president’s own impulses.</p>
<p id="gZcE2s">Trump shares Bannon’s support for European right-wing nationalism, his fear of Islam, and his instinctive hostility to China. But it’s clear, at this point, that the president does not have a way to translate those ideals into policies. Trump is neither an ideologist nor a policy wonk; his feelings about the world have little in the way of connective tissue or workable implications. It’s up to others to turn these impulses into an agenda.</p>
<p id="hIgQva"> Bannon had ideas for doing that. They were radical, and he worked — as he said — “every day” to try to implement them. But he didn’t have much of a support network.</p>
<p id="eCZ2nn">Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the highest-level official who shared parts of Bannon’s worldview, doesn’t play a major role defining Trump’s foreign policy — and is busy trying to save his own job. Steven Miller has seemed to play a limited role in foreign policy decisions aside from the Muslim ban. Other than that, there’s no one at the top like Bannon.</p>
<p id="V7qOFJ">Now look at who’s on the other side — the people who want to channel Trump away from Bannon’s vision and toward a more typical approach to foreign policy.</p>
<p id="7q4BkV">Kelly, McMaster, and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis are well-known for taking basically conventional stances on the big foreign policy issues. As a group, they’re strongly in favor of maintaining traditional American alliances, generally hostile to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and skeptical of blaming Islam as a religion for jihadist terrorism. Gary Cohn, the NEC director, has been the biggest opponent of Bannon’s proposals for cracking down on trade with China. Jared Kushner, Trump’s influential son-in-law, seems to have views similar to this group — as does Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, though he’s been largely ineffectual in internal White House debates. </p>
<p id="djUMj1">The “globalists,” as Bannon would call them, dominate the White House — the aides on Bannon’s side aren’t even close to their level of influence. The president has no demonstrated interest or capability to radically revise foreign policy on his own. His most controversial pronouncements, as my colleague <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16169464/steve-bannon-fired-donald-trump">Ezra Klein details</a>, are actually being ignored by the foreign policy apparatus:</p>
<blockquote><p id="omaFZc">White House staff, congressional Republicans, military leaders, and executive branch officials are increasingly confident simply ignoring President Trump. After Trump tweeted that he wanted the military to ban transgender service members from serving, for instance, the Pentagon <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pentagon-says-trumps-transgender-tweet-was-not-an-order/article/2630201">quickly said</a> that it had not received an official order and was going to carry on with business as usual until it did. Similarly, after Trump tweeted his threats at North Korea, the key organs of American foreign policymaking — the State Department, the Defense Department, and so on — were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/us/politics/north-korea-nuclear-threat-rex-tillerson.html?mcubz=0&_r=0">quick to declare</a> that nothing had changed, there was no military buildup or new red lines, and everyone should just ignore the commander in chief’s morning outburst.</p></blockquote>
<p id="RGnDGS">Absent Bannon, there’s no one to give unifying voice to a distinctively Trumpian foreign policy, no one who could really take the president’s impulses and shape them into a truly radical doctrine. Without him, in short, the Trumpiest elements of the Trump administration is rudderless on foreign affairs.</p>
<p id="OUE7IQ">Rudderless does not mean impotent, to be clear. The president still has the ability to make spur-of-the-moment decisions — like failing to commit to defending NATO allies in a speech or threatening to attack North Korea in a press conference — that destabilize global politics. That’s really scary, and I don’t mean to downplay it.</p>
<p id="tdyXyp">But off-the-cuff Trump pronouncements are not the same as radically transforming America’s approach to the world — forming an alliance with Russia to fight Islamism, for example, or taking an extremely hawkish line on China both militarily and economically. Those things take time, patience, and, above all, someone at the helm willing to fight for them. </p>
<p id="4SHYQg">It’s hard to say how Trump can be that guy without Bannon by his side.</p>
https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/18/16169486/steve-bannon-departure-foreign-policyZack Beauchamp2017-08-18T16:00:02-04:002017-08-18T16:00:02-04:00The chaos of the Trump administration, in one picture
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/bzLpWn0Eny0IUWmEGotOZl0ZTRI=/0x0:1801x1351/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56261975/Bannon_vanish_lead.1503085380.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty, Annotation: Javier Zarracina/Vox</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With Steve Bannon’s ouster, four of these five Trump advisers are now gone.</p> <p id="cNK0Jd">Eight days after being sworn in as president, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin while surrounded by five of his top advisers, as you can see in the above photo.</p>
<p id="2XhDSv">And now four of those five advisers are gone from the White House.</p>
<p id="0SH0oi">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resigns">ouster of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon</a> Friday was just the latest personnel shift in an administration that’s had a remarkable amount of turnover so far. </p>
<p id="fFELer">Of the others in the photo: </p>
<ul>
<li id="3cxkTt">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/14/14611124/michael-flynn-resigns-russia-news">National Security Adviser Michael Flynn</a> didn’t even last a month in his job — he was fired in February after news broke that he had misled the vice president about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition.</li>
<li id="udH5gp">
<a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/28/15724206/reince-priebus-fired-trump">Chief of Staff Reince Priebus</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/21/16011484/sean-spicer-resigns-anthony-scaramucci">press secretary Sean Spicer</a> departed in July after Anthony Scaramucci was hired as communications director — Spicer quit in protest, and Priebus was ousted.</li>
<li id="ikAacM">Only Vice President Mike Pence — who was elected and can’t actually be fired, except through impeachment — remains.</li>
</ul>
<p id="3VFTnx">And there’s been much more high-level White House turnover even than that. </p>
<ul>
<li id="BUTBMw">Trump’s first communications director, Mike Dubke, who never had much of a public profile, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/politics/mike-dubke-white-house-communications-director/index.html">departed in May</a>. </li>
<li id="eQRzV9">His replacement, the infamous Anthony Scaramucci, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/31/16071196/anthony-scaramucci-communications-director-fired-trump">was then fired</a> by the new Chief of Staff John Kelly just 10 days after being named to the job — apparently because Scaramucci was incompetent and unqualified.</li>
<li id="ZM6fil">And Deputy White House Chief of Staff Katie Walsh, a Priebus ally, <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trumps-deputy-chief-of-staff-katie-walsh-leaving-white-house/article/2618887">left the administration in March</a>, after her rivals <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/31/sources-white-house-leaks-center-discussions-katie-walsh-replacement/">attempted to brand her as a leaker</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p id="A366gi">That’s not to say that everyone has been cleared out. Many of the top White House staffers first appointed in January still hold their posts, including senior advisers Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, press aides Hope Hicks and Dan Scavino, legislative affairs director Marc Short, and White House counsel Don McGahn. Furthermore, under any president, White House staffers have difficult and stressful jobs, and turnover naturally occurs. </p>
<p id="o9y7rd">Still, it’s remarkable that Trump has burned through so many of his choices for senior jobs in less than seven months in office. For instance, his predecessor Barack Obama went through four official chiefs of staff and one interim one over his eight years in office — something Trump mocked at the time:</p>
<div id="mixJaz">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">3 Chief of Staffs in less than 3 years of being President: Part of the reason why <a href="https://twitter.com/BarackObama">@BarackObama</a> can't manage to pass his agenda.</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/156829591267328000">January 10, 2012</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="uFmKKV">Trump is far exceeding that pace — not just for his own chief of staff (who had the shortest stint of anyone since the position was created) but for a whole swath of top-level White House jobs.</p>
<p id="JBcVO4">Interestingly, there’s been far less turnover in Trump’s Cabinet so far, with the only change being John Kelly’s move from secretary of homeland security to White House chief of staff. This makes sense — firing Cabinet members is more of a headache, since Trump would have to get their replacements confirmed by the Senate. But he has a much freer hand with filling White House vacancies.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16170400/bannon-fired-trump-administrationAndrew Prokop2017-08-18T15:57:44-04:002017-08-18T15:57:44-04:00Steve Bannon’s exit from the Trump White House, explained
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AgTU1VEhr0lsLfLy7HL7bz7IPJY=/9x0:3600x2693/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56258689/GettyImages_653567564.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What will — and won’t — change in a post-Bannon White House.</p> <p id="P3QLXx">Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist and one of his most controversial advisers, is exiting the Trump administration after a tumultuous seven-month<strong> </strong>stint. The White House released a statement Friday saying that Bannon and White House chief of staff John Kelly had “mutually agreed” that this would be Bannon’s last day in his job.</p>
<p id="5jH42n">Bannon’s departure has been long in the making. Trump signaled his public displeasure with Bannon’s high media profile <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/12/15270756/steve-bannon-trump-new-york-post">back in April</a>, and the chief strategist’s clashes with other administration officials have only worsened since. A new round of rumors about Bannon’s potentially imminent departure began swirling after Kelly was named chief of staff in late July and began exploring how to restructure the dysfunctional West Wing.</p>
<p id="Kl3zqW">Then Bannon poured gasoline on the fire by giving <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant">a shockingly candid interview</a> to liberal journalist Robert Kuttner Tuesday, in which he criticized some of his rivals in the administration by name, contradicted Trump’s stated North Korea policy, and explained his plans to reshuffle State Department personnel. </p>
<p id="D7yHfq">This provided his many internal enemies — who had already accused him of being too eager to leak and to take internal disputes to the press — with several more reasons to call for his head. (Bannon’s allies have put out the word that he wasn’t aware his remarks would be reported, which seems rather sloppy of him.) Now, <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC/status/898588141686104070">Bannon is claiming</a> that his departure was his own idea, and that he submitted his resignation two weeks ago — but several reporters <a href="https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/898594885254619136">are</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/898595441650016256">hearing</a> that he was in fact fired.</p>
<p id="UwDM48">In any case, Bannon’s exit marks a major milestone for an administration and indeed a party that he’s influenced in profound ways. Bannon has attempted to steer Trump administration policy, and the GOP generally, toward what he dubs nationalism. </p>
<p id="dIfIWB">Part of this strategy involved stoking white voters’ resentments of various “others” — immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter protesters — beyond what was previously considered acceptable by GOP elites. President Trump shares Bannon’s instincts, and so this resentment stoking has suffused much of Trump’s campaign and presidency (as we saw in the president’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/15/16153240/trump-charlottesville-press-conference-nazis">statements on the violence in Charlottesville</a>). </p>
<p id="lVCZAp">Much of this will surely continue despite Bannon’s departure. But in losing Bannon, Trump is losing an adviser who was deeply committed to implementing this agenda at a granular level — someone who cared about policy details and lower-level personnel appointments, rather than just presidential tweets or statements.</p>
<p id="i67Dq4">Furthermore, Bannon has said he wants to turn the GOP toward <em>economic</em> nationalism — which he defines as tougher trade policies, increased infrastructure spending, and perhaps even tax hikes on the wealthy — as well. But he’s been much less successful on that front, as other advisers and interests have argued in favor of Republican status quo policies on economic issues, and have mainly won out in the Trump administration so far.</p>
<h3 id="tIOkps">Bannon wasn’t Trump’s brain. But they had similar passions.</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/zRutjQxVpt6sMEJlFyETmSSgan0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074223/GettyImages_632408944.jpg">
<cite>MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty</cite>
</figure>
<p id="vwcXhq">While Bannon has often been characterized as the shadowy adviser whispering things to Trump — “Trump’s brain” — the truth is more complicated. Many of the signature characteristics of Trump’s politics predated August 2016, when Bannon joined Trump’s campaign as its CEO.</p>
<p id="7BhmF8">What actually happened was that in the years before Trump’s campaign, he and Bannon seemed to come to parallel but similar realizations about what much of the GOP base wanted and truly cared about — and weren’t getting from existing Republican elites.</p>
<p id="pmbVgX">For Bannon, this realization came through running the conservative media outlet Breitbart News and noticing which issues resonated most with readers: The site spotlighted tales of lurid crimes committed by <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/california/2015/05/23/one-sex-offender-illegal-alien-caught-after-another-alleged-offender-legalized/">unauthorized immigrants</a>, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2017/02/01/muslim-mob-rapes-15-christian-women-revenge-attack-conversions/">Muslims</a>, and <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/11/28/5-devastating-facts-black-black-crime/">African Americans</a>. Trump was drawn toward the same sorts of rhetoric, from the moment he launched his campaign and denounced Mexico for sending “rapists” to the US.</p>
<p id="FMh8Q0">“Both of them had a real talent for kind of stoking resentment and channeling that resentment into a political force that they could direct at more mainstream Republicans and at Democrats,” Josh Green, author of the book <em>Devil’s Bargain</em>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/21/16000914/steve-bannon-devils-bargain-josh-green">told me in July</a>.</p>
<p id="HnQtmb">The two men also shared a disdain for the GOP establishment. They had little use for Republican orthodoxy on economic issues (Bannon and Trump are both harsh critics of recent multilateral trade deals), and for what they viewed as an overly politically correct approach to campaigning.</p>
<p id="XutMXQ">But where Trump mainly expressed his views in off-the-cuff remarks and sound bites, Bannon tried to stitch it all together in a grand theory. Trump and his voters, he said, were part of a <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/11/02/trump-campaign-ceo-stephen-k-bannon-speaks-with-breitbart-news-daily-to-celebrate-show-anniversary/">“global populist movement”</a> challenging the power and conventional wisdom of political, cultural, and business elites in favor of “nationalism.”</p>
<h3 id="JlTokb">Bannon dominated the Trump administration’s earliest days — and then lost influence</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/B1URv7OR91zyU20ecyTb_1AADgc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074237/GettyImages_667950416.jpg">
<cite>Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Bannon and Reince Priebus, in happier times.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="UHMttP">So days after Trump unexpectedly won the presidency, he announced that Bannon would be his White House chief strategist — a newly created position given equal billing with Reince Priebus’s appointment as chief of staff. </p>
<p id="fbb9wx">Bannon’s appointment was massively consequential because of where he came from and whom he was most focused on satisfying — the Breitbart base. By naming Bannon his top political adviser, Trump was signaling that his top political priority would be pleasing that base, rather than reaching out to try to build broader support. That was, after all, what Bannon knew how to do.</p>
<p id="hyKmCR">Furthermore, there was a power vacuum during the chaotic transition period, and Bannon took advantage of it. He helped craft a series of executive orders Trump could use to start off his presidency with a bang, in a strategy deemed “shock and awe.” </p>
<p id="4aWN6e">Several of the orders involved immigration, and Bannon huddled with fellow anti-immigration hardliners like Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller to craft their details — with hardly any consultation from the agencies that would implement them or the lawyers who’d be tasked with defending them in court.</p>
<p id="LasrIq">But in the end, one order towered above the rest in importance — the travel ban. The order Bannon’s team drew up <a href="http://www.vox.com/2017/1/27/14370854/trump-refugee-ban-order-muslim">was remarkably extreme</a> in both substance and execution, and threw airports all over the country into chaos. It led to the sudden <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/30/white-house-lowballs-impact-of-trump-ban.html">detention of hundreds of people</a> and many others being turned away from flights or sent back out of the US after landing there. It also led to massive, spontaneous protests across the country and, eventually, the courts stepping in to block it. (A <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/6/29/15892378/muslim-ban-work-visa-airports-refugees">greatly scaled-back version</a> went into effect months later.)</p>
<p id="q9IohW">The travel ban fiasco defined the beginning of the Trump presidency, overshadowing everything else he tried to do and poisoning any attempts at outreach he might have hoped to make. </p>
<p id="X2Si21">It also <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/8/14525228/president-bannon-steve">fed a narrative</a> that Bannon, not Trump, was truly pulling the strings in the White House — a narrative the president didn’t like very much. So Bannon was reined in somewhat. There was to be no more blindsiding the rest of the administration with monumental executive orders. He was now clearly one adviser among many.</p>
<h3 id="F6YcvP">Bannon has spent the past few months waging war against his rivals in the administration</h3>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PFyB4bFvQ_LUtmgKKLW9ADAGpRM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074249/GettyImages_631289914.jpg">
<cite>Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty</cite>
<figcaption>Jared Kushner and Bannon had a falling-out.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="PQjccQ">Bannon then transitioned from shock and awe to something more like trench warfare — he and his “nationalists,” against people he viewed as his rivals in the administration, whom he referred to with the epithet <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/14/15209072/steve-bannon-trump-kushner-globalists">“globalists.”</a></p>
<p id="jtlJMI">Publicly, Bannon has styled his role as trying to make sure Trump sticks to his campaign platform against establishment-oriented advisers who are trying to steer him in a more conventional direction. And this means a lot of conflict.</p>
<p id="Cbeelc">On trade policy, he wanted tougher measures against China but faced opposition from National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs COO. “That’s a fight I fight every day here,” Bannon <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant">said to Kuttner</a>. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying. We gotta do this. The president’s default position is to do it, but the apparatus is going crazy. Don’t get me wrong. It’s like, every day.”</p>
<p id="dTA3ks">Meanwhile, on foreign policy, Bannon has sparred with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. He reportedly <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/trumps-syria-strike-is-sign-of-bannons-waning-influence.html">opposed</a> Trump’s strike in Syria in April, and has been arguing <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/mattis-had-wade-feud-between-furious-white-house-rivals-mcmaster-and-bannon-646228">against McMaster’s recommendations</a> to send more troops to Afghanistan. But he also claims to be using his influence with the president to get rid of lower-level State and Defense Department officials he dislikes. “I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State,” he <a href="http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant">told Kuttner</a>.</p>
<p id="VJ39K4">There have also been many reports about Bannon coming into conflict with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser. Bannon seems to view Kushner as too beholden to business and New York elite opinion on controversial matters. Their conflict started spilling out into the press <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/14/15209072/steve-bannon-trump-kushner-globalists">in April</a>, and is sometimes said to include Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, as well.</p>
<p id="A5QwNl">Overall, Bannon has made many enemies in the administration. These rivals essentially view him as a mischief maker beholden to his own ideological faction rather than to the success of the administration as a whole. And fairly or not, he’s gained a reputation for leaking and trying to undermine other officials in the media. </p>
<p id="tY1tq3">So when John Kelly came in as chief of staff and started thinking about how he should shake up the West Wing, Bannon’s continued presence in the administration came into serious question. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html?_r=0">New York Times reported</a> Monday that Bannon could well be fired, and that he has been blamed for leaks. And Trump <a href="http://time.com/4902506/steve-bannon-trump-white-house/">was vague</a> on Bannon’s future at a press conference Tuesday, saying, “We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon.” And now he’s out.</p>
<h3 id="pUxfDC">What Bannon couldn’t do: turn the GOP left on economics</h3>
<p id="DpF0Pz">In reflecting on Bannon’s influence in the administration now that he’s headed out the door, it’s worth looking back at an excited interview he gave to <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747">journalist Michael Wolff</a> back during the transition.</p>
<p id="MZnD8t">“We’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” Bannon said. He continued:</p>
<blockquote><p id="AMTXCy">It's everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I'm the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, ironworks, get them all jacked up. We're just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.</p></blockquote>
<p id="Nlfrux">If this had happened, it would have been a fascinating start to the Trump administration. Infrastructure spending polls <a href="https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/839538613364932622">incredibly well</a>, meaning the new president would have begun his term with an initiative that could unify rather than divide the public. Meanwhile, Democrats (particularly those in red states) would have faced enormous pressure to work with Trump, and even holdout Republicans would likely fear getting on the wrong side of the new president.</p>
<p id="n5o5wP">But the White House didn’t end up doing anything like this. Instead, Bannon’s infrastructure push was relegated to the bottom of the administration’s priority list. There hasn’t been a serious, substantive push on it all year. </p>
<p id="oSzTPL">There were understandable reasons. New roads and bridges cost money, and Trump would need Congress to give him that money. The problem was that Republican leaders who controlled Congress simply didn’t support ramping up infrastructure spending. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress faced powerful partisan incentives to oppose the administration, so an effort to work with them would have been risky. </p>
<p id="8PkxFt">So the White House decided to sign on to GOP leaders’ preferred agenda of health reform first, then tax reform — an agenda that’s now in shambles.</p>
<p id="DLxBDr">Much of the rest of Bannon’s hoped-for economic nationalist agenda has fallen by the wayside too. Trump has put the kibosh on major new multilateral trade deals, but hasn’t yet done much to roll back the existing status quo (advisers have warned him that tougher measures against China could start a trade war). Bannon’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/steve-bannon-pushing-for-44-percent-marginal-tax-rate-on-the-very-rich/">reported suggestions</a> that Trump back a tax increase on the wealthy have also been ignored. The result is that when it comes to economics, Trump’s administration has looked a lot more conventionally Republican than Bannon would have preferred.</p>
<h3 id="dj7Kll">Bannon’s departure will likely change the administration most in lower-profile ways </h3>
<p id="ArvRGZ">We certainly shouldn’t expect the spirit of the Trump administration to greatly change now that Bannon is departing. The president himself has repeatedly demonstrated that his own instincts on racial controversies are much like Bannon’s. And Bannon has gotten like-minded people into prominent administration jobs — for instance, fellow immigration hardliners Sessions and Miller will continue to guide policy there.</p>
<p id="uCSu06">Still, with Bannon’s exit, Trump really is losing a high-level adviser who was deeply committed to operationalizing — rather than watering down — some of the most controversial parts of his agenda. </p>
<p id="bOcZJA">Again, while President Trump may share Bannon’s instincts on many matters, he has little interest in policy details or lower-level personnel appointments. Bannon was greatly interested in both, and worked hard to try to ensure that they complied with his “nationalist” views.</p>
<p id="IAMmY8">Trump could get someone else to fill a similar role (Stephen Miller seems an obvious candidate). But it’s also possible that, beyond Trump’s tweets and top-level decisions, the administration could drift in a more establishment-oriented direction on some fronts without Bannon there to wage lower-profile fights. Who will keep pushing against the tide on trade policy, or try to veto lower-level agency appointments? </p>
<p id="1aAVj5">The bigger picture, though, is that after seven months of the Trump administration under chief strategist Steve Bannon, the president’s approval rating is <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/">down at 37 percent</a>. That’s hardly all Bannon’s fault — he was a skeptic of the health care push and doesn’t seem to be embroiled in the Russia scandal. </p>
<p id="mYgqX4">Still, much of Trump’s failure to start off his presidency on a more positive and popular footing should indeed be laid at Bannon’s feet. Bannon has often seemed more focused on pleasing the Breitbart base and waging war against his own enemies than on making Trump a successful and broadly popular president. So with a chief strategist like that, it’s no surprise that Trump has ended up largely unsuccessful and unpopular.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resignsAndrew Prokop2017-08-18T15:30:02-04:002017-08-18T15:30:02-04:00Donald Trump’s tumultuous week, explained
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/rxCshKUJr13yXiwiqumQHf23X_o=/0x0:3600x2700/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56260503/AP_17226808923695.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Protestors in New York during a moment of silence for Heather Meyer on Monday. | Craig Ruttle/AP</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Neo-Nazis marched and a chief strategist got fired.</p> <p id="ND478u">There was really only one political story this week — Donald Trump’s erratic behavior in the wake of a white supremacist murder in Charlottesville, Virginia, and its fallout. But the sheer volume of events and kaleidoscopic array of consequences — ranging from the removal of a statue in Annapolis, Maryland, to the imperiling of the president’s relationship with key congressional Republicans, to the departure of chief strategist Steve Bannon — can be difficult to keep up with. </p>
<p id="yOmN7E">Here’s what you need to know.</p>
<h3 id="lZOlNA">Trump pulled his usual tango with an explosive group</h3>
<p id="SyBDEY">It all started with the “Unite the Right” gathering of “alt-right” white supremacists and neo-Nazis in Charlottesville who rallied in defense of the town’s statue of Robert E. Lee and marched carrying torches and chanting slogans like <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16141456/renaud-camus-the-great-replacement-you-will-not-replace-us-charlottesville-white">“Jews will not replace us.”</a> The rally <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/12/16138900/charlottesville-va-car-crash">attracted counterprotesters, and a Nazi sympathizer named James Field</a> drove his car into them, injuring nine people and killing one woman, Heather Heyer.</p>
<ul><li id="EuMras">
<strong>Trump’s back-and-forth: </strong>Trump’s initial reaction Saturday<strong> </strong>blamed “many sides” for violence, leading to several days of criticism, a <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/14/16144582/trump-tango">reluctant Monday statement</a> clearly blaming white supremacists, and then <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16153238/5-moments-trump-charlottesville-press-conference">unscripted remarks on Tuesday</a> where Trump returned to the many sides theme and even defended some of the marchers. </li></ul>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ArEhZRmLy7qZALLyXsZxT_DsvnM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074649/AP_17227740611964.jpg">
<cite>Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP</cite>
<figcaption>President Donald Trump reaches into his suit jacket to read a quote he made on Saturday regarding the events in Charlottesville, as he spoke to the media in the lobby of Trump Tower on Tuesday afternoon.</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li id="P27cxS">
<strong>Trump is Trump:</strong> The remarks were, fundamentally, nothing new for a man who launched his ascendancy in Republican politics with birther conspiracies, said a judge was unfit to serve based on Mexican ancestry, and campaigned on a Muslim ban. </li>
<li id="o4U2jg">
<strong>Why it matters:</strong> Practical responses to Trump continue to vary across the board, but this appears to be the week when the American political elite finally reached the conclusion that, whatever you think of Trump, he’s not going to change who he is.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="7b0LkB">Corporate America kinda ditched Trump</h3>
<p id="RTjArO">Backlash to Trump’s flirtations with white supremacist groups led to increasing pressure on American businesses to distance themselves from the White House by quitting his various advisory councils. At first, Trump was defiant, but eventually he bowed to the inevitable by folding the councils. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/nnHDgmQbtyhZHrWjYXUHEQNJk-U=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074679/GettyImages_633680300.jpg">
<cite>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>President Trump delivers opening remarks at the beginning of a policy forum with CEOs from IBM, PepsiCo, Blackstone Group, GM and others at the White House on February 3.</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li id="JaDqQu">
<strong>Trump is no longer intimidating: </strong>Early in his presidency, many businesses clearly <em>feared</em> Trump, and there was a lot of discussion of the possibility that he could shift corporate culture in favor of domestic production and against outsourcing by using his Twitter bully pulpit. But Trump is now sufficiently unpopular that the dynamic, if anything, goes the other way, and companies are under pressure to <em>not</em> align with the White House. </li>
<li id="4dy7Ac">
<strong>Business still loves Trump: </strong>But make no mistake — these advisory councils are just for show. Corporate America has every intention of <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/17/ceos-take-trump-talks-underground-241758?lo=ap_f1">continuing to work quietly with the White House</a> on their shared priorities of slashing regulations and cutting corporate taxes. It’s just that it will happen in a low-key way. </li>
<li id="G4CoXm">
<strong>CEOs could check Trump if they cared: </strong>When corporate America gets <em>really</em> mad about something, they make their voice heard through collective action (and massive political spending) via groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. If CEOs wanted to, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/17/16157288/ceos-trump-white-nationalism-business">they could use these levers against Trump</a>. Instead, they’re <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/8/10/16122636/american-action-tax-reform-ad">running ads in support of Republican tax cuts</a>. </li>
</ul>
<h3 id="KGiTQn">Trump’s fighting with Senate Republicans</h3>
<p id="otrrP0">Charlottesville fallout does appear to be further imperiling Trump’s relationship with Senate Republicans, a relationship that had already been strained after the failure of Obamacare repeal efforts. The key step here was Trump taking the extraordinary measure of <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/17/16160928/trump-oust-jeff-flake-senate">directly calling for a primary challenge to Jeff Flake (R-AZ)</a>, though the clashes are multidimensional.</p>
<ul>
<li id="H10Yxe">
<strong>Republicans are hitting Trump:</strong> Incumbent senators — including majority leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Arizonian John McCain — were quick to rally around Flake. And the nexus of the Flake attacks with Charlottesville is emboldening other Republicans to express their annoyance. Sen. <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/17/16163974/corker-senate-republicans-trump-dance">Bob Corker complained that Trump hasn’t shown the “stability” or “competence”</a> the country needs from a president, while Tim Scott (R-SC) said Trump’s “<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/17/politics/tim-scott-donald-trump-charlottesville/index.html">moral authority is compromised</a>.”</li>
<li id="SZafLw">
<strong>Flake challenging Trump on policy:</strong> Trump’s explicit endorsement of a primary challenger to Flake appears to have helped inspire Flake to <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16166996/republican-against-trump-immigration">clearly and directly break with Trump on immigration</a>, standing up for the value of the “low-skilled” immigrants whom Trump wants to bar from the country. </li>
<li id="krymR3">
<strong>Why it matters:</strong> Since FDR’s time, presidents have shied away from challenging same-party presidents — even ones who defy them — for precisely this reason. Open warfare tends to provoke <em>more</em> policy dissent from the senator you’re at war with, while incumbent senators like to protect other incumbents. </li>
</ul>
<h3 id="MvmJ95">We started talking about Confederate statues </h3>
<p id="PZDRDP">The Unite the Right rally was not primarily about the Robert E. Lee statue that inspired it, but it has helped spark a national debate on the subject by inspiring critics of Confederate monuments to step up their activism, while inducing Trump to explicitly endorse them as an integral part of American history. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/_5XKPIlmKV6kRPL-GQsLR6iK9qw=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074795/GettyImages_832835236.jpg">
<cite>Denise Sanders/ Baltimore Sun/TNS via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>The Jackson-Lee Monument in Wyman Park was removed after workers took down four Confederate monuments overnight on Wednesday evening in Baltimore.</figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li id="APOSbx">
<strong>Monuments coming down in Maryland: </strong>Early in the week, the mayor of Baltimore <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/baltimore-confederate-statues.html?mcubz=1">quickly and quietly dispensed with the city’s Confederate statues</a>, and a few days later, the governor of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/md-senate-president-slams-hogan-for-fast-vote-to-remove-taney-statue/2017/08/17/41833b12-8390-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html">Maryland removed a statue</a> of the author of the Supreme Court’s infamous <em>Dred Scott</em> decision from public grounds. </li>
<li id="XlRJt8">
<strong>Trump stands up for statues: </strong>Seeking to shift conversation away from the very dicey ground of neo-Nazi marches, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/16/16154738/lee-davis-washington-jefferson">Trump tweeted vocal support</a> for Confederate statues (a position that has traditionally polled well), asking, “who’s next, Washington, Jefferson?” </li>
<li id="2QJ72N">
<strong>What’s next</strong>: While Confederate statues are swiftly dispensed with in no-longer-Southern Maryland, the issue <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/15/16147286/virginias-political-fight-confederate-monuments">looks set to be a significant flashpoint in November’s elections in Virginia</a> — a state that’s emerged as blue-leaning while retaining significant amounts of Southern identity. The Confederate statues that sit in the United States Congress are also coming under increasing criticism from Democrats, but there’s no sign they’ll be removed. </li>
</ul>
<h3 id="G2jtmK">Steve Bannon got fired</h3>
<p id="zJ5Yng">To cap things off, on Friday afternoon word began leaking from the White House that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resigns">president had decided to fire chief strategist Steve Bannon</a> — or maybe that Bannon had already submitted his resignation. The White House confirmed that Friday would be Bannon’s last day. </p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/UUeNWJ-eL4m0DaszE2_T2apfAU4=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9074835/GettyImages_632914802.jpg">
<cite>Drew Angerer/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>President Trumps speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin surrounded by his closest council on January 28. All but Vice President Mike Pence have been fired. </figcaption>
</figure>
<ul>
<li id="PQ8nLd">
<strong>Progressives have been demanding this:</strong> Bannon was Trump’s most visible and clearly identifiable link to the alt-right, and pressure to fire him has come from progressive groups and congressional Democrats since the day his appointment was announcement. </li>
<li id="DteRgA">
<strong>He seems to have been fired for other reasons: </strong>One read of Trump’s outbursts this week regarding Charlottesville is that it’s his way of clarifying that<strong> </strong>getting rid of Bannon does not mean backing down in the face of critics who charge him and his administration with racism. Bannon got fired because he’s been the source of inter-office leaks and drama, not because Trump has any fundamental disagreement with his view of ethnic politics. </li>
<li id="iHek5i">
<strong>What’s next? </strong>A critical question moving forward is what Bannon’s departure augurs for coverage of the Trump administration from his Breitbart media empire. In the immediate aftermath of the news, rank-and-file Breitbarters seemed ready to go to war with Trump. But it’s far from clear that Bannon himself wants to go in that direction. </li>
</ul>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16167762/bannon-charlottesvilleMatthew Yglesias2017-08-18T15:30:01-04:002017-08-18T15:30:01-04:00With Bannon out, will Breitbart News go to war with the Trump administration?
<figure>
<img alt="President Trump Meets With Cyber Security Experts At White House" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CxY-1v1A6nvROQHNEMFNqICAxfg=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56261631/633196026.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="ma2UMQ">With Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House, there are some signals that Breitbart News — the website Bannon ran that has relentlessly boosted Trump — might be about to turn on the administration.</p>
<p id="YNReGe">Without Bannon, "it's now a Democrat White House," one anonymous source close to the former chief strategist reportedly told New York magazine’s <a href="https://twitter.com/gabrielsherman/status/898594013409882112">Gabriel Sherman</a>. Sherman reported that Bannon is expected to return to Breitbart — the far-right media network he raised to a national platform under President Donald Trump.</p>
<p id="aYayqQ">Some of Bannon’s former colleagues at Breitbart, like senior editor at large Joel Pollak, have been declaring war much more literally.</p>
<div id="Z8LppA">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WAR?src=hash">#WAR</a></p>— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) <a href="https://twitter.com/joelpollak/status/898595085247324161">August 18, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="RLImWB">Pollak wrote that the decision to part ways with Bannon “may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration” in a Breitbart article with the headline <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/18/steve-bannon-gone-trump-risks-becoming-arnold-schwarzenegger-2-0/">“With Steve Bannon Gone, Donald Trump risks becoming Arnold Schwarzenegger 2.0”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="3dBUSe">Bannon was not just Trump’s master strategist, the man who turned a failing campaign around in August 2016 and led one of the most remarkable come-from-behind victories in political history. He was also the conservative spine of the administration. His infamous <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/05/03/finally-know-steve-bannons-whiteboard-donald-trump-promises-voters/">whiteboard</a> in the West Wing listed the promises Trump had made to the voters, and he was determined to check as many of them off as possible. Steve Bannon personified the Trump agenda.</p>
<p id="8c4ewp">With Bannon gone, there is no guarantee that Trump will stick to the plan. That is why — too late, in retrospect — conservative leaders <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/18/conservatives-to-trump-bannon-conway-vital-agenda/">wrote</a> to the president Friday to advise him that Bannon and campaign manager-turned-counselor Kellyanne Conway were too valuable to lose.</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="kCyxOb">Breitbart London’s editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam posted a mock-up of a “Bannon 2020” campaign banner.</p>
<div id="xRpvJD">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bannon?src=hash">#Bannon</a> <a href="https://t.co/sJSonso9Ll">pic.twitter.com/sJSonso9Ll</a></p>— Raheem (@RaheemKassam) <a href="https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/898589642441859073">August 18, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="541eyv">The White House confirmed Bannon’s departure Friday, after <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resigns">months of rumors</a> that the strategist was on shaky ground. Trump signaled in April that he was unhappy with Bannon’s growing media profile. Internal divisions within the White House have only escalated since.</p>
<p id="5Sb2ca">Even so, Bannon, and his Breitbart media world, is deeply intertwined with Trumpism. It won’t be an easy divorce, and going against Trump could prove to be an extraordinarily risky move for Breitbart, which has grown in national name recognition largely because of Trump’s base. </p>
<p id="hT6gRX">War would be as much a test of Breitbart’s brand as it is Trump’s — and it’s unlikely that it would end in Breitbart’s favor.</p>
<p id="ZEQnLI">There is an alternative route for Breitbart, which the <a href="https://twitter.com/costareports/status/898598473016016896">Washington Post’s Robert Costa</a> pointed out. Bannon has always been careful not to wage war against Trump specifically, but rather find foils in his inner circle — specifically advisers like Gary Cohn and Jared Kushner, whom Bannon sees as corporate “globalists.” In this scenario, the war wouldn’t be against Trump, but against those that are leading him astray.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16162456/bannon-breitbart-news-trump-warTara Golshan2017-08-18T15:00:03-04:002017-08-18T15:00:03-04:00The NY Post Survivor: White House cover is once again relevant
<figure>
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LdfqmySi4dgAccQcLnna1ZOof4g=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56261117/GettyImages_645173996.0.jpg" />
</figure>
<p id="cnUTJa">Just over three weeks ago — on July 27 — the New York Post made its cover “Survivor: White House” amid reports of chaos and uncertainty in the administration. With Steve Bannon’s departure Friday, three of the seven officials pictured are now gone. </p>
<div id="WdPzYT">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tomorrow's cover: In the latest episode of “White House Survivor,” the West Wing descended into chaos Thursday <a href="https://t.co/9n4WabNpff">https://t.co/9n4WabNpff</a> <a href="https://t.co/CEihk60hwD">pic.twitter.com/CEihk60hwD</a></p>— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/890719845184135168">July 27, 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<p id="Qf3Ecf">Bannon joins Reince Priebus (who was ousted July 28) and Anthony Scaramucci (who was removed from his new job as communications director before he could even formally start on July 31). </p>
<p id="K0Hwu1">They join other notable departures from the Trump administration in its first not-quite-seven months: </p>
<ol>
<li id="tqBzMQ">Acting Attorney General <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/1/30/14446744/muslim-ban-justice-department-sally-yates">Sally Yates</a> — fired January 30, 2017</li>
<li id="G0QfQv">National Security Adviser <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/14/14611124/michael-flynn-resigns-russia-news">Michael Flynn</a> — resigned February 13, 2017</li>
<li id="7FXGIV">Deputy Chief of Staff <a href="http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-former-rnc-official-is-first-to-depart-1490896455-htmlstory.html">Katie Walsh</a> — resigned March 30, 2017</li>
<li id="8xNPbZ">FBI Director <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/10/15612660/james-comey-fbi-fired">James Comey</a> — fired May 9, 2017 </li>
<li id="cmKEuS">Director of communications Mike Dubke — resigned May 30, 2017 </li>
<li id="Tnj3Oc">Director of the Office of Government Ethics <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/6/15929742/walter-shaub-office-government-ethics-resigned">Walter Shaub</a> — resigned July 6, 2017</li>
<li id="uVYe6l">White House director of communications <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/21/16010474/sean-spicer-resigns-white-house-press-secretary-quits">Sean Spicer</a>— resigned July 21, 2017</li>
<li id="2sDfSB">White House Chief of Staff <a href="https://www.vox.com/2017/7/28/15724206/reince-priebus-fired-trump">Reince Priebus</a> — ousted July 28, 2017 </li>
<li id="Y5ZimN">White House communications director <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/28/16053694/anthony-scaramucci-white-house-explained">Anthony Scaramucci</a> — fired July 31, 2017</li>
<li id="aHwlm9">White House chief strategist <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16145188/steve-bannon-fired-resigns">Steve Bannon</a> — resigned August 18, 2017 </li>
</ol>
<p id="7hdIw6">Also on the New York Post cover is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom President Trump has repeatedly mocked on Twitter; Trump also told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> in July that, in hindsight, “If he was going to recuse himself [from the Russia investigation], he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else.” </p>
<p id="iCtJVi">Sessions, though, still has his job.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16169520/ny-post-survivor-white-house-coverKelly Swanson2017-08-18T14:40:02-04:002017-08-18T14:40:02-04:00Bannon is out. Bannon’s strategy lives on.
<figure>
<img alt="President Trump Returns To White House From Speaking At CPAC Event" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CYOPUc8Hw31T8K7bYSXE2cpGJIY=/0x0:3000x2250/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/56260761/644965412.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Donald Trump doesn't need help being a racial demagogue.</p> <p id="MpINqN">When Steve Bannon was hired as President Trump’s chief strategist — one of the first two hires the president-elect announced after winning the election — it was correctly regarded as a symbol that Trump would govern as the same sort of populist he’d been during the campaign: loose-cannon attention seeking in style, “law and order” hawkishness about immigration, Islam, and crime in policy.</p>
<p id="1vPWJd">But the opposite isn’t true. Bannon’s departure from the White House, announced on Friday after weeks of speculation, doesn’t mean the Trump administration is pivoting away from “Trumpism” — the racialized populism Bannon represented. If anything, it means that Bannonian strategy has been so deeply embedded in the DNA of the Trump administration that Bannon’s own presence is no longer needed.</p>
<p id="gLze0s">Consider Tuesday’s press conference — in which Trump said that the white supremacist march in Charlottesville featured “very fine people” and deflected blame for the violence that killed one counterprotester onto “bad people on both sides” — a commencement ceremony. Trump isn’t firing Bannon. He’s graduating from him.</p>
<h3 id="NwTGLG">Bannon wasn’t the driver of Trumpism within the Trump administration</h3>
<p id="ipRahj">For all the drama of the Trump White House, with its alarming turnover and constant backstabbing leaks, it’s easy to assume that no one in the executive branch has any idea what they’re doing. That might look even more true with the departure of Bannon, who cultivated (to Trump’s annoyance) a reputation as being the master puppeteer of the Trump phenomenon. </p>
<p id="YG0JQJ">But it’s not. If the leaks are to be believed, Steve Bannon doesn’t appear to have been really <em>doing </em>anything in the Trump White House. When new Chief of Staff John Kelly made the rounds to figure out who fit where within the West Wing org chart, <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/11/kelly-considers-more-west-wing-changes-trump-241560">according to Politico</a>, he apparently heard from multiple people that Bannon didn’t actually have any responsibilities. According to the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/us/politics/steve-bannon-trump-white-house.html">New York Times, </a>Bannon spent the last week “in exile,” with no face-to-face meetings with Trump — even as Trump’s response to Charlottesville seemed to reflect Bannon’s worldview as well as anything else the president had done. As the rumors of Bannon’s ouster circulated, one anonymous staffer <a href="https://www.axios.com/white-house-review-nears-end-officials-expect-bannon-firing-2474443198.html">snarked to Axios</a> that at least his departure would be smooth because he didn’t have any projects to wrap up.</p>
<p id="YWtAJQ">While Bannon has been swanning around with his whiteboard, though, other figures in the White House and the rest of the executive branch have been working to implement the social arm of the Trumpist agenda: to crack down on legal and unauthorized immigration, to re-empower police officers to do what they need to do to crack down on street crime and left-wing protest. </p>
<p id="uQw63I">Take Stephen Miller, who helped write the RAISE Act — the only major bill the Trump administration has had a hand in introducing since inauguration, which would cut legal immigration to the US in half over 10 years — and who is increasingly central to the White House’s communications work. Take Sebastian Gorka, whose willingness to defend the Trump administration’s record on terrorism has made him a favorite of the president. </p>
<p id="zR3NTV">Take Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who, after a period of public tension, appears to have been reassured of his stature by Kelly, and who is plugging along with his threats to deprive cities of federal grants because they don’t do enough to help federal agents enforce immigration law. Or take Kelly himself, who was a staunch defender of the Trump administration’s fights against “bad hombres” of all stripes as secretary of homeland security.</p>
<p id="zzXlMq">Not all of these figures liked Bannon himself. And not all of them necessarily believe that Trump’s style is helpful to getting his agenda enacted, the way Bannon does. But they’re all doing the work of turning Trumpism into not just a political style but the policy of the United States government.</p>
<h3 id="0hFJkC">Bannonism has failed and Trumpism has won</h3>
<p id="j3scKP">But the “law and order” policies that have emerged as the core of Trumpism are only half of the governing philosophy Bannon himself supports. Bannon’s label for his own philosophy — “economic nationalism” — might be a dubious attempt to distance himself from the ethnic nationalists who make up many of his allies, but it’s also a reminder that economic populism is part of Bannonesque Republicanism. </p>
<p id="qMg90p">And the Trump administration hasn’t seen much of that at all. The plum economic jobs have gone to Goldman Sachs bankers — whom Breitbart calls “globalists,” complete with globe emojis, in an increasingly unsubtle anti-Semitism. </p>
<p id="4hCCXa">Trump distinguished himself among his primary opponents for opposing cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and for saying that government should make sure people don’t die for lack of health coverage. Then he proceeded to spend weeks at a time pressuring Congress to pass Obamacare repeal bills that would restrict coverage. He may have called the bill passed by the House “mean” after the fact, but it didn’t stop him from holding a Rose Garden party when it passed the chamber, or induce him to oppose a Senate bill that would also have stripped coverage from millions of people.</p>
<p id="01lddq">And then there have been all the doomed attempts to pivot to infrastructure.</p>
<p id="meFG0P">The fact of the matter is that Trump has, since the election, ceded economic policy to the Republican establishment in exchange for them not attempting to “tame” him on social and racial issues (and simply on issues of style).</p>
<p id="6qVlaA">As Ezra Klein <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16169464/steve-bannon-fired-donald-trump">wrote</a> earlier today, Trump simply doesn’t appear interested in doing the work that would push forward an economic agenda. He is much more interested in saying racially inflammatory things and getting people to pay attention to him. That might, on occasion, advance a policy agenda on “law and order” issues — it can’t really advance an agenda on economic ones.</p>
<p id="LJQWpL">Trumpism is becoming policy without Trump’s personal involvement. Bannonism would require a bigger lift. And it’s one the president is uninterested in providing.</p>
<h3 id="EMAsf4">Bannon’s genius is for attention. Trump had that talent from birth.</h3>
<p id="2IptU6">Despite Bannon’s lofty monologues about “economic nationalism,” though, his key contribution to the conservative movement and the Trump presidency wasn’t his ideology. It was a tactical insight: to treat American politics as a constant culture war.</p>
<p id="w2HoDN">Breitbart under Bannon was more hawkish on immigration than other conservative outlets, sure. But it was notable for its willingness to jump on stories outside Washington that could cast people on the “other side” of the culture war — liberals, higher ed institutions and academics, immigrants, people of color — as the villains. The site had a “Black Crime” vertical. The stories themselves weren’t politics stories, but they were part of a politics.</p>
<p id="x5Rb7s">If people were outraged, at least they were paying attention. And if “the left” was outraged and overreacted, even better — it would make the Breitbarters look like the victims and their critics look like the ones who wanted to “divide” America.</p>
<p id="FOHvBe">Of course, all of these were tricks that Donald Trump was using long before Steve Bannon got on board. Trump didn’t actually need to be taught that saying inflammatory things was good for keeping all attention on you, or that there was a subset of Americans who were so hungry for an alternative to “political correctness” that they’d accept tired racism as blunt truths. </p>
<p id="VdZiU3">The reason Donald Trump was the Republican presidential nominee was because he knew these things. Bannon simply stepped in in the fall of 2016 to make sure Trump wasn’t steamrolled by the Republican establishment into forgetting them.</p>
<p id="panRN7">After half a year of the Trump presidency, it’s eminently clear that there is never any reason to worry that Donald Trump will forget how to say inflammatory things for attention. </p>
<p id="1E6wwI">Trump’s post-Charlottesville press conference on Tuesday, reportedly lauded by Bannon as a “high point,” was also a reminder that Trump didn’t need anyone whispering in his ear to remind him to praise the “very fine people” marching at a white supremacist rally and lie about who had initiated the violence. He did that on his own. Bannon was free to go.</p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16169470/trump-fire-bannon-racism-breitbartDara Lind