TRUMP PEOPLE/STEVE BANNON: “So much for the eclipse of the Steve Bannon wing of the Trump administration.
Barely weeks ago, after President Donald Trump described his firebrand political guru in a Wall Street Journal interview as just ‘a guy who works for me,’ speculation was rife that Bannon was on his way out of the White House.
But the former Wall Street investment banker and Breitbart News supremo, who said earlier this year the administration’s goal is nothing less than the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’ put his head down.
Now, a string of sharp turns by the President back toward the populist, nationalist DNA that underpinned his 2016 campaign have Trumpologists, who keep track of who is up and who is down in the chaotic West Wing, sensing Bannon ascendent.
Trump’s recent embrace of populist positions has seen him announce an exit from the Paris climate accord. He unleashed searing criticism of NATO leaders in Brussels two weeks ago and is using the London terror attacks to renew his push for a travel ban on residents of a group of predominantly Muslim nations.
All of those issues were important themes in an election campaign in which Trump harnessed extreme dissatisfaction in the heartland over the political establishment. And his new direction clearly fits in to the ‘America First’ ideology that fueled his rise, and with which Bannon is closely identified.”
-Stephen Collinson, “Trump’s populist wing on the rise,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, June 6, 2017 8:38am