RACISM/STEVE BANNON/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Amid reports of disgust and dismay among White House officials in the wake of President Trump’s insistence that ‘both sides’ bear the blame for the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Va.., Saturday, there appears to be one member of the administration who couldn’t be happier: White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.
While others have decried Trump’s remarks as a stain on the presidency, Bannon sees Tuesday’s news conference as a ‘defining moment’ in which Trump rejected the ‘globalists’ and defended ‘his people,’ according to a report from Axios.
One unnamed source told Axios that Bannon was ‘proud’ that Trump ‘stood up to the braying mob of reporters.’
And in a phone call to American Prospect co-founder and co-editor Robert Kuttner on Tuesday, Bannon seemed thrilled that Trump’s opponents are talking so much about race.
The longer Democrats ‘talk about identity politics, I got ’em,’ Bannon said. ‘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.’
Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News who once called the site a ‘platform for the alt-right,’ helped Trump form the nationalist message that cemented his base of support during the 2016 campaign.
But Bannon dismissed the white supremacists who demonstrated in Charlottesville as a ‘bunch of clowns.’…
And Bannon did not seem concerned that Trump appeared to distance himself from him Tuesday. Rather, he said his rivals within the State and Defense departments are ‘wetting themselves.’ “
-William Cummings, “Bannon: If left focuses on race, ‘we can crush the Democrats’,” USA Today, Aug. 16, 2017 11:02am