A lot of people are discussing President Trump's ban on Muslim immigrants, or the court order on Friday that overturned it for green card holders and those "who have already arrived in the US and those who are in transit, and who hold valid visas". But there is a more intriguing story emerging of how and why this happened, and it seems Trump adviser Steve Bannon is at the center of it:
Washington Post:
President Trump’s elevation of his chief political strategist to a major role in national security policy, and a White House order banning refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries from U.S. entry, appeared to come together as cause and effect over the weekend.That isn't completely true, except the "formal" part of it:
Stephen K. Bannon — whose nationalist convictions and hard-line oppositional view of globalism have long guided Trump — was directly involved in shaping the controversial immigration mandate, according to several people familiar with the drafting who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The order, which has ignited sweeping domestic and international backlash, came without the formal input of Trump’s National Security Council, the committee of top national security aides designed to ensure the president examines all policy issues from different perspectives.
In Trump’s case, the NSC has not yet been fully formed. Key department heads, including the secretary of state, have either not been confirmed or had little chance to be briefed by those under them.
But even as the mechanism for full consultation with defense, diplomatic, intelligence and other national security chiefs remains incomplete, Bannon’s policy influence was established late Saturday in a presidential directive that gave him something no previous president has bestowed on a political adviser: a formal seat at the NSC table.
While [President] Obama did not include political strategist David Axelrod in his own NSC organizational directive, Axelrod frequently showed up at the meetings — particularly those having to do with strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq — to the consternation of [CIA director Robert M. Gates] and others."Presence in a meeting" versus "formal presence in a meeting" is splitting hairs.
On the other hand:
George W. Bush barred his political strategist, Karl Rove, from NSC meetings, according to Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff. “The president told Karl Rove, ‘You may never come to a National Security Council meeting,’ ” Bolten said at a conference on the NSC and politics last fall.The office of the presidency is no longer separated from political considerations, and this is yet another legacy of Obama.
“It wasn’t because he didn’t respect Karl’s advice or didn’t value his input,” Bolten said. “But the president also knew that the signal he wanted to send to the rest of his administration, the signal he wanted to send to the public, and the signal he especially wanted to send to the military is that the decisions I’m making that involve life and death for the people in uniform will not be tainted by any political decisions.”
But there is a positive aspect of this:
Trump sees Bannon as a generational peer who shares his anti-establishment instincts and confrontational style. According to several people familiar with their relationship, Bannon has cultivated a rapport with Trump over security issues in recent months, and impressed Trump with his grasp of policy in talks they have held together with top intelligence and military officials.Love him or hate him, Bannon helped to shape Trump's message on the campaign trail. By keeping Bannon close, Trump is staying close to the ideology which he conveyed to the voters. This is a positive that most presidents seem to forget once in office, especially after the multitudes of advisers get in their ears. Without a governing philosophy/ideology, then a president is nothing more than a balloon in the wind.
The new president relies on Bannon to ensure that his campaign promises and nationalist worldview are being followed and are shaping national security strategy. Trump’s approval of Bannon’s new role is seen inside the White House as the formalization of a dynamic that has already been at work for weeks, these people said.
This begs the question: Who is Steve Bannon?
The Daily Beast:
I met Steve Bannon—the executive director of Breitbart.com who’s now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafort—at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse on Nov. 12, 2013...Are you seeing what this is? This is Trump leading a rebellion, first within the Republican Party, and inevitably on the national level.
Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant.
“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.
I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:
“I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.”
...Trump’s decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by him—that of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it. Trump’s behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannon’s belief in Leninist tactics. As the Bolshevik leader once said, “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”
But this rebellion has other interesting aspects:
Medium:
While the article linked above is from blogger Yonatan Zunger, it brings together published information in an informative way that is worthy of notice. Please read the whole piece.However, here are some parts of note. First, Zunger's story links to an article from CNN, which states:
Friday night, DHS arrived at the legal interpretation that the executive order restrictions applying to seven countries -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen -- did not apply to people with lawful permanent residence, generally referred to as green card holders.As the Zunger points out:
The White House overruled that guidance overnight, according to officials familiar with the rollout. That order came from the President's inner circle, led by Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. Their decision held that, on a case by case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the US.
Also notable is that career DHS staff, up to and including the head of Customs & Border Patrol, were kept entirely out of the loop until the order was signed.The Trump government is very much a top-down hierarchy, not an inclusive meritocracy.
Before you suggest this could be a one-off situation, consider this:
The Guardian is reporting (heavily sourced) that the “mass resignations” of nearly all senior staff at the State Department on Thursday were not, in fact, resignations, but a purge ordered by the White House. As the diagram below (by Emily Roslin v Praze) shows, this leaves almost nobody in the entire senior staff of the State Department at this point.
As the Guardian points out, this has an important and likely not accidental effect: it leaves the State Department entirely unstaffed during these critical first weeks, when orders like the Muslim ban (which they would normally resist) are coming down.
The article points out another point worth highlighting: “In the past, the state department has been asked to set up early foreign contacts for an incoming administration. This time however it has been bypassed, and Trump’s immediate circle of Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Reince Priebus are making their own calls.”Admittedly, this could still be a one-off situation, wherein Trump's inner circle is handling things until they can put their own people in place at the State Department. However, considering one of Trump's executive orders last week was a hiring freeze, does this sound like a guy who is looking to fill a lot of positions?
Also, when you consider Steve Bannon's stated goal to "bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment", this does fit within the mold of someone doing exactly that.
Before I leave Zunger's story, he has one last intriguing speculation:
Finally, I want to highlight a story that many people haven’t noticed. On Wednesday, Reuters reported (in great detail) how 19.5% of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, has been sold to parties unknown. This was done through a dizzying array of shell companies, so that the most that can be said with certainty now is that the money “paying” for it was originally loaned out to the shell layers by VTB (the government’s official bank), even though it’s highly unclear who, if anyone, would be paying that loan back; and the recipients have been traced as far as some Cayman Islands shell companies.Finally, in news from the far Left of America, aka California:
Why is this interesting? Because the much-maligned Steele Dossier (the one with the golden showers in it) included the statement that Putin had offered Trump 19% of Rosneft if he became president and removed sanctions. The reason this is so interesting is that the dossier said this in July, and the sale didn’t happen until early December. And 19.5% sounds an awful lot like “19% plus a brokerage commission.”
Conclusive? No. But it raises some very interesting questions for journalists to investigate.
AFP:
Momentum! What kind? Polls? A proposition on the ballot? Not quite:A campaign for California to secede from the rest of the country over Donald Trump's election is gaining momentum, with supporters allowed to start collecting signatures for the measure to be put to a vote.Wake me up when they have something more than "you can now go out and collect a boatload of signatures".
California's Secretary of State Alex Padilla gave the green light on Thursday for proponents of "California Nationhood" -- also known as Calexit -- to start collecting the nearly 600,000 signatures needed for the measure to qualify on the November 2018 ballot.
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