Steve Bannon is out. H.R McMaster is in. It’s now starting to dawn upon some of Donald Trump’s most ardent admirers that they’ve been had. The main accomplishment of the Trump revolution has not been to forward populism. It has been to devour its own children.
Trump entered office declaring that ‘this carnage ends now’. Not so. He’s been producing it in the form of lopping off the head of one adviser after another. Bannon is now promising ‘war’ against the ‘New York Democrats’ that he says are running the White House. If so, it will be a fratricidal one.
Bannon was of course the brains behind Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, something that the president could never entirely forgive. Trump wants all the credit for himself. Now Bannon is headed back to familiar territory, Breitbart News, the truculent alt-right outlet, where he hopes to revive his crusade for economic nationalism.
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