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An awful day for Trump's presidency
https://www.axios.com/an-awful-day-for-trumps-presidency-2473799057.html ^ | August 15, 2017 | Jonathan Swan

Posted on 08/16/2017 2:39:11 PM PDT by be-baw

On Tuesday night, while Gary Cohn was fuming about President Trump's latest comments, Steve Bannon was excitedly telling friends and associates that the "globalists" were in mass freakout mode.

Today, Bannon reveled in the disbanding of the president's business council, seeing this as yet more evidence that the Trump administration is at odds with the "Davos crowd," as Bannon often calls these corporate elites, in a voice dripping with contempt.

Bannon saw Trump's now-infamous Tuesday afternoon press conference not as the lowest point in his presidency, but as a "defining moment," where Trump decided to fully abandon the "globalists" and side with "his people." Per a source with knowledge: "Steve was proud of how [Trump] stood up to the braying mob of reporters" in the Tuesday press conference. This account of Bannon's thinking has come from conversations with his friends and associates who've been in touch with him since the racist carnage in Charlottesville.

Bannon has not meaningfully advised the president about his response to Charlottesville. He's still on the outs with Trump, who has been calling him a leaker for weeks, though the president described Bannon as a good person on Tuesday.

They spoke by phone on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, according to a source with knowledge of the calls, but the response to Charlottesville has been all Trump, and Trump at his purest.

On the phone to Bannon, Trump asked his chief strategist "where does it end?" according to a source with knowledge of their conversations. Trump wasn't referring to the white supremacists, but to the counter-protesters whom the president believes are on a slippery slope towards "changing history" by tearing down monuments of Confederate heroes and potentially, he has said, the Founding Fathers like George Washington, who owned slaves.

Bannon, who is in New York today, has a view of Trump's Charlottesville response that horrifies many of his West Wing colleagues:

Unlike some of Trump's other top aides — who have varied on a spectrum between frustration and disgust since the president's Charlottesville remarks — Bannon has unapologetically supported Trump's instinct to apportion blame to "both sides."

Sources who've spoken with Bannon since Charlottesville say he views this moment as analogous to the campaign moment when Hillary Clinton condemned half of Trump's supporters to a "basket of deplorables." Bannon believes that if Trump condemned all the people who protested the pulling down of the Robert E. Lee statue then he'd fall into a trap set by leftists, the establishments of both parties, and the mainstream media. (Some of Bannon's colleagues say this is an absurd argument. They point out it was a crowd of white supremacists holding tiki torches and chanting racist slogans, and that this is no time for the president to be searching for the "fine people" in the group. They say Trump should be condemning the tiki torch crowd unequivocally and leaving the debate over statues and free speech to another, less racially-heated, day.)

Bottom line: Both Trump and Bannon are of one mind, and, within the White House at least, theirs is a minority view. They saw the backlash to Charlottesville as an example of political correctness run amok and instinctively searched for "their" people in that group of protesters. Bannon has told associates that Trump, on Tuesday afternoon, took it to the next level for the country by asking where does it end? He especially loved Trump's line: "I wonder, is it George Washington next week?


TOPICS: Cheese, Moose, Sister
KEYWORDS: axios; bannon; breitbart; charlottesville; cvariots; fireandfury; handwringers; michaelwolff; stevebannon; third100days; trumpmedia
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To: madison10

President Trump (to my knowledge) has never publicly stated that Bannon is leaking to the press.

Just more “according to sources” stuff.


21 posted on 08/16/2017 2:57:10 PM PDT by Bratch ("The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke)
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To: madison10

Well, he gave him faint praise as a “nice person.” But, he said he was a leaker, and he was a late-coming flatterer to Trump’s campaign who came after Trump won the primary and didn’t have anything to do with his success. His most cutting remark: He said, “I know Steve Bannon.”


22 posted on 08/16/2017 2:57:43 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: be-baw

This is completely unsourced. We are just supposed to believe the author. I do not.


23 posted on 08/16/2017 2:59:54 PM PDT by Stingray51
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To: nickcarraway
🙄
24 posted on 08/16/2017 3:02:04 PM PDT by Jane Long (Praise God, from whom ALL blessings flow.)
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To: be-baw

At this point Trump and Bannon need to play Solomon with the press.

Here is what they need to do.

1. Announce a press conference concerning Steven Bannon

2. Get the names of all of the reporters in the room and put them on an executive pardon order.

3. Start the Press conference asking if they feel that Steve Bannon needs to answer for his supposed “crimes”? When they say YES.

4. Lead Steven Bannon out in prison chains and put him on the floor in front of the press gaggle.

5. Announce that everyone on the press pool is on an executive pardon order for pardoning them for the death of Steve Bannon, and that Bannon has agreed to this ahead of time, but it is conditional that everyone in the press pool will have to unanimously agree to kill Steve Bannon and that it will be filmed and streamed online.

6. Tell them if they think that Steve Bannon is such a monster they should use their fists and feet to beat and stomp him to death and his death will be filmed.

If the press press just walks away, tell them they have chosen wisely.

If not the press is shown as the monsters they are and Steve’s Sacrifice would not be in vain.


25 posted on 08/16/2017 3:03:20 PM PDT by GraceG ("It's better to have all the Right Enemies, than it is to have all the Wrong Friends.")
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To: be-baw

Ha! No wonder Michael Merced was so livid about Trump’s speech.

Still winning.


26 posted on 08/16/2017 3:04:54 PM PDT by robroys woman
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To: be-baw
Axios= Same Old Politico Liars / Lefties ..

Axios are the old politico frauds who liars .

This is more BS and fake news .

These creeps are Bannon enemies and liars .

27 posted on 08/16/2017 3:05:44 PM PDT by ncalburt (ll)
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To: GraceG

Are you in Colorado by chance? Or Shirley Jackson’s ghost?


28 posted on 08/16/2017 3:05:57 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: be-baw

Axios is a crap source citing unnamed sources

Brannon does not give interviews. While this might be his reaction I consider this article to be pure speculation


29 posted on 08/16/2017 3:06:50 PM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: be-baw

“I wonder, is it George Washington next week?

...
Not quite. Al Sharpton is now gunning for Thomas Jefferson.


30 posted on 08/16/2017 3:08:09 PM PDT by ckilmer (q e)
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To: GraceG

WTF?


31 posted on 08/16/2017 3:10:48 PM PDT by stevio (God,Guns,Guts.)
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To: be-baw

Good for Bannon. He knows the truth.


32 posted on 08/16/2017 3:10:59 PM PDT by mulligan
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To: madison10

True, the whole thug was a bunch of morons fighting a bunch of thugs.

There were probably a large handful of patriots there to protest the removal of the statue, but they weren’t part of the battle, I would assume.


33 posted on 08/16/2017 3:11:48 PM PDT by cyclotic (Trump tweets are the only news source you can trust.)
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To: stevio

Well I think the media needs to be called out on the absolute demonization of Steve Bannon, they have been working since before the election to paint him as someone worse than the most evil man who ever lived.

The reason is because they envy the way Breitbart took the wind out of their sails, I doubt very many of them actually believe all this crap they spew at Bannon, but they need to be called out their crap.

Punks like Acosta and the press pool like to talk a big game, but they themselves are a bunch of wimps. They should be forced to confront directly their own biases against the man.


34 posted on 08/16/2017 3:16:57 PM PDT by GraceG ("It's better to have all the Right Enemies, than it is to have all the Wrong Friends.")
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To: JoSixChip

I have come to the conclusion it does not matter what Trump says or does not say. The media is out to destroy him and will twist his words and second guess him.

I’m much more interested in what he does.


35 posted on 08/16/2017 3:18:52 PM PDT by henkster (Ask your favorite liberal to take the "Snowflake Challenge.")
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To: nickcarraway

Careful Nick, you’re NeverTrump is showing........


36 posted on 08/16/2017 3:20:12 PM PDT by Lurkinanloomin (Natural Born Citizen Means Born Here Of Citizen Parents - Know Islam, No Peace -No Islam, Know Peace)
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To: Fantasywriter
Yeah, but what's the symbology?


Boonndock Saints reference, had to do it.
37 posted on 08/16/2017 3:24:34 PM PDT by mrmeyer (You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. Robert Heinlein)
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To: be-baw
Bannon is smart enough to know this is a Soros psy-op or staged event;

paid for crisis-actors on both sides,

innocent people getting hurt and killed.

38 posted on 08/16/2017 3:32:55 PM PDT by Sontagged (Lord Jesus, please frogmarch Your enemies behind You as You've promised in Your Word)
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To: be-baw

The awesomeness of this Press Conference was too awesome for the Fake News.

I am tired of people damning President Trump with faint praise.

Here is my opinion: He is GREATNESS. He might make it a BIG 4:

Washington—Jefferson—Lincoln—Trump.

I only omit Reagan because the 4 I counted were at a NATION-BUILDING moment in history.

Nation Building in AMERICA.


39 posted on 08/16/2017 3:33:04 PM PDT by Disestablishmentarian
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To: WVMnteer

American Jewry looks to be out for blood, even though Trump has proved himself a friend.

Goldman Sachs and Gary Cohn can go straight to hell.


40 posted on 08/16/2017 3:35:04 PM PDT by Rome2000 (SMASH THE CPUSA-SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS-CLOSE ALL MOSQUES)
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