Donald Trump may be a loose cannon, but at least he has “grownups” around him who can check his
more extreme instincts. That’s what the president’s critics used to tell themselves by way of reassurance, said Dan de Luce and John Hudson in Foreign Policy. But it is now worryingly clear that the grown-ups in his inner circle have been cut out of the loop. Neither James Mattis nor Rex Tillerson – the seasoned hands who serve, respectively, as Trump’s secretary of defence and secretary of state – were consulted about the recent sweeping restrictions on immigration. The man really calling the shots is Trump’s chief strategist and political advisor, Steve Bannon. He was the driving force behind the controversial travel ban, and he also played a major role in crafting the president’s aggressively populist inaugural speech. What’s more, he has just been given a permanent seat on the
National Security Council, the president’s key advisory group on foreign policy.
Bannon is a deeply alarming character – a true ideologue, said Heather Digby Parton on Salon. The former boss of the right-wing website Breitbart has previously boasted of his desire to destroy the existing social and political order, and described Christian civilisation as under mortal threat from unassimilated immigrants and radical Islam. It’s scary to think that this man is now in a position
to shape foreign policy, said Steve Mollman on Quartz. Only last year, he predicted that a military confrontation in east Asia was inevitable. “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to ten years,” he declared in a radio interview. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Bannon is in a strong position today, said Jamie Weinstein on The Daily Beast, but he may come to
regret his prominence. People are talking of him as the real power behind the throne; the hashtag #PresidentBannon has started cropping up; The New York Times has reported that Bannon told colleagues during the presidential campaign that he viewed Trump as the “imperfect vessel” through which he would achieve his populist revolution. Trump, who follows the media closely, won’t appreciate this narrative. The president has no problem with infighting among his staff, but “as a narcissist of the highest order”, he’ll fiercely resent the suggestion that “someone other than himself is running the show”.
