It had already been widely reported that President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, was among the very few top officials around Trump who quietly cheered as he resisted pressure to unequivocally lay the blame for the deadly violence in Charlottesville on Nazis and white supremacists.
But now Bannon has gone public with this view in a pair of new interviews. Indeed, he has gone even further: In a striking admission, Bannon confirmed that he views the racial strife and turmoil unleashed by Charlottesville as a political winner for Trump.
In the first interview, with the New York Times, Bannon explicitly defended the portion of Trump's comments in which he seemed to defend the rallying white supremacists' opposition to the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Trump asked rhetorically whether this would ultimately lead to the removal of statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Here's Bannon:
"Bannon . . . said in an interview that if Democrats want to fight over Confederate monuments and attack Mr. Trump as a bigot, that was a fight the president would win.
"'President Trump, by asking, 'Where does this all end'--Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln--connects with the American people about their history, culture and traditions,' he said.
"The race-identity politics of the left wants to say it's all racist," Bannon added. "Just give me more. Tear down more statues. Say the revolution is coming. I can't get enough of it."
In the second interview, with the American Prospect, Bannon (believing himself to be off the record) elaborated a bit more on this general theme:
"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. 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."
Remarkably, Bannon is gleefully discussing the political dividends that (he believes) Trump will reap from the fraught aftermath of racial violence that led to the burial of a young woman who was murdered for showing up to protest racism and white supremacy. In so doing, Bannon endorses the general view, also expressed by Trump, that leftist violence ("tear down more statues") is partly to blame for the ongoing racial strife, and defends Trump's drawing of an equivalence between statues honoring Washington and Jefferson on the one hand, and those honoring the leading lights of the Confederacy on the other.
On Thursday morning, Trump doubled down on this view in a series of tweets, calling efforts to remove Confederate statues and monuments "foolish":
"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson--who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also . . . the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!"
Numerous historians have already pointed out the many problems with this equivalence. While Washington and Jefferson were indeed slave owners, they helped create the nation, while Confederate leaders sought to secede from it in order to set up a separate nation perpetuating slavery. Others have noted that the whole point of many of these Confederate monuments was to celebrate white supremacy during the Jim Crow era.
Ultimately, though, what is really significant here is Bannon's frank admission that he believes the current ongoing turmoil benefits Trump. To be sure, a more cynical, self-interested motive may be at work. As the New York Times reports:
"Mr. Bannon, whose future in the White House remains uncertain, has been encouraging Mr. Trump to remain defiant. Two White House officials who have been trying to moderate the president's position suggested that Mr. Bannon was using the crisis as a way to get back in the good graces of the president, who has soured on Mr. Bannon's internal machinations and reputation for leaking stories about West Wing rivals to conservative news media outlets."
There is ample evidence that this may help Bannon's standing with Trump. The Post reports that Trump--like Bannon--also believes his remarks reiterating that "both sides" are to blame for the Charlottesville violence will boost him politically:
"Trump felt vindicated after the remarks, said people familiar with his thinking. He believes that his base agrees with his assertion that both sides are guilty of violence and that the nation risks sliding into a cauldron of political correctness."
With the special counsel's probe closing in, and with his numbers sliding deeper into the danger zone, Trump plainly believes that valiantly defying the forces of political correctness (meaning the forces that want him to unequivocally condemn racism and white supremacy) will rally his supporters to his side. Bannon is clearly feeding that instinct, at least partly to shore up his own standing with the president. Neither, naturally, recognizes any obligations or duties on the president's part to try to calm the antagonisms that are being unleashed, and neither appears even slightly concerned about the damage they could do to the country, at a time when experts are warning that this sort of rhetoric could cause an escalation in white supremacist activity.
As Trump's new tweetstorm in defense of Confederate monuments confirms, he appears determined to keep feeding these antagonisms. And new polling explains why.
Editorial on 08/18/2017