Of all the various components of Trump’s circus of administration, the most surreal has to be how everyone else associated with him turns out to be even more awful. This ranges from the mindless tools like Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway and Dr. Ben Carson; far-right traditionalists like Mike Pence and Jeff Sessions; but the toast of his administration has to be Steve Bannon, his chief strategist.
Bannon’s involvement with the President has been one of the biggest controversies of the administration for three reasons. The first one is that before Trump, Bannon was the executive chair of Breitbart News,a far-right news organization that is responsible for borderline-racist articles,which embodies Bannon’s alt-right political viewpoints. The second is how he symbolizes the emptiness of Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp,” due to his past of being a banker for Goldman Sachs and making documentaries funded by Citizens United that were propaganda films for the organization. The third is the scary amount of influence Bannon has over Trump, knowing all of this background information about him. This is why recent news involving shrinkage of Bannon’s power is being celebrated, but still has bittersweet results.
Trump’s relationship with Bannon was criticized the most when Bannon was placed on the National Security Council’s cabinet level principals committee, where national security issues are discussed within the top people of Trump’s cabinet. Obviously this was criticized by both sides of the political spectrum for appointing a political adviser to the council; and raised concern about how much influence Bannon, a man whose ex-wife swore in court that he didn’t want his daughters going to school with a Jewish student and was also denounced by conservative and former employee, Ben Shapiro as being a white supremacist had on the President. This is why there was much relief when it was announced this week that Bannon was being removed from the council.
Despite the somewhat variations on the reason for this from the press, the majority are agreeing that General H.R. McMaster was responsible for this move. McMaster is Trump’s current National Security Advisor, and replaced Michael Flynn after he resigned due to his connections with Russia. That scandal was a blessing in a disguise because McMaster’s experience in the Middle East and his rational view of the Middle East has made him the one sane member of Trump’s cabinet. In accordance with McMaster’s sanity, he supposedly insisted that Bannon be removed from the council. However, despite the lapse in sanity the administration has had, there’s still the fact that after Bannon was removed and Rick Perry was added. However, Perry is the lesser of two evils since he’s not a white nationalist per say.
Despite the fact that Trump’s administration will never stop being a circus, the decreasing influence of Steve Bannon and increasing influence of General McMaster shows that not all is lost. In the end, we’ll be able to make it through his administration with the assistance of the momentarily lapses of sanity within Trump’s administration.
