Siege: Trump Under Fire

by Michael Wolff

For Bannon, losing the House could in fact be quite the perfect plan. A good part of his bitter fight with Trump—beyond the fact that everyone fought bitterly with Trump—had to do with Trump’s willingness to let the Republican leadership substitute its agenda for his. Trump and Bannon’s populist revolution had, too often, defaulted to standard Republican politics. So here, in defeat, Bannon might get his all-out war with the Republican Party. It was the RINOs—the Republicans in Name Only—who had not adequately defended Trump; hence, if the House was lost, it was the RINOs who would be responsible for his impeachment. If the House flipped and Trump was threatened with impeachment, the deplorable wing of the party would be energized and ascendant (although even for Bannon the nature of that energy had its fearsome prospects). What would rouse this beast more than anything was its leader’s destruction. Depending on Bannon’s mood, he was ready to bring it on, and he could see how the martyrdom of Donald Trump might be a net positive for himself and the populist movement. Trump would be turned into a powerful symbol, victim and martyr, and in the end that might play better than Trump as the movement’s infuriating and unpredictable standard-bearer.