For Bannon, Trump’s campaign and his presidency were partly a dare. Stop me if you can—and if you can’t, then you deserve Trump. His contempt for Democrats was, in its way, not directed at Democrats per se, but at what he regarded as the mediocrities they produced, a set of placeholders who did not have the necessary political gifts. He would enumerate their names in one breath: Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand. “That’s who they’ve got? That’s who they’ve got? Stop! You’re killing me.”
