The New York Times was ecstatic that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon resigned on Friday, bidding him “good riddance” and saying that his exit was a “relief.”
The Times editorialized that having a pro-nationalist figure like Bannon “at the pinnacle of White House policy making was a nightmare come to life.”
Though Democrats and globalists, much to the Times’ delight, occupy the West Wing, the Times points out that Bannon “still poses a danger for our broader politics” because now “he is freer to rally his forces against anyone who doesn’t toe his nationalist-protectionist line.”
While Bannon was the “architect” of many of Trump’s popular nationalist policies that got him elected, according to the Times, he was “also a voice against some of Mr. Trump’s worst excesses, like his firing of James Comey, the F.B.I. director; his abusive campaign against Jeff Sessions, the attorney general; and his appointment of Anthony Scaramucci, an inexperienced Wall Street loyalist, as communications director.”
The Times adds that Bannon also “disparaged the ideas of using force against North Korea and of expanding military involvement in Afghanistan.”
After labeling Bannon the “Pepe the Frog reptilian brain of the Trump presidency,” the Times points out that Bannon was “more wily and complicated than his now-former boss” and highlights that he was “against foreign trade, overseas military involvement and big-money Washington elitism.”
That’s why “Bannonism” resonated with the blue-collar “Reagan Democrats”—like the ones who voted for President Barack Obama and then voted for Trump—in the Rust Belt that Bannon profiled in his 2012 The Hope and the Change documentary about those very disaffected voters.
“Mr. Bannon argued for maintaining a clearer bead on the needs of working-class voters who blamed an out-of-touch Washington for ills from joblessness to opioid addiction,” the Times observes. “His departure liberates him to advocate a program of ‘economic nationalism’ that many Trump voters say they voted for.”
The Times also acknowledges that Bannon was one of the first conservatives to realize that stories about the corrupt Clinton Foundation “wouldn’t stick unless they resonated beyond the right-wing echo chamber” before stating that Bannon “is a potentially more damaging force to both parties now.”
“Still, good riddance,” the Times concludes with what seems like a sigh of relief that one fewer America-first nationalist is in the West Wing.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.