UPDATED: Question To Steve Bannon: If This Is What You Think, Why Not Warn Deplorables?

Conflict, Critique, Donald Trump, Family

What Mr. Bannon said about the Trump family (he’s correct about Ivanka) and its dealings is unflattering, to say the least. Via NBC News:

In a new book, Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, calls a meeting of Trump campaign officials with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

The book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” soon to be published by Henry Holt, was written by Michael Wolff, a columnist and an author who has written several books, including a biography of Rupert Murdoch. In it, Bannon rips into Donald Trump Jr.; White House senior adviser Jared Kushner; and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort for taking a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. …

Via Politico.com comes the full statement from President Donald Trump, in response to Steve Bannon.

Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books.

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.

A question to Steve Bannon: If this is what you think, why did you not warn Deplorables?

UPDATE: MORE UGLY details from the new book on Trump’s White House.

1. Trump’s team had concerns about his ability to process information and make decisions

Trump has excoriated media accounts that he spends hours a day watching television and has said he spends a good deal of time reading “documents.”

Wolff’s reporting indicated Trump’s team felt otherwise.

“He didn’t process information in any conventional sense,” Wolff wrote. “He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate. He trusted his own expertise — no matter how paltry or irrelevant — more than anyone else’s. He was often confident, but he was just as often paralyzed, less a savant than a figure of sputtering and dangerous insecurities, whose instinctive response was to lash out and behave as if his gut, however confused, was in fact in some clear and forceful way telling him what to do. It was, said [former deputy chief of staff Katie] Walsh, ‘like trying to figure out what a child wants.’” …

Steve Bannon Said Ivanka Trump Is ‘Dumb As A Brick.’ You Can Take That To The Bank.

Donald Trump, Ethics, Family, Morality

I said so myself in “What Ivanka Wants, Ivanka Gets“:

Donald’s daughter has no place in the White House, no matter how cutely she “argues” for her ambitions:

“I want to be a force for good.” (Who defines “good,” Ivanka? Limited and delimited government means that it’s not you.)

“I want to pursue my passions.” (Your passions, Ivanka, are not necessarily the people’s passions—or even within the purview of their government.)

Whether she’s tweeting about the accomplishment that is the war on Syria or about inflicting her kids on China’s first couple, Ivanka’s tweets have the insipid emptiness of a contestant in a beauty pageant.

“Proud of my father for refusing to accept these horrendous crimes against humanity.”
“Proud of Arabella and Joseph for their performance in honor of President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan’s official visit to the US.” …

In the same column, I also called Jared Kushner her poodle, and asked readers “to study Mr. Kushner. The man’s a mouse. Have you ever heard Jared Kushner utter a word in public? Do you even know what he sounds like? The poor man looks low T—like he might one day go the way of Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn Jenner. (I love LGBTQ, so long as they come in peace.)”

It transpires now that, “Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner reportedly agreed that if either ran for president, it would be Ivanka.“ Well of course.

From “Steve Bannon says Ivanka Trump is ‘dumb as a brick’“:

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, called Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter and top White House adviser, “dumb as a brick” in journalist Michael Wolff’s new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed a manuscript of the book on Wednesday.

Earlier Wednesday, The Guardian and New York Magazine published excerpts of the book, which included a host of critical comments by Bannon about top West Wing advisers and members of the president’s family.

A spokesman for Ivanka did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This isn’t the first time Bannon has taken a public shot at Ivanka.

1: How Do You Know You’re A Neocon? Hint: It Has To Do With How You See US History

Cultural Marxism, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy, States' Rights, The State, War

A neoconservative will have hastened to condemn a wise and magnanimous man, John F. Kelly, for seeing redeeming qualities in Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee. was an honorable man,” said White House Chief of Staff Mr. Kelly. How dare he! And how right he was. Lee was a great American.

When Lee resigned his commission as the colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in April 1861 and subsequently took command of the state forces of Virginia, and eventually of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, he was only acting to “fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country.”

John F. Kelly is an honorable and wise American.

Allen C. Guelzo, the author of the piece condemning Kelly, writes in the neoconservative, Cultural Marxist tradition, whereby history is painted over with a cheap patina of current political dogma, to conceal traditional, republican virtues of yesteryear.

Pat Buchanan on The Great Man.

Israel Maintains An Oil Pipeline With Iran, While Urging The US To Aggress Against The Islamic Republic

Foreign Policy, Iran, Israel, Neoconservatism, Trade

My-my. Israel maintains an oil pipeline with Iran. It is alleged that “Iranian oil no longer flows through the pipeline.” What’s not in dispute is that Israel urges the US to aggress against Iran, while it keeps its options open.

Trade is excellent always. It forestalls war (something that makes neocons like Mad Max Boot a very sad boy). Israel should trade with regional powers. It should just refrain from hypocrisy—getting the US to fight battles Israel itself is trying to admirably avert via trade.

There is great secrecy, not least a gag order, involved in the dealings of the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC) a joint venture with Iran, set up in 1968.

Israel, worried about national security, maintains tight control over EAPC, to the extent that articles about its business dealings must pass through the military censor.

Instead of renewing EAPC’s concession, which came up this year, Israel formed a new company with the same initials, the Europe Asia Pipeline Co, owned by the government. It will take over the original EAPC’s responsibilities by September, with an option to extend the handover period an additional six months.

Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said in a statement on Sunday that it had extended the gag order on EAPC for five more years and broadened it to include the new company, known as EAPC-B, as well.

MORE.