This is part of Hello, Trumpworld, Slate’s reluctant guide to the people who will be calling the shots now—at least for as long as they last in Washington.
Steve Bannon, the scruffy MAGA populist known for railing against immigration and bullying centrist Republicans, reached the height of his power at the beginning of the first Trump administration—and quickly fell. In 2017, back when he was associated with the then-popular term alt-right, he had served only months in his role as the White House’s chief strategist when he was pushed out of the position after the deadly (and optically damaging) “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. A year later, he broke with Donald Trump more seriously after it was reported he had insulted Trump’s children.
But Bannon is playing the long game, and his alienation from the White House failed to kill his political ambitions. He got behind MAGA Senate campaigns, and it was reported that he and Trump remained in contact. He also refocused on media, first with Breitbart, then through his War Room show and associated films. He tried (but largely failed) to orchestrate a far-right populist movement in Europe. He spread vast amounts of dangerous COVID- and election-related misinformation to energize dissident conservatives. He urged inflammatory MAGA Republicans to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House.
It can be tempting to think of Bannon as a silly character with a bloated sense of his own importance. The 71-year-old has a corny obsession with the Roman Empire and quotes philosophers as he parrots conspiracy theories and rails against the elites; he broadcasts from his own basement and wears layered polo shirts. But we shouldn’t dismiss him. Although Bannon worships Trump, he has enough of his own ideological vision to be more than a sycophant clinging to a powerful man’s coattails. He knows to look more broadly for power, to build connections and a following for his own particular brand of politics. Some of his regular guests, such as Kash Patel, Scott Bessent, and Bill McGinley, are already taking positions of power within the administration.
He may not formally return to the White House, but Bannon will use this moment to push his provocateur allies in positions of power toward a stark “America First” agenda. He’ll fight the influence of the party’s Elon Musk–Vivek Ramaswamy tech cohort (“we’re going to rip your face off,” he recently warned Musk) and ruthlessly attack any sign of softness from the GOP. Most important, he’ll continue to hammer the intellectual arguments for the kind of pure, nativist-populist version of the MAGA agenda that he sees as key to building a lasting political movement.
Bannon isn’t built for compromise, and if midterm elections give Democrats any kind of upper hand, he’ll be swept out of power again. (He could also face a personal setback from his upcoming trial over his border wall charity scheme.) But for as long as Trumpism has political dominance in the halls of Congress, Bannon will be there to try to police the ideological purity of the movement.
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