How Steve Bannon pulled one of the greatest upsets in American politics

JUDY WOODRUFF: Finally tonight: an inside look at the relationship and the political
partnership between President Trump and his controversial adviser Steve Bannon.
In Joshua Green's new book, "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming
of the Presidency," he examines how Bannon became a prominent nationalist conservative
voice that helped create one of the biggest upsets in American politics.
Green is also a senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek, and he joins me
now.
Welcome to the "NewsHour."
JOSHUA GREEN, Author, "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of
the Presidency": Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Josh Green, you start the book out saying Donald Trump wouldn't be president
if it weren't for Steve Bannon.
In a nutshell, who is Steve Bannon?
JOSHUA GREEN: Bannon is a guy who is very much an outsider like Donald Trump is.
And although he doesn't come from money -- he was raised in a blue-collar Navy family in
Richmond, Virginia -- he has the same basic outlook toward life and toward elites that
Donald Trump developed.
Bannon has a very unusual background.
He joined the Navy.
He went from the Navy to Harvard Business School.
He talked his way into a job with Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the 1980s,
and moved from there to Hollywood film financing, and eventually became a conservative documentarian,
met the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, and wound up in charge of Breitbart
News, the right-wing news site.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, what brings these two men together?
Are they the ideological, philosophically similar people some might think?
What is the magic that brings them together?
JOSHUA GREEN: I think the magic that brings them together is that they have the same basic
political outlook.
If you look at Trump and what he said about politics going all the way back to the 1980s,
there have been several clear populist themes.
He is against free trade.
He thinks the U.S. is getting taken advantage of by foreign governments.
Bannon's populism is very much the same, but he adds the element of immigration, hostility
to immigrants, both legal and illegal.
And when Bannon met Trump in 2011 and began tutoring him on politics, that was the idea
that he really put forward.
And if you look at the politician Donald Trump became, it's very much a reflection of Steve
Bannon's politics.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this -- so, is this something that's driven by being against outsiders?
JOSHUA GREEN: It really is.
It's driven by the idea that the country is in decline and needs to fundamentally return
to an earlier time, when people like Steve Bannon were at the heart of the American economy
and American story, so the 1950s, when you had a strong manufacturing base, when there
were -- it was clear, the forces of good and evil in the world, communism vs. democracy.
Both Trump and Bannon don't like the rise of the younger, multiethnic generations of
Americans that the Obama coalition reflected, and are doing everything they can to fight
against it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, speaking of that, what we have read about Steve Bannon, Breitbart,
elements of racism, the so-called alt-right movement, even anti-Semitism, how much of
that is a strain here?
JOSHUA GREEN: It's a big strain.
And one of the effects that Bannon had on politics was to open up a kind of sluice gate
of people who existed really only on the fringes of American and far-right talk radio and on
Internet boards and try and bring them into the political conversation, the mainstream
political conversation, by giving them a voice on places like Breitbart News.
And what Bannon thought he was doing was marshaling these hidden political forces to go up against
not Democrats, but the establishment Republican leaders, people like Mitch McConnell, Paul
Ryan and, before him, House Speaker John Boehner, who was Bannon's original target and was forced
to resign in 2015, in part because of the energies that Bannon and Breitbart News unleashed
in Washington politics.
JUDY WOODRUFF: OK, on just as straight a measurement as you can, how successful has Steve Bannon
been in getting his ideas across in this administration?
JOSHUA GREEN: Well, it would be hard to argue that Bannon hasn't been shockingly successful
overall.
If you go back three years -- and I tell this story in the book -- Steve Bannon was very
closely allied with Jeff Sessions, who, at the time, was the populist Republican senator
from Alabama.
And Bannon tried to talk Sessions into running for president, not because he thought he could
win, but because he thought Sessions could elevate the issues of immigration and antipathy
to free trade to the top of the Republican agenda.
And Sessions ultimately decided not to do that.
But by linking up with Donald Trump, Bannon was able to not only get that on top of the
Republican agenda, but make it all the way into the White House and have real power to
enact some of these policies, in a way that he never did as a conservative publisher.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is Bannon involved in the Russian probe?
JOSHUA GREEN: So far, he seems not to be directly implicated.
I know he hasn't hired a lawyer, as many people in the Trump family and the Trump administration
have to defend them against potential investigation.
So, as far as we know, Bannon is not yet implicated in the Russia scandal.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But you have reported, I know, in, I guess, language that we can't use here,
that Bannon is interested in smearing Robert Mueller as much as he can.
JOSHUA GREEN: Well, if you look at what Steve Bannon really does for Donald Trump, going
all the way back to the beginning of their relationship, it isn't that he's a Machiavellian
figure, as he's been portrayed.
It's that Steve Bannon is the guy who goes out and attacks Trump's critics and his enemies,
whether that's someone like Megyn Kelly at FOX News, or the mainstream media after Trump's
"Access Hollywood" tape was released on the eve of the debates.
Right now, Trump feels like he needs someone aggressively defending him in the Russia probe.
And he wasn't happy with the way that his own White House spokespeople were doing the
job.
JUDY WOODRUFF: If you look at the polls right now, in -- I guess, in large part, Donald
Trump seems to be holding on to his base, but there is some evidence of slippage.
And you have got, what, 40 percent of Americans with a strong opposition to Donald Trump.
If it continues this way, does Steve Bannon stay where he is?
JOSHUA GREEN: I think it does, because Bannon and Trump both seem to believe that it is
absolutely vital to keep Trump's base angry and riled up and active.
And there is some pretty interesting polling data to indicate that that's working.
The Washington Post/ABC had a poll that came out this week saying that only 9 percent of
Republicans thought that the Russia collusion posed any sort of problem.
And, to me, that's an indication that Bannon's methods are working.
And while he hasn't gotten Trump anywhere near a majority of popular support, he has
managed to maintain that critical 40 percent base that Trump is going to rely on.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Josh Green, nobody else has gotten this deep a look at Steve Bannon.
So, thank you very much.
"Devil's Bargain" is the book, "Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency."
Thank you very much.
JOSHUA GREEN: Thanks so much for having me.

How Steve Bannon pulled one of the greatest upsets in American politics

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