Descriptions of Steve Bannon

Oh hell

"I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of Trump and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breech for this president's efforts to make America great again."

"My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of 'the evil empire' and to making films about Reagan's war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton's involvement in selling uranium to them."

"My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr."

https://www.axios.com/scoop-bannon-sends-regret-to-trump-1515329924-dbfe9439-59e0-4773-8d3d-079e5ee2b493.html

that would be "breach", sloppy steve

Bannon, a soothing voice as well as a professional agitator, tried to argue the dialectical nature of what they had achieved (without using the word “dialectical”). Because Trump’s success was beyond measure, or certainly beyond all expectations, the media and the liberals had to justify their own failure, he explained to the new president.

Other than Trump himself, Bannon was certainly the oldest inexperienced person ever to work in the White House.

It was a flaky career that got him here.

Catholic school in Richmond, Virginia. Then a local college, Virginia Tech. Then seven years in the Navy, a lieutenant on ship duty and then in the
Pentagon. While on active duty, he got a master’s degree at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, but then he washed out of his naval career. Then an
MBA from Harvard Business School. Then four years as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs — his final two years focusing on the media industry in Los Angeles — but not rising above a midlevel position.

In 1990, at the age of thirty-seven, Bannon entered peripatetic entrepreneurhood under the auspices of Bannon & Co., a financial advisory firm to the entertainment industry. This was something of a hustler’s shell company, hanging out a shingle in an industry with a small center of success and
concentric rings radiating out of rising, aspiring, falling, and failing strivers. Bannon & Co., skirting falling and failing, made it to aspiring by raising small amounts of money for independent film projects — none a hit.

Bannon was rather a movie figure himself. A type. Alcohol. Bad marriages. Cash-strapped in a business where the measure of success is excesses of riches. Ever scheming. Ever disappointed.

For a man with a strong sense of his own destiny, he tended to be hardly noticed. Jon Corzine, the former Goldman chief and future United States senator
and governor of New Jersey, climbing the Goldman ranks when Bannon was at the firm, was unaware of Bannon. When Bannon was appointed head of the
Trump campaign and became an overnight press sensation — or question mark — his credentials suddenly included a convoluted story about how Bannon & Co. had acquired a stake in the megahit show Seinfeld and hence its twenty-year run of residual profits. But none of the Seinfeld principals, creators, or producers seem ever to have heard of him.

Mike Murphy, the Republican media consultant who ran Jeb Bush’s PAC and became a leading anti-Trump movement figure, has the vaguest recollection of
Bannon’s seeking PR services from Murphy’s firm for a film Bannon was producing a decade or so ago. “I’m told he was in the meeting, but I honestly
can’t get a picture of him.”

The New Yorker magazine, dwelling on the Bannon enigma — one that basically translated to: How is it that the media has been almost wholly unaware
of someone who is suddenly among the most powerful people in government? — tried to trace his steps in Hollywood and largely failed to find him. The
Washington Post traced his many addresses to no clear conclusion, except a suggestion of possible misdemeanor voter fraud.

In the midnineties, he inserted himself in a significant role into Biosphere 2, a project copiously funded by Edward Bass, one of the Bass family oil heirs, about sustaining life in space, and dubbed by Time one of the hundred worst ideas of the century — a rich man’s folly. Bannon, having to find his opportunities in distress situations, stepped into the project amid its collapse only to provoke further breakdown and litigation, including harassment and vandalism charges.

After the Biosphere 2 disaster, he participated in raising financing for a virtual currency scheme (MMORPGs, or MMOs) called Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE). This was a successor company to Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), a dot-com burnout, whose principals included the former child
star Brock Pierce (The Mighty Ducks) who went on to be the founder of IGE, but was then pushed out. Bannon was put in as CEO, and the company was
subsumed by endless litigation.

Distress is an opportunistic business play. But some distress is better than others. The kinds of situations available to Bannon involved managing conflict,
nastiness, and relative hopelessness — in essence managing and taking a small profit on dwindling cash. It’s a living at the margins of people who are making a much better living. Bannon kept trying to make a killing but never found the killing sweet spot.

Distress is also a contrarian’s game. And the contrarian’s impulse — equal parts personal dissatisfaction, general resentment, and gambler’s instinct -
started to ever more strongly fuel Bannon. Part of the background for his contrarian impulse lay in an Irish Catholic union family, Catholic schools, and
three unhappy marriages and bad divorces (journalists would make much of the recriminations in his second wife’s divorce filings).

Not so long ago, Bannon might have been a recognizably modern figure, something of a romantic antihero, an ex-military and up-from-the-working-class guy, striving, through multiple marriages and various careers, to make it, but never finding much comfort in the establishment world, wanting to be part of it
and wanting to blow it up at the same time—a character for Richard Ford, or John Updike, or Harry Crews. An American man’s story. But now such stories
have crossed a political line. The American man story is a right-wing story. Bannon found his models in political infighters like Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove. All were larger-than-life American characters doing battle with conformity and modernity, relishing ways to violate liberal sensibilities.

The other point is that Bannon, however smart and even charismatic, however much he extolled the virtue of being a “stand-up guy,” was not necessarily a nice guy. Several decades as a grasping entrepreneur without a success story doesn’t smooth the hustle in the hustler. One competitor in the conservative media business, while acknowledging his intelligence and the ambitiousness of his ideas, also noted, “He’s mean, dishonest, and incapable of caring about other people. His eyes dart around like he’s always looking for a weapon with which to bludgeon or gouge you.”

However much a marginal, invisible, small-time hustler Bannon had been — something of an Elmore Leonard character — he was suddenly transformed inside Trump Tower, an office he entered on August 15, and for practical purposes, did not exit, save for a few hours a night (and not every night) in his temporary midtown Manhattan accommodations, until January 17, when the transition team moved to Washington. There was no competition in Trump Tower for being the brains of the operation. Of the dominant figures in the transition, neither Kushner, Priebus, nor Conway, and certainly not the president-elect, had the ability to express any kind of coherent perception or narrative. By default, everybody had to look to the voluble, aphoristic, shambolic, witty, off-the-cuff figure who was both ever present on the premises and who had, in an unlikely attribute, read a book or two.

Is this Wolff

yes

Bannon didn’t promote internal debate, provide policy rationale, or deliver Power-Point presentations; instead, he was the equivalent of Trump’s personal talk radio. Trump could turn him on at any moment, and it pleased him that Bannon’s pronouncements and views would consistently be fully formed and ever available, a bracing, unified-field narrative. As well, he could turn him off, and Bannon would be tactically quiet until turned on again.

By ten weeks in, Steve Bannon’s mastery of the Trump agenda, or at least of Trump himself, appeared to have crumbled. His current misery was both Catholic in nature — the self-flagellation of a man who believed he lived on a higher moral plane than all others — and fundamentally misanthropic. As an antisocial, maladjusted, post-middle-aged man, he had to make a supreme effort to get along with others, an effort that often did not go well. Most especially, he was miserable because of Donald Trump, whose cruelties, always great even when they were casual, were unbearable when he truly turned against you.

funemployed

Steve Bannon is like a collage of every gross closeup on Ren & Stimpy.

— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) January 9, 2018

Steve Bannon is one of those weird '50s recipes where you stitch slices of olive loaf into the rough shape of a human and fill it with cottage cheese and aspic.

a sentient shitpost that magically inhabited a biohazard disposal facility so as to teach the world about alcoholism

https://www.avclub.com/lets-check-in-on-the-breitbart-comments-section-which-1821948032

finally getting the robert redford role he was born to play

https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-lawyers-up-russia-investigators-ready-to-pounce

Trey Gowdy, who led the Republican questioning, pressed Bannon hard on his description of Don Junior's Trump Tower meeting as "treasonous." Gowdy asked Bannon whether he would consider it treason for somebody close to him to approach Wikileaks' Julian Assange to get opposition research on Hillary Clinton. Bannon replied that such a scenario would be bad judgment. Then Gowdy produced emails from a Cambridge Analytica employee — the Trump campaign data firm closely affiliated with Bannon — boasting of just such contacts with Assange. Bannon claimed this was the first time he'd seen these emails (though they've been in the news).

https://www.axios.com/steve-bannon-congress-testimony-inside-room-e30bd797-3720-44f0-bf32-5760cb6882e9.html

non-denialist

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/378569-bannon-i-dont-deny-anything-in-fire-and-fury-book

voter suppression middle manager

https://shareblue.com/cambridge-analytica-christopher-wylie-voter-suppression-testimony-steve-bannon/

sexist vote suppressor

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/inside-the-trump-2020-campaigns-disorganized-attempt-to-keep-america-great

face of Trump-era populism

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/steve-bannon-on-how-2008-planted-the-seed-for-the-trump-presidency.html

Hobo LARPer

Just saw Errol Morris has a doc on him at TIFF.

Yeah, IIRC it's another high-concept one where he just interviews a stained mattress draped with multiple shirts.

Capitalism started in 1983 at HBS, says Steven Bannon

comeback kid

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/steve-bannon-launches-pro-trump-effort-to-hold-the-house

Hanging out with Clinton's old traveling companion Jeffrey Epstein of late. Because of course he is.

A colleague of mine has a very unhealthy relationship with lunch at work and often eats stuff past its 'best before' date. No big deal, most food is OK, except that I once caught him microwaving a block of mince lamb that was past its 'use by', a different deal. He ate it wrapped in an out-of-date flour tortilla, with a smear of out-of-date mayo. It looked like Steve Bannon.

You hurt me in my heart.

you hurt me in my digestive system

"and as I parted the President's ass-cheeks..."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/K5EoXiIiUiAeRyUokMxm-NU2Y0A=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/ATGH2JVQIYI6RIQLL5HYIQUWMY.jpg

Bannon setting up his own scam university, the last resort of the truly worthless shitbag

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/with-support-from-steve-bannon-a-medieval-monastery-could-become-a-populist-training-ground/2018/12/25/86dac38a-d3c4-11e8-a4db-184311d27129_story.html?utm_term=.19746434663f

Bannon is racist?

ha ha

pom I'm sorry, kind of, but the analogy was delicious, and dafter people than you have pursued the same line of concerned inquiry

I forgive you Christianly.

Having just read the article, I await Bannon's upcoming monograph on Ezra Pound with bated breath.

The irony is that I love The Cantos as much as almost any written work and still hate Pound's moronic antisemitism (and anti-Taoism tho that's orders of magnitude less repulsive obv)

Pretty sure Bannon isn't much of a reader really

In his later years he disavowed his anti-Semitism, describing it as a 'suburban prejudice'. Because that was clearly the most abhorrent thing about it… But The Cantos themselves are still classic and subsequent generations of American poets did a marvellous job of separating the poetic craft from the hateful lunacy without exonerating him in the process.

I do wonder what a bona fide alt-right literary scene would look like in 2019. Outside of France, which already has its Houllebecqs and its (Renaud) Camus. On second thought, I'd rather not know.

is houllebecq alt-right? i always had the impression he was a fancy french chuck palahniuk, which i immediately realize is exactly alt-right.

He had a recent piece in the NYT about how Trump is actually a great president so

Houellebecq is a full-time troll, I don't know if even he "believes" most of what he says but it doesn't really matter at this point, talk like a fascist, you are a fascist.

I think the character who at one point becomes a visceral racist because he's not getting any love in Atomised was definitely him writing himself into the book.

Houellebecq looks like a lotr goblin giving an interview half way through makeup pic.twitter.com/Xv5eQopkaK

— Crowsa Luxemburg (@quendergeer) January 5, 2019

lol, he is literally turning into an actual troll orc.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been arrested after being charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through their campaign “We Build the Wall.”

Stoked for the mugshots.

Caged Garfield

Missing the forest for the trees here — one of his indicted co-conspirators is the current acting head of the DEA!

https://www.dea.gov/divisions/dea-leadership

what lol. is this the work of Q? or something?

Yep—it was me who arrested him.

Need to correct the previous post; there is unsurprisingly more than just one Timothy Shea in the world. A couple of early news reports had said it was him but since updated. Still, I wasn’t surprised at the idea at all!

Do they let you wear 2 shirts in prison, or is there a concern that you might be able to hang yourself or fashion an escape rope with them?

Steve Bannon is a good man. He is being treated unfairly. Steve doesn’t belong in jail. #SetSteveFree #MAGA #KAG pic.twitter.com/aByyB9fOd4

— Vic Berger IV (@VicBergerIV) August 20, 2020