Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s Closest Adviser, Just Wants to See the World Burn
A tale of two terrifying quotes.
Over the last ten days, it's been easy to feel like shadow President Donald Trump and the actual President Steve Bannon are purposely trying to destroy this country, but common sense would indicate that such an idea would be ridiculous. After all, these are men who wanted the giant responsibility of running the nation. Surely, they couldn't have set out to do evil, right, guys? Right? I said, right, guys? Oh no. The fact that no one is responding is a little unnerving. Well, if you are to believe these next two sources, it sure seems like Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are okay with letting the whole thing burn down. Those sources? Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.
First, here's Trump in an interview with Fox News in 2014 (quotes via the New Statesman):
“A lot of people live better without having a job, than with having a job. I’ve had it where you have people and you want to hire them, but they can’t take the job for a period of nine months because they’re doing better now than they would with a job.”
“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell, and everything is a disaster, then you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be, when we were great.”
Well, that's terrifying. Our current president once expressed the thought that having the economy crash—never mind the millions of families such catastrophe would devastate—would help get America back to how it "used to be, when we were great." Now, you could argue that 2014 was a long time ago (it isn't) and maybe he's changed his mind since then (he hasn't), but look at that verbiage. That's some proto–Make America Great Again bullshit.
Thankfully, I'm sure his advisers are not so cavalier about the idea of America as we know it crumbling... Oh no. Steve Bannon said some scary shit, didn't he? (via The Daily Beast):
“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.
Shocked, I asked him what he meant. “Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.
And now Steve Bannon, a man who ran Breitbart, with its horrifying views on white nationals, has been added to the National Security Council, because handing him control of domestic issues wasn't quite dangerous enough for our boy Donny. Hell, Bannon wants a literal and bloody religious war.
The two most powerful men in this country want to light shit on fire and hope that fixes things.
H/T Sarah Kendzior.
