Looks like in addition to being the “Law and Order” president who appeals to the “Silent Majority,” Donald Trump is making yet another bid to imitate Richard Nixon: The Daily Beast reports that with his precious ACA repeal potentially going tits-up (but let’s not get our hopes or our tits up just yet), Donald Trump is being told by Steve Bannon that he should start keeping a “shit list” of Republicans who got in the way of his first major legislative initiative. It’s a tough call — will the list mostly include people who voted against it, or, since Trump never actually had a plan of his own, will it also include Paul Ryan, who instead of actually writing a plan anyone wanted, simply threw together a mess of rightwing pipe dreams and Ayn Rand-inflected floor sweepings and called it a “replacement” for the ACA? And perhaps Bannon’s former based home, Dead Breitbart’s Home For Rightwing Screaming, which hated the bill and called it “Obamacare Lite” from the start?
The big differences between Trump’s shit list and Nixon’s enemies list, of course, are that Nixon’s list was secret, and that he mostly focused his paranoia on perceived enemies outside his own party, while Trump, ever aware that his greatest challenge isn’t the other party but the traitors who may have held their noses and voted for him but don’t love him enough, is out to destroy people who might occasionally be on his side. Gotta do something with that inauguration gift Bannon gave him, a lovely set of matching Long Knives. Also, Trump’s list doesn’t have anyone on it half as cool as Paul Newman (yes, really!).
We’re also unlikely to have any moment as astonishing as then-CBS correspondent Daniel Schorr reading the list of names on live TV and finding his own name on it (at about the 55-second point below):
Now, it’s anybody’s guess how Trump will use his shit list; he’s always struck us as the person who never needed notes to keep track of whom he hates. It may be more of a Bannon thing, anyway, as part of his ongoing effort to divide the world into Trump loyalists and those who must be purged with fire when the Time of Purification is at hand:
Huh. We guess Bannon is allowed an occasional military metaphor, since he was in the Navy, unlike Trump with his disabling heel spurs that magically went away.Two senior Trump administration officials with direct knowledge of the process told The Daily Beast that Bannon and Trump have taken a “you’re either with us or against us” approach at this point, and that Bannon wants the tally of “against” versus “with us” mounted in his so-called West Wing “war room.”
“Burn the boats,” Bannon (in his typical, pugnacious style) advised Trump, according to one official involved. Burning one’s boats is a reference to when military commanders in hostile territories order his or her troops to destroy their own ships, so that they have to win or die trying.
So we guess Republicans who oppose the ACA repeal bill because it’s not rightwing enough are simply shaking in their jackboots? Maybe not so much:
Freedom Caucus aides said they were similarly unperturbed on Friday. One simply responded to The Daily Beast’s question regarding potentially getting on Trump and Bannon’s “shit list” with one word: “Meh.”
It’s not quite Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe at Bastogne replying to the German demand to surrender with “NUTS!” But Donald Trump isn’t exactly a Panzer division, either.
Of course, we also hear Donald Trump now thinks signing onto Ryan’s plan was a terrible idea, too, so maybe he needs to get “Trump, D.” on that list. Considering Bannon was calling Ryan and the Republican leadership “all cunts” just a short two years back, Trump had better watch his step to make sure he stays off Bannon’s shit list.
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