Trump strategist Bannon speaking out; here’s what you need to know

Amid reports of disgust and dismay among White House officials in the wake of President Trump’s insistence that “both sides” bear the blame for the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, there appears to be one member of the administration who couldn’t be happier: White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

While others have decried Trump’s remarks as a stain on the presidency, Bannon sees Tuesday’s news conference as a “defining moment” in which Trump rejected the “globalists” and defended “his people,” according to a report from Axios.

And in a phone call to American Prospect co-founder and co-editor Robert Kuttner on Tuesday, Bannon seemed thrilled that Trump’s opponents are talking so much about race.

The longer Democrats “talk about identity politics, I got ’em,” Bannon said. “I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News who once called the site a “platform for the alt-right,” helped Trump form the nationalist message that cemented his base of support during the 2016 campaign.

But Bannon dismissed the white supremacists who demonstrated in Charlottesville as a “bunch of clowns.”

“Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers,” Bannon told Kuttner. “It’s a fringe element, I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it.”

And Bannon did not seem concerned that Trump appeared to distance himself from him Tuesday. Rather, he said his rivals within the State and Defense departments are “wetting themselves.”

Bannon believes the U.S. is “at economic war with China” and many of those he views as adversaries wish to work with Beijing on trade and North Korea. He even called out some of those he wishes to see gone by name.

“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense,” Bannon said. “I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton out at State.” Thorton is currently the acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Bannon said he also is fighting Trump’s national economic chair Gary Cohn and “Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

Bannon’s strategy, according to Kuttner, “is to battle the trade doves inside the administration while building an outside coalition of trade hawks that includes the left as well as right.”

Kuttner believes Bannon reached out to him as part of this strategy. It was an effort to gain an ally from the left who shares some of his positions on China trade policy.

Kuttner said he found it “puzzling” that Bannon would “assume that a possible convergence of views on China trade might somehow paper over the political and moral chasm on white nationalism.”

“Either the reports of the threats to Bannon’s job are grossly exaggerated and leaked by his rivals, or he has decided not to change his routine and to go down fighting,” Kuttner concluded.

As for North Korea, Bannon appeared to be at odds with Trump that there’s a military solution to the crisis.

“There’s no military solution (to North Korea’s nuclear threats), forget it,” Bannon dais. “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

Contributing: Associated Press