Bannon Takes His Total War to Trump’s Doorstep

Having lost the battle to control Donald Trump’s presidency from within the West Wing, Steve Bannon has taken his war on the Republican Party outside the White House, leaning into his reputation as a political brawler to pressure Trump to uphold the populist-nationalist agenda that helped sweep him into power. “They’re not going to help you unless they’re put on notice,” he remarked earlier this month, promising to support anti-establishment candidates in order to transform the G.O.P.

On Tuesday, Bannon’s influence within the conservative movement will be put to the test. Bucking the establishment Republicans and Trump himself, Bannon had sent nearly all of Breitbart’s political reporters to Alabama to boost former judge Roy Moore against Luther Strange, the state’s former Attorney General, in the special election to fill Jeff Session’s vacant Senate seat. Moore, a controversial culture warrior with a decidedly Breitbartian, anti-Mitch McConnell tilt, held a wide and comfortable lead in the race long before Bannon had sent Breitbart down south. And in a sign that he is seeking to position himself as a power broker, Bannon appeared at a campaign rally for Moore on Monday night to deliver a barnburner of a speech.

“We have a cute phrase: ‘Drain the Swamp.’ But the enemy we face is not cute,” he told the crowd, hours before the polls were set to open Tuesday morning. “And we’re not going to do it with slogans. We’re just not going to do it because we wish it away. You’re gonna have to fight every day to take Washington back, and by taking Washington back, take the control of your own lives back!”

Although the Strange-Moore primary has been positioned as a proxy battle for the soul of the Republican Party, pitting the establishment against the far-right, Bannon himself defended his support for Moore as more pro-Trump than Trump himself. ”A vote for Judge Roy Moore is a vote for Donald J. Trump,” he said, even as the president dispatched Vice President Mike Pence to campaign for Strange. ”And a vote for Donald J Trump is a vote to make America great again.”

“We were not here to defy President Trump, we were here to praise him,” Bannon explained in a follow-up interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, who broadcast live from the sidelines of the Moore rally. “Strange can’t sit there and say ‘I can stand up to Mitch McConnell.’ McConnell is giving him 30 million dollars.”

Moore had been making that arguments for weeks, but Bannon’s influence elevated Moore’s position to a national level. CNN reported that inside Breitbart, the editorial leadership made no secret of their preferred candidate. “As of now, everyone is working on the Alabama race,” political editor Matthew Boyle told employees in an internal chat room. “If anyone has any questions please let me know.” Indeed, the focus on Alabama was so intense that on Monday, coverage about Moore and Strange dominated the site’s front page.

For Bannon, Tuesday’s primary could be an inflection point in his fight against the “new aristocracy” in Washington whom he blames for his political defenestration after a brief ascent into the White House’s inner circle. “I wear their contempt as a badge of honor,” he declared to Hannity. “They have helped destroy this country. They have perpetrated economic hate crimes against the good people of this country.”

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