“Burn the boats” and “burn it all down” were cries heard to come from the lips of the pugilistic Steve Bannon when his war room was an actual office in the West Wing, and not a right-wing podcast. Bannon conceives of government as an “administrative state” or Deep State. In October he spoke to a group of Republicans about how to “deconstruct” same, a process which would begin the next time the pendulum swings and a Republican is in the White House, hopefully Donald Trump. Bannon is big on “2024 — or before.” NBC News:
“If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately,” Bannon said in a telephone interview with NBC News. “I gave ’em fire and brimstone.”
Bannon, who ran former President Donald Trump’s first campaign and later worked as a top adviser in the White House, said that Trump’s agenda was delayed by the challenges of quickly filling roughly 4,000 slots for presidential appointees at federal agencies and the steep learning curve for political officials who were new to Washington.
He is not alone in that view. His appearance at the Capitol Hill Club came at the invitation of a new organization called the Association of Republican Presidential Appointees, which was formed to create a resource for future GOP officials tapped to fill federal jobs.
“There are so many statutes and regulations as well as agency and departmental policies, it can be very overwhelming when you first come in,” said Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, a former Broadcasting Board of Governors official who is one of the organizers of the group. “This is an organization that has a very narrow, clear and much-needed purpose, and, once it is operational, I think it could do a lot of good not just for the Republican Party but for the country.”
Trump often railed publicly about career civil servants and Obama administration political appointee holdovers whom he saw as obstacles to his agenda, referring to them collectively as the “deep state.”
Bannon said he wants to see pre-trained teams ready to jump into federal agencies when the next Republican president takes office. For the most part, that means the tiers of presidential appointees whose postings don’t require Senate confirmation.
This is a Republican Deep State coup, make no mistake about it. If there is one thing you can depend upon with the right-wingnuts, it is that whatever nefarious deeds they accuse the Democrats of doing, that is their own game plan that they are telegraphing. What is comical about this, is that this commitment to Trumpism is coming from Steve Bannon. If you recall Bob Woodward’s first book on the Trump White House, Fear: Trump In the White House, Woodward recounts an anecdote where Bannon is told, “Donald Trump is running for president,” and Bannon replies, “Of what country?” Bannon knew all too well back then what a complete joke Trump was, but then he figured out how to exploit Trump and MAGA for his own gain.
So. Bannon intends to embed shock troops in the government and create a shadow government, which presumably he will run.
And here’s Matt Gaetz to talk about his role in this new reign of terror that these two buffoons have come up with.
That echoes Bannon’s sentiments in October.
“We’re going to have a sweeping victory in 2022, and that’s just the preamble to a sweeping victory in 2024, and this time we’re going to be ready — and have a MAGA perspective, MAGA policies, not the standard Republican policies,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and describing a 2024 electoral victory as a “second term.”
This throws us back, yet one more time, to the one and only question that the Republican party needs to answer, at least for itself: Is it still the party of conservatism or is that history and the party of Trumpism is now going to be the GOP going forward?
Marjorie Taylor Greene informs people that she is the base not the fringe. She and the Putin Caucus, a phrase coined by attorney Ron Filipkowski who left the Republican party last year and tweets delightful right-wing pieces, are adamant that they represent the real GOP and aren’t lunatics. We are talking about Gaetz, Greene, Gosar, Gohmert (the four ghouls) Boebert, Brooks, Cawthorn, Jordan, the hard core whackos of the House. Did I miss anybody?
Gaetz is adamant that he’s going to kick ass and take names when the inevitable occurs and the GOP eventually gets the majority in the House (which may not be 2022.) He doesn’t seem to worry much about his legal headaches, which have not gone away. The wheels of litigation move slowly but inexorably. It’s interesting that he’s talking so tough right now and my speculation on that is that he’s setting himself up for martyrdom. When the inevitable occurs and he’s in a very ugly trial, it will be because the Deep State is retaliating against him for political reasons, not because he’s a pedophile.
That’s what this set up is, to create St. Matt of MAGA, the political martyr, not the convicted pedophile who finally got himself into a mess that Daddy’s money couldn’t buy his way out of.
Meanwhile, I think that Bannon’s shock troops/Deep State plans bear keeping an eye on.
Gaetz isn’t quite smart enough to keep his plans secret.
That, or he is just peacocking because he knows it’s not going to happen that way.
The GOP is fighting a guerrilla war against the US and its Constitution. These will use any and all tactics, no matter how corrupt and illegal, to advance their agenda.
It doesn’t matter if the GOP is now “conservative” or Trumpist. Low-information voters don’t care about ideology as long as they can cling to their guns and wear MAGA hats. Consider Bannon’s stated goal to “deconstruct” the state (ah, small government!). But in reality, he wants thousands of Trumpists to fill every possible government job in order set up an autocracy and quash any opposition.
This is so fucked up. I hope Gaetz and Bannon keep running their mouth though. Some of this has to be used for evidence, and also hopefully puts a kick in the pants of the Dems, so we know what we’re up against.
When poor people get accused of ANYTHING by the law, it acts quickly. If u aren’t shot in the street, u are roughly handled & incarcerated UNTIL UR COURT DATE TO PROVE UR INNOCENT. Rich white folks can do their criminality on national TV & NEVER GO TO JAIL…just tongue lashings & investigations. Hypocrisy in motion to prove the LAW IS JUST A TOOL BACKED BY GUNS TO UPHOLD THIS SICK CULTURE OF SHALLOW GREED. FACT. Of course all the law school grads sing together…BUT BUT BUT BUT.