On June 21, I went to see Steve Bannon at his home in Washington, D.C., before he went to prison on Monday for contempt of Congress. I went because right-wing populist parties were surging in nations across Europe. I went because it seemed possible and even probable to me that Donald Trump was going to be re-elected president. I wanted to know how today's trends looked from the perspective of somebody in the MAGA movement. I went because I wanted to have a clearer idea of what a second Trump term would look like. During our conversation, Bannon, a longtime adviser to Trump, mentioned that it was a mistake for Republicans to agree to a presidential debate in June. He predicted that President Biden would appear old and infirm during the debate. By agreeing to debate so early, Bannon reasoned, Republicans were giving the Democrats time to swap out their candidate before their convention. If Republicans had insisted on a September debate, it would have been too late. By the fall, Democrats would have had no other option but Biden. That turned out to be a pretty good prediction. Bannon's prognostications about the French right were pretty accurate as well. Marine Le Pen's party appears headed to victory in the first round of that country's parliamentary voting. On the 21st, I found Bannon's vision terrifying. I find it doubly terrifying now that Trump is much more likely, post-debate, to regain the White House and yet another country in Europe might go populist right. I hope Democrats read this interview, and I hope it focuses their minds as they try to figure out how to proceed this summer and fall. Even if your instinct is to avoid such perspectives, I urge you to reconsider. People make better electoral decisions when they directly confront those on the other side of issues — even people they find disreputable and abhorrent. Some readers might wish that I'd argued with Bannon more. But I'm a journalist before I'm a pugilist. Before I argue, I want to understand, and I want to help readers understand. I mostly asked him questions, and when I did push back, it was to help me comprehend his mode of thinking, to get him to go deeper. It's a fancy two-step, but I think it's possible to be humble and appalled at the same time. Those of us who oppose Bannon and all he stands for should be humble because most of us didn't see Trump coming and most of us didn't see Trump coming out of Jan. 6 and his felony convictions stronger than ever. Many of us didn't foresee that the populist right would be a dominant force, maybe the dominant force, in nations around the world. But those events have come to pass, so at least we should have the good sense to face unpleasant truths directly. As Bannon faces his reckoning, the rest of us must contend with an even larger reckoning in the months ahead. Programming note: The newsletter will be off Thursday, July 4, and return on Friday, July 5. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Opinion Today: David Brooks’s unsettling interview with Steve Bannon
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