In news that would be a lot more encouraging if it weren’t coming from the lips of Steve Fucking Bannon, the former White House strategist has declared that the Trump presidency is now “over.” Bannon gave an interview about his departure from the Trump administration earlier today to The Weekly Standard, stating that, “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
Of course, it’s not surprising to learn that Bannon views himself as synonymous with the early days of Trump’s tenure in office (or that he views that as something to be proud about.) He co-wrote Trump’s bitter, angry inaugural, and his populist strategies helped get 45 elected. Still, after a year of keeping his anti-establishment views at least nominally quiet (even as he did everything within his variable power to quiet the voices of moderation in the Trump White House), Bannon’s finally letting us all know what he really thinks. “I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he said of “West Wing Democrats” and establishment Republicans. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency—and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville—his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”
Bannon, meanwhile, appears to be as energized as ever by his fresh supply of sweet, life-giving hate. He returned to Breitbart immediately tonight, which hailed him as some kind of weird, fired version of a conquering hero. Or, in his own words: “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” in a metaphor we ourselves might have avoided, if we were the ones who’d so recently been accused of taking too much interest in our personal armory.