President Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, is recruiting from Breitbart News to staff the White House, raising Breitbart’s profile and power. One of Breitbart’s biggest stars, Julia Hahn, is expected to join the White House as an aide to Bannon. Breitbart’s national security editor, Sebastian Gorka, will also relocate to the White House, likely with a spot on the president’s National Security Council.
Hahn worked for Laura Ingraham at a time when the radio host led the charge to oust former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (admittedly no loss. Ed). Hahn has had Speaker Paul Ryan in her cross-hairs, writing mocking stories about him being a closet supporter of Hillary Clinton and helping his primary challenger. Her focus has been on immigration, trade and economic populism, three issues at the center of Trump’s agenda. Gorka’s primary focus at Breitbart has been the threat of radical Islam. He has been a fierce critic of what he describes as the Obama administration’s weak response to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other international terror groups. Hahn and Gorka would give Bannon two allies who buy into the issues that were central to Trump’s.
This sets up two rival centres of influence – Bannon on the one hand and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on the other. Priebus recruited key allies Sean Spicer and Katie Walsh, the former finance director and chief of staff at the RNC, who will act as deputy chief of staff at the White House. Breitbart are opening bureaus in France, Italy and Germany, where they believe Brexit-style insurgencies could be on the cusp of developing. Some say that Breitbart is nothing more than a propaganda arm of Trump’s White House, “a state-sponsored/controlled platform designed to advance the administration’s propaganda.” But Breitbart denies this, pointing to their complaints to Trump about not announcing the hiring a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton and for continuing former President Obama’s policy of issuing work permits to young people who are in the country illegally. (extracted from a news item from The Hill. 1/25/2016).
If all this seems petty and parochial, it is not. It potentially has repercussions for the whole world. Never previously has a super- power gone rogue like this. These Breitbart people are very dangerous, extreme and racist. They are the ugly face of Republican America, without soul, empathy or care for their fellow man.
And now Bannon has been appointed to the National Security Council, an unprecedented move because it introduces party politics into purely national security matters. This has never happened before. It is thought that it was Bannon who is driving the refugee ban, and the ban was introduced (without thought or preparation, of course) by Bannon, although the NSC had no input into the decision. Bannon is set to radicalize huge numbers of previously pro-American muslims. it’s called an “own goal” and puts American citizens at greater risk.