Maybe it was because Steve Bannon was too close to the president. Maybe he just wasn’t viewed as a worthy adversary. Whatever the reason, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist has up to now mobilized insurgencies aimed at taking down Republican incumbents unscathed by return fire. Now, following his brief stint as the right hand of the president, Bannon’s latest effort to remake the GOP in his own image is finally meeting with some resistance.
“Steve Bannon is dead wrong,” read a statement released on Wednesday evening by Steven Law, president and CEO of the Mitch McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund. “Every fact that has come out about James Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation has affirmed the rightness of President Trump’s decision.”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Ostensibly, Law’s statement is aimed at comments Bannon made about former FBI Director Comey in an interview with “60 Minutes.” But Law’s comment is a dishonest one. Bannon never said what is being implied here.
“It’s been reported in the media I was adamantly opposed to that,” Bannon confirmed when pressed by Charlie Rose as to whether he agreed with Trump’s decision to terminate Comey. “I am a big believer in this city that it’s a city of institutions, not individuals. . . The FBI is the institution.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that if James Comey had not been fired, we would not have a special counsel,” he added.
“Someone said to me that you described the firing of James Comey—you’re a student of history—as the biggest mistake in political history,” Rose concluded. “That’d probably be too bombastic even for me, but maybe modern political history,” Bannon concurred.
At no point did Bannon discuss the merits of the case against Comey; he talked only about its political implications. The former White House strategist suggested that it was dangerous to make an adversary out of an institution in Washington D.C.—particularly one as well-connected and influential as the FBI. He noted that it was a straight line from Comey’s dismissal to the establishment of a vexing and costly special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign. Finally, Bannon asserted that Comey’s removal was among the biggest explicitly political blunders a president has made in living memory. It’s hard to argue with any of that. The Senate Leadership Fund is flailing at straw men.
But why? Obviously, they see that Bannon is a threat today in a way he wasn’t yesterday, and now Bannon knows it. This broadside was fired following reports by Politico and others indicating that the former Trump aide is huddling with deep-pocketed, anti-establishmentarian donors in the effort to secure his place as kingmaker. Bannon hopes to field a slate of non-ideological Donald Trump cutouts to challenge sitting Republicans who don’t seem inclined to bend the knee before the president. Their willfulness must be punished.
That represents a direct assault on the Senate Leadership Fund, which has only one objective: to keep incumbent Republican senators, whatever they believe, in their seats. Outside of the White House but with his working links to the president reportedly intact, Bannon can’t be allowed to organize his mutineers unmolested.
In attacking Bannon, not on the merits of what he actually said but, rather, by echoing sentiments shared by much of the pro-Trump right, Law and his McConnell-backed institution are aiming at Bannon’s support among pro-Trump Republicans. Unfortunately for them, this shot across Bannon’s bow was wildly off the mark. Not only did they attack Bannon for saying something he didn’t say, they’re also going after him for believing something he likely doesn’t believe. That looks desperate, distressed, and disorganized, and it will only embolden the very people they hoped to intimidate.
The good news for the Senate Leadership Fund is that they will get many other opportunities to make up for this missed one. It is, to say the least, unlikely that Bannon has been deterred. Given his reported intention to target occasional Trump skeptics in the Senate, including Tennessee’s Bob Corker, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, Nevada’s Dean Heller, and Arizona’s Jeff Flake, Bannon’s forces will be coming up against McConnell’s in the near future. For their sake, here’s hoping that by then the Senate Leadership Fund comes up with a more subtle line of attack. Otherwise, the Republican civil war will be a short one.
