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Steve Bannon is off the National Security Council

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L

LegendofJoe

Member
I imagine other people on the council had a problem with Bannon being there. I suspect that they convinced Trump to remove him. I don't think this relates to anything going on with Russia.
 
E

EatinOlives

Member
Lol "Susan Rice"

Two days ago the white house never spoke a peep about her. Now she's the next boogeyman who "happens" to be constantly mentioned by these idiots.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
EatinOlives said:
Lol "Susan Rice"

Two days ago the white house never spoke a peep about her. Now she's the next boogeyman who "happens" to be constantly mentioned by these idiots.
Click to expand...


Whitehouse didn't but the far right loved invoking her over Benghazi because Hillary was white and Susan was easier to rile people up with. Like, none of the people mad about Benghazi ever had a clue what they were mad at. So a black lady was just butter to lubricate the nonsense.
 
E

Electric Eye

Banned
Trump never wanted Bannon at the NSC and was actually pissed off that he was "tricked" into giving him the position. On one of the first EOs he signed it stipulated Bannon would get a seat at the NSC and of course Trump never bodered to read what he signed and then went off and got mad and felt tricked.
 
M

Mahonay

Banned
Electric Eye said:
Trump never wanted Bannon at the NSC and was actually pissed off that he was "tricked" into giving him the position. On one of the first EOs he signed it stipulated Bannon would get a seat at the NSC and of course Trump never bordered to read what he signed and then went off and got mad and felt tricked.
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Almost forgot about this. It's simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. Fuck both of them. I hope infighting ramps up now.
 
N

Netherscourge

Banned
Bannon's role on NSC was to look over Gen. Flynn's shoulder...
Click to expand...

Now see - that part right there makes this whole thing sound really really suspicious.

1. Why was he looking over Flynn's shoulder in the first place?
2. Did they KNOW Flynn was dirty even back when they first picked him for the job? [EDIT - yea, apparently they did know.]
3. Why put a guy you know is dirty in your cabinet in the first place? So much so that you had to keep a spy on him?
4. Why even admit to it publicly? Is this some sorry-ass attempt to distance themselves from Flynn? But THEY picked him for the job in the first place, apparently knowing he was dirty.

This makes no sense. Making that statement above about keeping an eye on Flynn is very damaging to the Trump administration. Do they even realize how that sounds?
 
G

greepoman

Member
Netherscourge said:
Now see - that part right there makes this whole thing sound really really suspicious.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm pretty cynical...His job was to look over Flynn...But he never went to a meeting?

I'm leaning towards this is just another trick to dominate the headlines and get another Susan Rice quip out there ("He was there something something Susan Rice is the devil").
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
In the past there was a cottage industry called court intrigue, where contemporary writers and journalists were preoccupied with who was moving up and who was moving down in the power rankings within the court. And much of this speculation was pretty bad and based on weak signals from very opaque governments. Like, we had no way to know. It was a sort of fortune telling. And it's one of those things where if you're wrong, you just say "No, I was right, but stuff changed".

During the cold war there was an academic discipline called Kremlinology, that did the same thing. Tenured professors made whole careers out of speculating about what was going on in the Soviet Union. We now know they were across the board wrong. And none of them predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, so they badly missed the most enormous prediction they needed to get right.

These kinds of things are less common in developed democracies because government is relatively transparent; you have a good public idea of what's going on and who's who at the zoo. But it still happens with Korean peninsula analysts because DPRK is obviously not transparent -- protip if you want to be an analyst of the DPRK security situation, just repeat that "Ongoing tension is troubling, as is uncertainty about the line of succession and reports of internal conflict -- but the situation is very volatile and it's hard to know for sure". Wow.

Now it's 2016-2017. Why on earth is there so much media coverage on whether Kushner, Bannon, Ivanka, Pence, Preibus, or someone else has Trump's ear? Why are we reacting strongly to little signals? Because the government is no longer transparent and we need to resort to the same methods we used to study dictatorships; mostly gossip. This is being exacerbated by a decline in media (Twitter, 24 hour cable news, overanalysis of everything) and exploited by the competing factions within the government.

America is obviously a Democracy, I'm not a hysteric person talking about the collapse of civilization. I am simply noting that the discourse around policy and around government has shifted to this degraded form more typical of the study of autocracies.
 
A

Allard

Member
greepoman said:
Yeah I'm pretty cynical...His job was to look over Flynn...But he never went to a meeting?

I'm leaning towards this is just another trick to dominate the headlines and get another Susan Rice quip out there ("He was there something something Susan Rice is the devil").
Click to expand...

That or he got wind of a story about to break today or later this week. As evidence by institutions statements before releasing a story journalists do call officials to comment before running stories as they find their voice on the matter to be important to the story as any other. Usually they just get a no comment or don't pick up the call. To me it sounds like there could be a Bannon and Flynn story coming in the pipeline and they are doing preemptive damage control (as hilarious inept as it looks).
 
L

Leona Lewis

Banned
Stumpokapow said:
In the past there was a cottage industry called court intrigue, where contemporary writers and journalists were preoccupied with who was moving up and who was moving down in the power rankings within the court. And much of this speculation was pretty bad and based on weak signals from very opaque governments. Like, we had no way to know. It was a sort of fortune telling. And it's one of those things where if you're wrong, you just say "No, I was right, but stuff changed".

During the cold war there was an academic discipline called Kremlinology, that did the same thing. Tenured professors made whole careers out of speculating about what was going on in the Soviet Union. We now know they were across the board wrong. And none of them predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, so they badly missed the most enormous prediction they needed to get right.

These kinds of things are less common in developed democracies because government is relatively transparent; you have a good public idea of what's going on and who's who at the zoo. But it still happens with Korean peninsula analysts because DPRK is obviously not transparent -- protip if you want to be an analyst of the DPRK security situation, just repeat that "Ongoing tension is troubling, as is uncertainty about the line of succession and reports of internal conflict -- but the situation is very volatile and it's hard to know for sure". Wow.

Now it's 2016-2017. Why on earth is there so much media coverage on whether Kushner, Bannon, Ivanka, Pence, Preibus, or someone else has Trump's ear? Why are we reacting strongly to little signals? Because the government is no longer transparent and we need to resort to the same methods we used to study dictatorships; mostly gossip. This is being exacerbated by a decline in media (Twitter, 24 hour cable news, overanalysis of everything) and exploited by the competing factions within the government.

America is obviously a Democracy, I'm not a hysteric person talking about the collapse of civilization. I am simply noting that the discourse around policy and around government has shifted to this degraded form more typical of the study of autocracies.
Click to expand...
To be fair, it's not unprecedented. Hell, even early on in no drama Obama's administration, similar power "rankings" were a hot topic, with figures like Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod constantly being pinned against each other.
 
H

HStallion

Now what's the next step in your master plan?
Trouble said:
I honestly have no idea how to feel about this. I mean he's not Bannon, but he's also kind of an idiot and has no national security or intelligence creds.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the kind of guy we need to drain the swamp
 
L

Lunar15

Member
Every day I feel less and less that there's some grand scheme here, like some like to say, and really just tons and tons of incompetence fostered through a candidate who never thought he had a chance and won in the last second.

I don't think that makes me feel any better, though.

However: Does this do damage to Breitbart through its association with Bannon? I mean, perception these days has nothing to do with reality, so I wonder if, regardless of the actual reason Bannon was taken off the council, people on the right see him as less trustworthy?
 
K

Kyzer

Banned
Stumpokapow said:
In the past there was a cottage industry called court intrigue, where contemporary writers and journalists were preoccupied with who was moving up and who was moving down in the power rankings within the court. And much of this speculation was pretty bad and based on weak signals from very opaque governments. Like, we had no way to know. It was a sort of fortune telling. And it's one of those things where if you're wrong, you just say "No, I was right, but stuff changed".

During the cold war there was an academic discipline called Kremlinology, that did the same thing. Tenured professors made whole careers out of speculating about what was going on in the Soviet Union. We now know they were across the board wrong. And none of them predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, so they badly missed the most enormous prediction they needed to get right.

These kinds of things are less common in developed democracies because government is relatively transparent; you have a good public idea of what's going on and who's who at the zoo. But it still happens with Korean peninsula analysts because DPRK is obviously not transparent -- protip if you want to be an analyst of the DPRK security situation, just repeat that "Ongoing tension is troubling, as is uncertainty about the line of succession and reports of internal conflict -- but the situation is very volatile and it's hard to know for sure". Wow.

Now it's 2016-2017. Why on earth is there so much media coverage on whether Kushner, Bannon, Ivanka, Pence, Preibus, or someone else has Trump's ear? Why are we reacting strongly to little signals? Because the government is no longer transparent and we need to resort to the same methods we used to study dictatorships; mostly gossip. This is being exacerbated by a decline in media (Twitter, 24 hour cable news, overanalysis of everything) and exploited by the competing factions within the government.

America is obviously a Democracy, I'm not a hysteric person talking about the collapse of civilization. I am simply noting that the discourse around policy and around government has shifted to this degraded form more typical of the study of autocracies.
Click to expand...

Interesting way of looking at it. I think people are also just way more interested and want to know things we wouldnt otherwise normally know. People are worried about whats going on in the white house
 
Z

Zeus Molecules

illegal immigrants are stealing our air
LegendofJoe said:
I imagine other people on the council had a problem with Bannon being there. I suspect that they convinced Trump to remove him. I don't think this relates to anything going on with Russia.
Click to expand...

I actually feel it's the opposite. Everyone made it quite clear from the beginning they were uncomfortable with him on the council and how it broke established protocols. If anything internally this move indicates something changes that made it necessary he step down now. If Not I doubt he would have based on the optics alone of what this move says. Especially since Bannon is a media man and knows this looks horrible considering the last few weeks of controversy
 
T

Trouble

Banned
Duane Cunningham said:
This doesn't preclude him from being Secretary of Energy.
Click to expand...

He's not actually explicitly being added to the NSC, the Secretary of Energy is. So if he is replaced his successor would be on the NSC.

The Secretary of Energy being on the NSC isn't actually a terribly bad idea. It just brings a little light back on the fact that Perry being SoE is insane.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Leona Lewis said:
To be fair, it's not unprecedented. Hell, even early on in no drama Obama's administration, similar power "rankings" were a hot topic, with figures like Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, and David Axelrod constantly being pinned against each other.
Click to expand...

It is true that court intrigue plays a role in every single country (the study of cabinet shuffles in parliamentary democracies, for example). And there's no doubt that any government has internal disagreement. Biden famously fought with the rest of the national security apparatus about Iraq/Afghanistan (side note: Obama's first note to an aide after being elected to the senate was a note saying "kill me now" because Biden was going on a rant in committee).

But two things:
1) Typically in a more transparent government, we observe movements directly, rather than inferring them through gossip and reading between the lines. When the government puts out a press release saying they're changing policy, then cool, they're changing policy. But when they say 20 contradictory things and seem to lie at every turn, we need to cut through that, which is where you look at what the Czarina wears to tell what Rasputin is telling the Czar.

2) Typically in a more institutionalized government, the consequences of such movements are less all-encompassing than in autocratic government, where policy is set at whim. If everything is rule-driven and institutionalized then swapping out people in chairs won't cause any immediate recalibration. The willingness to throw out everything is characteristic of autocrats.
 
K

kirblar

Member
It was Tillerson, not Perry.

Perry being there is fine given that the DoE is responsible for our nukes. And also because he's actually got history in governance.
 
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