Conner, you had a piece in the Jacobin this week about Steve Bannon and his broad-based,
I guess, program, which we saw some of it on evidence, at least in terms of broad platitudes
from Donald Trump this week during his speech.
It also was juxtaposed with the former governor of Kentucky, Beshear's response, that was
situated in a diner, and we can get to that in a moment.
Just give us a sense of, A, why you attribute Donald Trump's broad-based, I guess, economic
program, if we can call it that, to Stephen Bannon, and then give us a sense of what Bannon's
ideology, how you would describe it.
Well, I think we can attribute what makes Trump different than other Republicans to
Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon is someone who, superficially, is not on board the laissez–faire, Paul
Ryan, mainstream GOP program.
Steve Bannon considers himself ... He calls himself an economic nationalist.
It's not that this is a more progressive economic viewpoint, it's just that it is different
than the Paul Ryan view.
I think ... I don't know if you saw, but a couple days ago it was announced that the
GOP really wants to go after Medicaid.
One of the lone voices in the Trump Administration, saying, ‘No, no, no!’
Is Steve Bannon.
Steve Bannon doesn't have that same Paul Ryan just hatred of all the welfare state.
Steve Bannon understands that, unlike someone like Ryan or others, that Medicaid is something
that's going to be important to a lot of the lower income people, in the rust belt and
other places, that voted for Trump.
He's ... Bannon is this counterweight to this more standard neo-liberal, laissez–faire
economic ideology.
Like I said, it's not any kind of more progressive ... It's not a more progressive economics.
When they talk about what the solution to the crises, it's all about re-shoring really
low-wage manufacturing jobs by competing with developing world wages.
That, to me, does not sound anything close to any kind of progressive economic program.
If we could describe, and you describe Paul Ryan's economic worldview as being neo-liberal,
which, for our purposes here, will be market-based solutions.
One of the reasons why he is ... Why Medicare and Medicaid, and I would argue also, Social
Security, are such gleams in his eye, in terms of cutting these things, is because ultimately,
it means less money being paid in terms of taxes.
Creating more market opportunities for his ... Either his donors, or frankly just that's
just the way his worldview works.
How would you describe Bannon's?
It's one thing to say it's not a progressive one.
He also doesn't have the same jonesing to cut Medicaid, let's say.
I don't know if we know where he is in terms of Medicare and Social Security.
Certainly, Trump, over the course of the campaign, at the very least, expressed that this is
a political non-starter.
What is it ... What is Steve Bannon's project?
To me, it seems that Trump's project is whatever's going to maintain Trump's position ... is
really fundamentally his ideology.
What is Steve Bannon's?
Right.
Well, Bannon is definitely a more unique and interesting person than the rest of the Right.
I think his project is, as he's been fairly clear about, is he really thinks that basically
... He's really critical of the turn towards finance and these industries that don't employ
many people.
He mistakenly believes that we're going to lower unemployment and bring back some golden
era by bringing back these jobs, but by bringing them back by ... I believe he's against minimum
wage.
They want to go after labor unions and bring Right to Work national.
I think his project is just this twisted idea that you can turn back the clock by driving
wages into the ground.
He's playing on voters' nostalgia for a golden age that is ... Not all of it's true.
This idea that back in the '40s, '50s and '60s, everyone had a manufacturing job and
it was going great.
What Bannon wants to do is play on that nostalgia.
How he wants to go about this, like I said, is just ... It's brutal.
It basically involves smashing labor unions.
It involves lowering employees' safety standards, and obviously, pay.
It's nothing that anyone should ... It's something people should be afraid of.
Indeed.
It's tough to get my arms around this on some level.
We know that, I think he ... I think there's sufficient support, I mean reporting, at this
point.
Just based upon the speech this week that President Trump gave, there is a desire to
curtail not just undocumented immigration, but all immigration.
To leave America, which we've heard over and over again, for Americans.
I think that's somewhat coded.
We have transcripts of Donald Trump back in 2012, saying ... I think it's CPAC in fact,
lamenting the fact that we don't get European and Canadian immigrants anymore.
We get all our immigrants from other places.
You don't have to ... That's fairly straightforward, in terms of the complaint there, that there's
this heritage quality.
I mean, is Bannon looking to return to a time of almost ... of the robber barons, right?
He doesn't seem to have an issue ... Certainly, if we look upon what we can see of the Trump
administration, nevermind what I think is yet to be revealed about the way that the
Trump administration is operating, that they certainly don't have an issue with picking
winners and losers in a very explicit way.
In a way that is, I think, even more intimately tied to who benefits in the White House.
Does that make sense on some level?
That we're talking about a ... I don't know, a late 1800s, early 1900s type of vision,
of robber barons and ... in this country?
Yeah, I think that probably is close to what his vision is.
It's import- I mean, he says that he ... He explicitly said ... ‘We're gonna get ... ‘ He
has some quote like, ‘We're going to get shipyards all jacked up,’ and ‘We're going
to bring back all this,’ and ‘We're going to rebuild America.’
He goes, ‘It's going to be as exciting as the 1930s.’
He says the 1930s, but he's leaving out the things about the 1930s that made all these
things possible, which was working-class militancy, which was the Communist Party running around
and organizing workers.
It was the Wagner Act, passed by FDR's, the FDR era, which enabled tens of thousands of
people, basically overnight, to join labor unions.
He's selling it as if it's a return to some ... He says the 1930s, meaning the New Deal,
but I think the robber baron era is a closer parallel.
You know what?
Even giving him that, it's ... The robber baron era was horrible.
It was basically war on working Americans.
There was the Pinkertons and strike-breaking and basically the State, largely, went to
war with the working class.
There was a rebuilding, in that era.
The infrastructure of cities was all going up in that time.
Even if we want to say, ‘Well, okay it's going to be horrible, but Bannon, he's going
to get some stuff built.’
No, he's not.
His infrastructure plan is basically, it's just tax credits.