Bannon's colleagues disturbed by interview with left-wing publication

Source: Axios | August 16, 2017 | Jonathan Swan

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Either way, Bannon’s White House colleagues can’t believe what they’re reading tonight.

Here’s what one of Bannon’s colleagues — somebody who’s not an enemy of his — told me after reading the piece: “Since Steve apparently enjoys casually undermining U.S. national security, I’ll put this in terms he’ll understand: This is DEFCON 1-level bad.”

Some had never heard of the American Prospect, but they have now. It’s a left-wing publication that Bannon apparently called on Tuesday to air his raw thoughts about his colleagues, undercut the president’s North Korea policy, and preview a coming economic war with China.

Here are some things that Bannon’s colleagues tell me bother them about the interview — an article that appears to be so well-read that it’s crashing the American Prospect’s servers:

– The liberal journalist Bannon called — Robert Kuttner — is no friend of Trump’s. As Kuttner writes, “I’d just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon’s boss. ‘In Kim, Trump has met his match,’ I wrote. ‘The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.'”

– Bannon undercut the president’s stance on North Korea: “Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: ‘There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

– He openly talked about his internal fights with colleagues: “That’s a fight I fight every day here,” he said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

– He talked about changing personnel in a way that made him sound like the president: “I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”

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