It didn’t take long for Breitbart to clarify what senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak meant meant when he declared ‘war’ shortly after Steve Bannon’s apparently acrimonious departure from the White House. The last few days worth of Breitbart material has been firmly critical of Donald Trump.
One notable piece was an interview with the popular American talk show host Dr. Michael Savage in which Savage said,
“Trump comes from a liberal background, and he saw which way wind was blowing and see what Eddie and Edith [Savage’s term for the common man and woman] wanted, and he ran with it. Now what? Now he’s hit a stone wall with his progressive friends, and so he’s got to do a 180? How far is he going to turn away from what got him elected? Is he going to become [Mitt] Romney? You know he’s going to move in another direction, but it’s anyone’s guess”.
This was published prior to Donald Trump’s announcement that he plans a ‘troop surge’ in Afghanistan.
After the speech in which Trump called for more troops to be deployed to the front of the longest war America has fought in its history, Breitbart published a scathing opinion piece by Brian Darling in which he declared himself a former Trump supporter.
Darling wrote,
“I thought it a big mistake for the United States to promote nation-building policies in North Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East when President George W. Bush pushed them and started the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I worried that the destabilizing policies of President Barack Obama caused chaos, not stability, in Egypt and Libya.
I voted for Donald J. Trump because he promised change.
I may have made a mistake.
Should we retitle National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster as President H.R. McMaster? For all those progressives who rejoiced at the ousting of Stephen K. Bannon from the White House — How do you feel now knowing that Bannon was a strong opponent of a troop surge in Afghanistan? Not so good?
The nation-building hawks have won and now expect the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol to cheer the president’s foreign policy conversion from a rhetoric of restraint view to one embraced by the interventionist wing of the Republican party including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ). So sad.
Despite the fact that President Trump announced that “we are not nation-building again,” he is in denial about the fact that he is maintaining the nation-building policies that he campaigned against as a candidate. President Trump’s policy is similar to that of Presidents Obama and Bush.
I was worried after the missile strike earlier this year against the Syrian government that this administration was slouching toward an interventionist agenda that ignored the folly of investing trillions of dollars in a country half a world away and putting Americans in harm’s way for a goal that is impossible to explain to average Americans.
There is no goal in the endless war in Afghanistan. The president is asking Americans to risk their lives, and their children’s lives, for what? What are we fighting for in Afghanistan? This is the same failed policy that Trump campaigned against”.
Whatever one’s views are or were on Trump, anyone who opposes American militarism would be hard pressed to disagree with Mr. Darling’s assessment.
The theme of longtime Bannon opponent and vanguard of the old American elite, H.R. McMaster being the power behind the throne, continued to play out on the pages of Breitpart. McMaster was a target of a further Breitbart piece which was critical of the US National Security Advisor for failing to brief Donald Trump on the USS John McCain collision near Singapore.
For his own part, Donald Trump came close to admitting that Trump White House policy is no longer Donald Trump’s personal policy. During his statement on Afghanistan, Trump said,
“My original instinct was to pull out. And historically, I like following my instincts”.
In betraying his instincts over Afghanistan, Trump has betrayed a large part of his base. Steve Bannon represented a large group of Americans who were conservative in domestic affairs and generally anti-war. Now, back at Breitbart, Bannon’s views are being made clear through the publication of anti-war/anti-Trump opinion pieces and interviews.
The narrative that Breitbart and Bannon are pushing is that Trump capitulated to the military men of the so-called ‘deep state’ and judging from Trump’s actions and indeed his own words, it is difficult to reach any other conclusion.
While America’s liberals continue to argue for impeaching Trump, the fact is that, by sending more troops abroad in spite of campaign promises to the contrary and by failing to declare martial law in areas of the US menaced by radical violent groups like Antifa, Trump is more or less giving the globalist establishment everything it could reasonably want.
Perhaps Breitbart ought to erect anti-war monuments in the name of Steve Bannon and see who the first is to commit an act of vandalism against them?
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