In Act 3 of William Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar”…
Caesar and his train approach the Senate. He sees the soothsayer in the crowd and confidently declares, “The ides of March are come” (1). “Ay, Caesar; but not gone” (2), replies the soothsayer. Artemidorus is also on the street and he pleads with Caesar to read his scroll. But Caesar ignores him and enters the Senate. Cassius approaches him with a request to overturn a previous ruling and let a banished countrymen return home. Caesar answers with a flavoured speech, informing Cassius that “I was constant Cimber should be banish’d/And constant do remain to keep him so” (72-3).
The conspirators gather around Caesar and he sees his trusted friend Brutus among them. They pull out their swords and stab Caesar. With his dying breath Caesar addresses Brutus, “Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!” (77).
FoxNews.com reports that
President Trump fired back at former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who in a new book harshly criticizes the Trump team for a “treasonous” meeting with a Russian lawyer.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday.
He continued: “Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself.”
In an excerpt of the book “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Bannon took aim at Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner for agreeing to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting in an apparent effort to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s**t, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Bannon said.
He argued that the meeting should have been held “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire” with lawyers instead of inside Trump Tower, doubting that Trump himself did not know about the sitdown.
The head of Breitbart also had an ominous warning about the Russia investigation, predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will go after Trump for money laundering.
“It’s as plain as a hair on your face,” said Bannon.
Trump accused Bannon of repeatedly leaking “false information to make himself seem far more important than he was,” downplaying Bannon’s influence in the White House before he departed in August.
“We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda,” said Trump.
“Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.”
In a statement, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders criticized the book by Michael Wolff: “This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House. Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad desperate attempts at relevancy.”
Believe it or not, the Godfather of Conservative Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, predicted something like this on August 18, 2017 after Trump fired Bannon…
…And so they tried Russia. They tried Russia for a year. The fact they’re spending so much time on this is all the evidence I need to know they don’t have anything on Russia collusion, because they keep careening from story to story or issue to issue. The theme is get Trump, get rid of Trump, impeach Trump, somehow get Trump out. That’s what Russia was about and still is. They’re still hoping Mueller comes up with something. And now this Bannon business or this stuff that happened in Charlottesville, that’s all about getting Trump.But there’s so much focus and so much energy being put into it that it tells me they’ve got nothing anywhere else. Now they think that Trump has really dealt himself a suicidal blow. They believe — do not doubt me on this — they believe that the people that voted for Trump are going to revolt against Trump now because Trump got rid of the guy they really like, Steve Bannon.
In other words, Trump’s supporters really don’t want Trump. Trump’s gotta get elected, but Bannon is the guy, if Bannon’s not there, Trump can’t get anything done. That’s what the media wants you to think the Trump base believes. You know, I should better state it. That’s what the media believes. That’s what the Washington establishment believes. They really do. You might think, “Rush, don’t be silly. They’re not that crazy.” Yes, they are, folks. They have to invent outrageous stories to explain to themselves why they lost.
Remember, they think they own everything necessary to win every election. The fact is they are losing elections and continue to do so. They are not the majority of the country. They are not the mainstream. It just looks like it because they run the media. But they’re not, folks. They are not the mainstream.
So how can this go otherwise? Well, they could look at Bannon and try to turn him into a sympathetic figure. And they will say, you know, Bannon, he knew, he knew this was over. Everybody could see it, Trump had lost his mind, Trump never had a mind, and what little mind Trump had is gone now. It’s not salvageable and Bannon knew he had to get out of there. He gave it his best shot. He had to get out of there.
And so he went and talked to Kuttner at the Prospect and he purposely threw Trump overboard ’cause he had to get fired. He couldn’t quit, look the quitter, had to get fired, had to get out of there, because Trump is such a lost cause. That’s one way the media could take this, sympathetic to Bannon, and try to rope Bannon in and get him as a regular guest. That would be nirvana if they get Bannon in to start savaging Trump.
Oh, can you imagine how happy that would make ’em? Steve Bannon as a nightly strategist or contributor on either MSNBC or CNN. Whenever Trump utters anything, bring Bannon in, “What did he mean? If you had told him to say that, what would your objective have been?” Bannon could say, “Well, I didn’t tell him to say that, obviously, or he wouldn’t have said it.”
It could go any number of ways. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the last year they’ve hated Bannon with a purple passion and overnight turned sympathetic and appreciative of Bannon.
Just as Rush predicted, you can bank on seeing Bannon pop up on CNN, MSNBC, and other Main Stream Media outlets who will be sympathetic to his revenge against President Trump.
Quite honestly, I believe that Trump has withstood more attacks from known enemies and those who were supposed to be his “friends” in the last year than any United States President before him.
I have no idea why Steve Bannon made these statement except for the fact that they make him appear to be a self-serving blowhard.
There has been no evidence found of any sort of unconstitutional or unlawful activity regarding the Trump Campaign by Mueller and his staff of Democratic Donors.
The two indictments that they came up with had nothing at all to do with the Trump Campaign.
In fact, Paul Manafort has filed a lawsuit which states that Mueller went out of the scope of the investigation to hand down the indictment against him.
And, truth be told, he has a good case.
Most of us have a “filter”. A still, small voice inside us which tells us when to speak and when to shut our yaps.
Evidently, Bannon possesses no such filter.
And, in this instance, bitterness won out over prudence and common sense.
Just as Brutus stabbed Caesar, so did Bannon stab Trump in the back.
The difference here is that Trump is not dead.
He is very much alive.
However, instead of fatally stabbing Trump in the back, Bannon may have just shot himself in the foot.
Until He Comes,
KJ
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