Josh Hawley on the Rocks
The 41-year-old Senate up-and-comer was, until 2021, just that. Things have changed. April 17, 2021|
12:01 am
Curt Mills
Donald Trump believes there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Even from Elba at Palm Beach.
We know this. In his eighth decade, it’s unwise to expect much change from the 45th president—or “the 45th,†as Trump is now explicitly rebranding (that is a change). Steve Bannon, Trump’s once and, now that he is pardoned, plausibly future counselor, also would seem to feel there’s no such thing as poor press. In his nearly five years as a household name, Bannon’s appetite for exposure and public bombast has been notorious, if unproductive, and put him at odds with Trump. But the final verdict on the outlaw approach of both men, forever twinned, is best summed up by the late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai on the revolution in France—it’s too early to say.
I could write a full dispatch on my personal impressions of the Trump relationship with Bannon, and vice versa: the junkie energy of the duo together, how Trump was ideologically affected by Bannon but, perhaps more interestingly, how persuaded Bannon became of the virtues of Trump’s approach. Trump is often sneered at as lazy, but his former chief strategist has told me he was enthralled by Trump’s work ethic when it came to what he actually cared about. The insane, germophobic flights back and forth daily from Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina to the New York penthouse. The cavernous appetite for media bloodsport. The willed obliviousness to establishment niceties, Trump’s brass tacks desire to get things done and chuck the process. The relentless propagation of The Brand, its exposure, its purity be damned, the preoccupation of loser historians of the future.
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