According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that Trump is facing a situation of “no one to use” after ordering that he no longer pay the lawyer’s fees for private lawyer Giuliani.
But in recent weeks, Trump has repeatedly talked on the phone with Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser who was once estranged from him.
People familiar with the matter said that Trump has searched for his former allies and tried to find people who are still willing to obey his orders. In recent weeks, President Trump seems to have found another confidant.
On his phone call with Bannon, he can “hear what he wants to hear” and can continue to adhere to the theory that “there is a vote fraud in the general election”.
So he called the former White House adviser many times to seek the latter’s advice on how to turn the situation around in such circumstances.
It is not clear how many times the two people have been electrified, and when the most recent one was.
When a reporter contacted Bannon, he refused to answer any questions. A White House spokesman did not respond to this.
Former “Invisible President” Bannon
As a former senior adviser to the White House president and chief strategist, Bannon is undoubtedly one of Trump’s top fans and a typical representative of the far-right populists in the United States.
He once had his own highlight moment.
In January 2017, Trump broke the tradition of the National Security Council (NSC) not to give permanent seats to officials with political positions, and took advantage of the reorganization of the NSC to place his confidant Bannon and become a “permanent member”.
During his time working for Trump, Bannon constantly exposed his growing ambitions and extreme exclusionary ideas.
On the one hand, he repeatedly sang the opposite of Kushner, the “first daughter” who was in the spotlight at that time.
According to The Politico, because of Bannon’s extreme populism and his anti-establishment ideas, and Kushner’s more technocratic approach to government It’s very different.
A senior official revealed that there are “a lot of disputes between nationalists and ‘West Wing Democrats in the White House'”. The frequent infighting between the two bored even Trump.
On the other hand, he participates in various extremist xenophobic organizations and frequently contributes articles in various right-wing media to promote racist and xenophobic ideas.
Bannon’s crowdfunding project “We Build the Wall” participated in the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall Trump promised during the election to “prevent illegal immigration from invading”.
He was not even satisfied with encouraging division within the United States, and reached out his tentacles to Europe to incite and fund support for the rise to power of the far right in Europe. In response, French President Macron has criticized: “Some populists in Europe colluded with some foreign interests, and their goal is to dismantle the EU.”
He had so much influence on American public opinion that he even was called the “invisible president” by some American media, including the New York Times.
However, the “most dangerous politician in the United States” called “the most dangerous politician in the United States” by Bloomberg was kicked out by Trump after only one year in the White House.
In August 2020, Bannon was accused of defrauding up to $25 million of donations using the crowdfunding wall project mentioned above, of which at least $1 million was used by Bannon for personal consumption.
Raising huge funds only built a tofu residue wall that was investigated as “severely eroded by the river”. Bannon pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on bail for $5 million.
The capricious Trump
After leaving the White House, Bannon cooperated with Special Adviser Robert Miller in an investigation into Trump’s relationship with Russia, which Trump expressed concern and dissatisfaction.
In January 2018, American writer and journalist Mike Woolf’s book Fire and Fury revealed that Bannon had accused Trump’s son Donald Jr. of meeting with Russian lawyers as “treason” and satirized Ivanka’s “dumb as a brick”.
In response, Trump angrily accused Bannon as “crazy” after being fired.
Subsequently, Bannon issued a special apology statement explaining that he was not targeting Donald Jr., a “loving and good young man”, and said that “my support for the president is unswerving”.
But the White House rejected his apology and said that there was no predictable way to “recover” Trump’s relationship with him.
In August 2020, the day after Bannon was summoned for alleged fraud, Trump made it outright to publicly call the media in his Oval Office that donation fraud was very “inappropriate” and hinted that Bannon’s root for this behavior may be his own vanity, not his own instigation.
“The Bannon thing is very sad, I know nothing about that project (meaning the fund-raising project involved in the case), and I don’t like this project…
I haven’t dealt with him in a long time, and I don’t deal with him at all.”
Although Trump will turn against each other, Bannon, who is facing criminal prosecution, is still a staunch supporter.
During Trump’s first impeachment in late 2019 and early 2020, Bannon set up a channel called War Room to facilitate the defense of the president alongside other Trump supporters.
During the epidemic, Bannon also used this platform to promote some false statements made by Trump about the coronavirus epidemic. During the election, Bannon publicly endorsed Trump’s claim that the election was fraudulent and continued to strongly support his re-election.
As president, Trump still holds the power of pardon for federal crimes.
In December 2020, a Trump adviser told The Washington Post anonymously that Trump had discussed the pardon of Bannon and considered issuing dozens more amnesty orders before leaving office.
