Must-Read: Steve M.: I Know This Sounds Wacky, but I Think Trump and Bannon Are Actually Conservatives

Must-Read: It has long been clear to me that the last thing Fred Hiatt and his crew at the Washington Post are interested in is being trustworthy information intermediaries—that what they write is of interest, as Izzy Stone used to say, not for what it tells us about the world but for what it tells us about the cons they are attempting to run.

The latest version is Fred Hiatt’s claim that he was one of the marks last fall–that he trusted Trump, and Trump conned him:

Steve M.: I Know This Sounds Wacky, but I Think Trump and Bannon Are Actually Conservatives: “The Donald Trump administration didn’t come into office holding out an olive branch to Chuck Schumer… and The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt finds that baffling…

For weeks there has been [an] obvious question for Stephen K. Bannon and President Trump: Why are they driving Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer into the arms of the implacable opposition?… Trump’s behavior from Inauguration Day on left Schumer no choice…. [But this] isn’t… optimal for Trump… if his and Bannon’s goal was to blow up both parties and forge a new working-class, nationalist majority…. [Had] Trump had begun his administration by seeking a bipartisan infrastructure bill, Schumer would have had no choice but to cooperate, and might well have welcomed the chance…

Hiatt just can’t figure it out…. [But] the notion that Trump and Bannon ever really wanted to “blow up both parties and forge a new working-class, nationalist majority” is completely specious…. Consider this Politburo story about tensions between the Trump Treasury Department and the Bannon wing in the White House:

Conservatives inside and outside Treasury say the new secretary, former Goldman Sachs banker, movie producer and Democratic donor Steven Mnuchin, is assembling a team that is too liberal and too detached from the core of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” platform of ripping up trade deals, gutting the Dodd-Frank banking rules and generally rejecting “globalism” in all its forms…. Mnuchin has selected another Democratic donor, Craig Phillips, for a top position… told senators… he supports parts of the… Volcker Rule….

Did you follow that?… On changing the tax code, eliminating the Volcker Rule, overturning Dodd-Frank, and generally “revamping” (i.e., gutting) financial regulations, the supposedly “populist” Bannon is to the right of Trump’s Goldman Sachs contingent…. Maybe Bannon doesn’t really give a crap about infrastructure, especially infrastructure paid for in a way Chuck Schumer might endorse…. “Champion of the working stiff” is a good market niche for [Bannon] (and for Trump). But all of Trump’s top advisers are ultimately Republicans. Unless they believed they could negotiate the terms of a Democratic surrender, they were never going to do inter-party outreach.