Steve Bannon.

[Dill]

(02-14-2017, 11:07 AM)hollodero Wrote: Chuck got one from me. 

About the bufffoonery. No, I do not see it as misdirection, although it crossed my mind. I, of course, do not really know anything. But I am on the Bannon train, I think he tried it with Palin, then successfully with Trump, he has a pattern of choosing easy influencable, self-regarding, not that bright individuals. But Trump is still Trump, still a sophomoric egomaniac who does stuff on impulse. I do not grant Trump any kind of impulse control (and why would anybody), hence I cannot believe he's following a master plan.

I don't see the question of planned misdirection vs impulsive incompetence as either/or. It can be both/and.

I don't think Trump has a master plan. He basically just reacts. The Dems have a healthcare plan? Then he will have a bigger better one. The best anyone has ever seen. In what will it consist? The answer will accumulate piecemeal as Republicans around him begin feeding him bits and pieces of what they want to see put in place.

But he comes from a business entertainment environment in which he has been able augment his own power by keeping people dependent upon him for jobs and favors guessing and in competition with one another.

It looks like he has continued that practice into the White House, which continues to be in chaos, and he employs picking advisors and cabinet, and it to the degree he can (at this point) in foreign policy, where it quickly breaks down.

So there is a plan, kind of, or perhaps a practiced behavior pattern which has gotten results before. But now he is so far out of his depth he cannot control the consequences.

Bannon I think, Like Kellyann, is brighter than Trump and able to influence him. A Trump doctrine might soon be discernible from Trump's domestic and foreign policy actions, revealed in consistent (if muddled) attempts to ban Muslims, expel immigrants, scuttle trade agreements, and muddle post-WWII alliances, again and again. 

Therefore not a Master plan, but a plan of sorts, the consequences of which have been very simply imagined (ISIS will back down if we build more aircraft carriers; employment will rise when illegals are expelled) but not thought through, beyond expected approval from his base.