White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon has largely been laying low, but he came out of the woodwork on Tuesday with a phone call to American Prospect editor Robert Kuttner to discuss China policy and the white nationalists President Donald Trump failed to fully condemn in the wake of the Charlottesville attack.
While discussing Bannon’s plan to carry out an “economic nationalism” policy program, Kuttner asked how economic nationalism ties into the recent violence in Charlottesville from white nationalists.
Bannon dismissed the racist and white supremacist vein in the conservative movement.
“Ethno-nationalism—it’s losers. It’s a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more,” Bannon told the American Prospect. “These guys are a collection of clowns.”
The White House aide said that Democrats’ messaging around race will only help his agenda and the Republican Party.
“The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em I want them to talk about racism every day,” Bannon told the American Prospect. “If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
During the phone call, which was initiated by Bannon, he largely discussed policy toward China and North Korea. He said that the U.S. is in an “economic war” with China and dismissed the possibility of a military solution to North Korea’s threats. Bannon also said he has plans to replace officials in the State Department and Defense Department who disagree with him on policy toward China and North Korea.
It’s not entirely clear whether Bannon intended to have an on-the-record conversation with the American Prospect. According to Kuttner, the two never discussed the phone call being off the record. Axios reported that Bannon told associates that he did not intend to give an interview to the American Prospect.
Bannon told the Daily Mail later Thursday morning that his conversation with the American Prospect served a purpose: He said that it “drew fire away from POTUS” and argued that it “changed the [media] narrative” in the wake of Trump’s response to the Charlottesville attack.
