Morning Joe Recap: Good morning everyone! Happy Thursday to you!
Joining today's show are Mark Halperin, Nicolle Wallace, Sam Stein, Josh Green, Jeremy Peters, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Jonathan Capehart, Steve Rattner, Sen. Tim Kaine, Karl Vick, Sen. Joe Manchin, Sen. Claire McCaskill, Alastair Campbell, Zac Levi and more
Yes Joe, we know you love Donald trump. Remember what Bill Kristol said about it yesterday? Regardless, a kinder and gentler Donald Trump? Interesting. I guess there are more from those Bloomberg Focus groups.
Bernie (Sanders) was interviewed extensively for the show today. Its a fascination and real interview with the Bern. Which is exactly why he is resonating with people and what is most astounding is how people that are for Trump say that if Trump does not get the nomination, they would vote for him (Bernie sanders).
Trump Viewed Unfavorably by Most Voters: Suffolk/USAToday.
Donald Trump has the most support at 23% from those expecting to vote in GOP primaries, but his favorability was the lowest at 27%, according to Suffolk University/USA Today national poll of likely voters.
Trump followed in poll by Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina at 13% each
Trump’s favorability, at 27%, was lowest of 10 candidates named in poll, and 61% of voters say they disapprove of him
By 53%-39% margin, people said a Muslim couldn’t be elected president; by 49%-40% margin, they said they wouldn’t vote for a qualified Muslim
NOTE: Sept. 24-28 survey of 1k voters likely to cast ballots in 2016 election has error margin of +/- 3 ppts.
In a Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies focus group video, likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa and likely Republican New Hampshire primary voters discuss why Trump's political incorrectness is both a strength and a weakness. (Source: Bloomberg).
Who Says Donald Trump Can (and Can't) Win the Republican Presidential Nomination? Politicians, pundits, and media figures have weighed in on whether the Donald can get the Republican nomination, or if he's just doomed.
Donald Trump still leads the Republican presidential field, but as his polling lead narrows, political observers continue to wonder whether the real estate mogul and rule-breaking candidate has a shot at winning his party's nomination, let alone whether he is a threat to make it all the way to the White House.
On Sunday, for instance, Trump was asked on Meet the Press whether he was in the race "for the long haul," according to a transcript. He answered that he wouldn't have much reason to continue if he saw himself "dropping in the polls." While that line prompted speculation that Trump might be getting tired of campaigning, on Tuesday he went on CNN to declare that he's "not going anywhere."
As the race continues to develop, the question of whether the current GOP front-runner will be ultimately be seen as a viable contender for the nomination is a matter of ongoing debate. Here is a roundup of those who say The Donald has a chance of winning—and those who say he does not.
He can win. A majority of likely Republican voters.
Specifically, 58 percent of them said it was "likely" he'd be the nominee as recently as an Oct. 2 Rasmussen poll, although that number was 66 percent in early September, when a majority of unaffiliated voters also said Trump would get the nod. Men, the middle aged and whites tend to be surest Trump can win. "The more a voter disapproves of President Obama’s job performance, the more confidence he or she has that Trump will end up as the Republican standard-bearer next year," the pollsters reported.
"He's a master brander," the husband of the Democratic front-runner told CNN in September. "When you've got a lot of people running and people are trying to make distinctions, being able to make a personal stamp on it so people identify with you counts for something, certainly in the beginning." Asked if he thought Trump could win the Republican nomination, Clinton replied, "I think so."
The former president reportedly chatted with the billionaire this past spring, when he was considering a run, and encouraged him play a larger role in the Republican Party, according to the Washington Post.
"He’s proven that no matter what he says, people dig him,” the SiriusXM radio host said on his show back in August, according to the Hill. "I think more or less, people are super tired of politicians, meaning that they like the idea of a successful businessman running the country who might actually be able to get s--- done,” he said. Stern, who has often hosted the mogul on his show, said Trump's negative comment about Mexican immigrants would animate people, but the broadcaster also predicted Trump would have a hard time governing.
"I can see him more than I can see any of the other ones winning the nomination and winning the presidency right now, certainly winning the presidency," the conservative pundit told Fox's Sean Hannity in July. Coulter, who has introduced Trump on the campaign trail, has said she supports the billionaire because of his immigration stance.
The veteran Republican strategist, who managed President Ronald Reagan's 1984 reelection campaign, wrote in Reuters Aug. 17 that "Trump has to build a state-of-the-art campaign if he wants to continue to do well and have the possibility of winning the nomination." Rollins said, however, that Trump had an advantage because "voters are fed up with the status quo. Many think the other candidates, mostly former or current elected officials, are part of the problem."
In an Oct. 6 interview, the "Dilbert" creator told Reason magazine: "What I see in Trump is a set of skills that are so deep and so exquisite, it would be hard for me to imagine anybody beating him, and so I've predicted he'll go all the way and win the presidency." Dilbert calls Trump "a Master Wizard" who has "a linguistic gift for influencing people."
The Vox.com co-founder wrote in September that a path for Trump included more appearances on conservative radio, courting of national security hawks, smart staff acquisitions, and policy wonkery. "The odds against him remain daunting given the way he's alienated the Republican Party's dominant tax cuts uber alles faction, but his combination of wealth, celebrity, and apparent popularity against the GOP rank and file gives him at least a sliver of the shot," Yglesias wrote.
"I will support the Republican nominee," the party's 2012 nominee told the Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum in September, according to Politico. "I don’t think that’s going to be Donald Trump." He said that the GOP "has historically nominated someone who's a mainstream conservative."
The veteran broadcaster told an audience in Israel in August that he has known the mogul "a long time" but does not think he could win, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Way back at the beginning of August, the editor of FiveThirtyEight.com and polling guru said Trump's effort might not fail quickly but, like other "fringe" candidacies that enjoyed early leads, "Trump’s campaign will fail by one means or another." More specifically, Silver pegged Trump's odds of even winning the Republican nomination at just 2 percent because of the "gantlet" of the nominating process.
The outspoken liberal documentarian said on Oct. 3 that demographics would end Trump's aspirations, according Business Insider. "Seventy-nine percent of the United States are either women, people of color, or people between the ages of 18 and 30," he said. "That's the blocks you have to win to get elected. Donald Trump, he has none of those blocks."
The director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics and author of the widely read "Sabato's Chrystal Ball" newsletter wrote in September that Trump prompts "blue language" from party big-wigs. "You had better believe that GOP leaders will do everything in their power, mainly behind the scenes, to ensure that Trump is not their standard-bearer." He added that "there is no way on God’s green earth that the Republican Party hierarchy is going to allow Donald Trump to be their nominee for president if they have enough power to stop him." With the GOP's forces uniting to thwart the billionaire, Sabato argues that the "near-unanimity of leadership opinion should be enough to defeat Trump one way or the other."
“Top operatives, strategists and activists in Iowa and New Hampshire”
Politico's August survey of these semi-anonymous insiders showed six in 10 of the Republicans said Trump couldn't win their state.
Bloomberg Politics Focus Groups: What's Powering the Ben Carson Boom. Despite never holding elected office, or perhaps because of that fact, the retired neurosurgeon has managed to impress many Republican voters.
What explains the appeal Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon who, despite never having held political office, is mounting a serious challenge for the Republican presidential nomination?
Simultaneous focus groups conducted by Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin and John Heilemann in Iowa and New Hampshire on Monday shed light on that question, and may help explain the doctor's strong polling numbers.
When asked to describe Carson, participants in the focus groups called him “deep,” “thoughtful,” “intelligent,” “measured,” “true to himself” “someone you can trust” and “calm.”
“I really think he could create a much more peaceful world, just by sitting down with diplomacy and talking to people.”
Marie, a teacher and librarian from New Hampshire. “He seems like he’d be more of a—a soothing balm,” Judi, a custodian from Iowa, said.
“I think there’s nothing common anymore about common sense. And I think he has the mentality that he can look at an issue, carefully weigh the facts, and make sound decisions,” Scott, a who manages subcontractors for defense control in New Hampshire, said.
Indeed, Carson’s lack of business experience seems to be a draw, and the focus group participants cited his unique background as evidence that he may be able to address problems from a different angle.
“I think his brilliance would help us solve problems thinking outside the box,” said Marie, a teacher and librarian from New Hampshire, where a majority of focus group participants said they believed Carson would eventually become the Republican nominee.
In both early states, Carson has been climbing in the polls since August, just after the first nationally televised Republican presidential debate, and has been on the rise ever since. The outsider candidate has now risen to third place in New Hampshire and second place in Iowa. In an election in which candidates lacking political experience are leading the pack, Carson, unlike rivals Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina, cannot point to a strong record of leadership in the business world. But when it comes to his appeal, participants in both focus groups pointed to his demeanor as a sign of strength.
Compared to the bombastic style of Trump, Carson presents voters with a Washington alternative who focus group participants believe is more likely to engage in diplomacy than name calling.
“I really think he could create a much more peaceful world, just by sitting down with diplomacy and talking to people,” Marie said.
Which is not to say that Carson's own statements have always proved uncontroversial. He found himself roundly criticized after saying in late September that he "would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation." But some of his focus group supporters did not seem to care—in fact, many agreed.
New Hampshire participants were split on whether they agreed with Carson’s comments, but every participant in Iowa said they concurred, with some calling the comments “spot on."
“I’m not saying I couldn’t ever get that, and I’m not saying that I—there couldn’t be an intelligent, very well-spoken Muslim as president someday,” Aaron, a teacher from Iowa, said. He added, “It would be hard to trust that at this point.”
But Carson’s perceived strength as an untested outsider could also be his weakness.
“I’m not so sure he is qualified,” Jessie, who works in real estate in New Hampshire, said. “I think that he seems like a genuinely good man, I think that he’s a smart man, I think that he could do wonders in local politics, and I think that honestly he should stick to that. I don’t think that in the Oval Office he would be good, I don’t think he necessarily has the demeanor to get things done.”
His temperament, too, has raised alarms for some, with a handful of participants calling for a “less passive” version of Carson with “a little bit more edge.”
“If I could create this, I don’t know, super awesome candidate, that was Ben and Trump put together, because if Ben Carson could use some of Trump’s fire with his diplomacy in which he talks with, that would be a—it would be almost an open-shut case,” Aaron said.
The focus groups were organized by independent polling firm Purple Strategies. Participants came from the Manchester, New Hampshire, and Des Moines, Iowa, areas and represented a variety of ages and socio-economic and educational backgrounds. They agreed to be quoted without their last names. Qualitative research results cannot be statistically analyzed or projected onto the broader population at large. As is customary, respondents were compensated for their participation.
Bloomberg Politics Focus Groups: Jeb Bush Not Impressing Voters in Iowa, New Hampshire. When asked their opinion on the former Florida governor, Republican focus group participants didn't offer a positive assessment.
Jeb Bush's presidential prospects are not looking good in the two states that will cast the first votes of the 2016 election.
Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin and John Heilemann conducted simultaneous focus groups with Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire on Monday, at a crucial juncture in the presidential race when horserace numbers show “outsider” candidates surging and a candidates prepare for a third televised debate just around the corner.
When asked to describe the former Florida governor, participants called the one-time front-runner an “underdog” and described his prospects as an “uphill battle.” Others described the candidate as “over-rated,” “typical politician,” “way out of touch” and “a lot of baggage.”
“I think his personality just doesn’t—I feel like he’s tepid.”
“I think his personality just doesn’t—I feel like he’s tepid,” Jennifer, an adult counselor from New Hampshire said. “I think people think he doesn’t have it in his belly, when you’re standing beside Donald Trump, boy, you can really pale in comparison in terms of desire.”
While the participants of both focus groups admitted they are impressed by what they have heard about Bush's record in Florida, many did not see that as being reason enough to put him in the Oval Office.
“I feel like getting Florida doesn’t necessarily make him presidential material,” Larry, a writer from Iowa, said.
But while likely voters were cool on Bush, many said they were impressed with his Floridian counterpart, Marco Rubio.
Rubio was described in the focus groups as “honest and straightforward,” “smart, bold and charismatic,” “statesman-like,” and “intelligent wildcard.” Aaron, a teacher from Iowa, described Rubio as “young, energetic, honest and conservative.” Participants in both focus groups indicated that they were impressed by his knowledge of foreign policy.
Still, even while drawing praise, some in the groups expressed doubts that Rubio is ready for the top job.
“At some point I think he could make a good president, but I don’t think the time is right,” David, a financial planner from New Hampshire, said.
And while another establishment candidate, John Kasich, has been making considerable efforts in New Hampshire and has begun to build more of a ground game in Iowa, his name recognition among both groups were surprisingly low. Most participants in both states did not know enough about the Ohio governor to name three adjectives to describe Kasich. Those who could said words like “intelligent,” “hard working,” and “most experienced.”
When Halperin told the group in New Hampshire about Kasich’s past position as the chairman of the House Budget Committee, participants were unimpressed. Robert, an operations manager at a construction company, called him a “glorified accountant, basically.”
“Everything he’s done hasn’t changed a thing for where we are now,” Kathy, a sales associate, said. “He’s been in that game, which all the accounting, he’s been right here in the thick of it and he’s part of the problem.”
On New Jersey governor Chris Christie, participants in both states were as up-front and brash as the man they were describing, describing him as “lost,” “corrupt,” “obnoxious” and “too Jersey."
“He’s there,” Aaron said. “There’s my two words for Chris Christie.”
The focus groups were organized by independent polling firm Purple Strategies. Participants came from the Manchester, New Hampshire, and Des Moines, Iowa, areas and represented a variety of ages and socio-economic and educational backgrounds. They agreed to be quoted without their last names. Qualitative research results cannot be statistically analyzed or projected onto the broader population at large. As is customary, respondents were compensated for their participation.
For much more from Bloomberg Politics’ focus groups, watch With All Due Respect on Bloomberg TV and BloombergPolitics.com Thursday at 5 p.m. ET. Editor's Note: A participant from an earlier focus group was inadvertently included in this week's Iowa event. Because this does not meet the standards of Purple Strategies, we have not included any of that participant's comments in the video clips or stories.
For much more from Bloomberg Politics’ focus groups, watch With All Due Respect on Bloomberg TV and BloombergPolitics.com Thursday at 5 p.m. ET.
Hillary Clinton's flip-flop on the TPP makes no sense.
After months of hinting she might oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Hillary Clinton made it official this week. And her explanation for why she's coming out against the deal now — after years of supporting it — makes no sense.
During her time as secretary of state, from 2009 to 2013, Clinton was a strong supporter of the TPP. CNN has a fun article documenting 45 times Secretary Clinton spoke out in favor of the deal, which was then in the early stages of negotiation. She even said in 2012 that "this TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements."
Now she sees things differently. In the interview with PBS's Judy Woodruff where she came out against the treaty, she cited two specific objections: It doesn't have language dealing with currency manipulation, and it has provisions that favor big drug companies over patients.
These are totally plausible arguments for opposing the TPP. But they make no sense as reasons for Clinton to change her mind about the treaty.
The pharmaceutical language in the TPP is better than expected
In her Wednesday PBS interview, Clinton said she was "worried that the pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits, and patients and consumers fewer."
One of the most controversial issues in the TPP negotiations was an Obama administration proposal to grant drug companies 12 years of legal protections for a type of drugs called biologics. Companies that develop biologic drugs enjoy 12 years of protection against copycats in the United States, but other countries have shorter terms. The Obama administration was pushing for language requiring all countries to conform to the US standard.
But surprisingly, the US didn't get its way. Other TPP countries opposed the US's proposal, and ultimately the parties agreed to a complex deal that granted between five and eight years of protection.
There are two ways that Clinton's professed concern over an excessively pro-pharma deal rings hollow. One is that — unlike currency manipulation — this is an issue where Clinton speaking up earlier could have made a difference in the negotiations. Instead, Clinton at the time carefully avoided addressing the substance of the TPP's drug provisions. I can't find a single example where she called for Obama to accept the more consumer-friendly terms other countries were demanding.
Second, the final version of the TPP wound up being less friendly to big drug companies than the version US negotiators proposed. If Clinton was concerned about the TPP being too friendly to big drug companies, the final version should have made her more, not less, comfortable, than the "gold standard" version she once praised.
Currency manipulation was never going to be part of the TPP
TPP critics, including the AFL-CIO, have been raising concerns about currency manipulation since the outset of TPP negotiations. Members of Congress from across the political spectrum have urged the White House to make currency manipulation an issue in the TPP negotiations.
The Obama administration has flatly refused these requests. And they've had a fairly persuasive argument, too: Foreign governments won't go for it. Countries around the world see control over currency as a core part of national sovereignty. If the US had taken a hard line on the issue, it likely would have simply derailed the negotiations.
That was the administration's position when Clinton served as secretary of state. And it was the administration's position in early 2015, when Clinton began expressing concern about the lack of currency manipulation language in the TPP.
By early 2015, negotiations over the TPP were coming to a close. Clinton knew perfectly well there was zero chance that US negotiators would even bring up the issue, to say nothing of getting other countries to go along with it. Raising the issue in 2015 was simply a way of laying the groundwork for eventual opposition.
Of course, if she really thought currency manipulation was an essential part of the agreement, she probably shouldn't have described the deal as the "gold standard in trade agreements" in the first place.
Ezra Klein from Vox writes 'Why Clinton’s TPP opposition unnerves me'. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was running against an inexperienced, untested young senator named Barack Obama. Clinton was known as one of the most serious policy wonks to ever run for president, and her network included most of Democratic Party's top policy staff, many of whom had worked directly for her or her husband.
But, somehow, much of the Democratic policy establishment ended up supporting Obama. No one doubted that Clinton knew policy inside and out; they doubted that she would make the right calls in the face of public pressure.
The Iraq War loomed largest here, but a smaller, but still important, moment was when Hillary Clinton proposed suspending the federal gas tax for the summer travel season. Economists hate this sort of policy pander: it encourages people to use more gas, robs the highway trust fund of revenue that needs to be raised some other way, and ends up raising gas prices because of increased demand.
But it polls well. And Clinton, who knows better, signed onto it. So did John McCain. But Obama didn't. He slammed the proposal as "short-term, quick-fix" thinking, and said, "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's an idea designed to get them through an election."
Policy wonks agreed, and Clinton faced a storm of criticism for her pander. She was reduced to protesting, "I’m not going to put my lot in with economists," which didn't endear her to economists — or to anyone who actually does want policymakers to listen to economists when designing tax policy.
Obama had his struggles with policy opportunism, too — notably, when he left the individual mandate out of his health-care plan, which led to a lot of health-policy experts preferring Clinton (Obama ultimately flip-flopped on the issue in office). But it was moments like the Iraq war and the gas tax that helped Obama win over much of a Democratic policy establishment that had no reason to trust him.
Clinton keeps taking positions that are...hard to believe.
Of late, Clinton is again looking like the kind of candidate who puts polls in front of policy.
First, she came out against Obamacare's Cadillac tax — a policy that enjoys wide support among health economists. Clinton knows the problems of the massive deduction for employer-provided health insurance well; decades ago, her health-care plan wiped out tax code's preference for employer-based health care, and in 2008, she had a smaller, more targeted, version of the Cadillac tax in her proposal.
I want to be clear here. Lots of people oppose the Cadillac tax, and for lots of reasons. What I have trouble believing is that Clinton and her policy advisors really think the Cadillac tax is a bad idea. Her past policies embrace its theory, her past advisors helped pass it into law, and virtually everyone who spends their days thinking about how to control health-care costs considers it one of Obamacare's most promising provisions.
On Wednesday, Clinton came out against the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, saying that she's concerned with the provisions around pharmaceuticals and the absence of provisions around currency manipulation. But, as Tim Lee notes, Clinton strongly supported early versions of the deal — she called the TPP "the gold standard in trade agreements" — that were worse on pharmaceuticals and identical on currency manipulation.
Again, the argument here isn't that there aren't reasons to oppose the TPP, but that knowing Clinton's record, her advisors, and her past comments about the deal, it's hard to believe that Clinton really opposes the TPP deal.
Something of the same could be said for the Keystone XL Pipeline. Clinton's initial take on the pipeline was positive, and then she said she wouldn't take a position until she was president, and then she finally came out against it. I'm a bit more inclined here to credit Clinton's position as authentic — she's a climate hawk, and while my sense is she thinks both sides make too big a deal over Keystone, I can see her leaning against it — but it's not exactly a bold, polls-be-damned approach to the issue.
Opposing these policies may not even be good politics.
Clinton's reputation as a policy wonk is sterling; it's common to talk to Democratic (and, in some cases, Republican) staffers who tell you that they've never briefed a politician as sharp and informed as she is.
But Clinton's reputation as a policymaker is iffier — her critics can rattle off a long list of important decisions, ranging from the Iraq War to the bankruptcy bill, where they think she was swayed by polls or interest groups.
Clinton, of course, isn't just a policymaker — she's a politician, and particularly when it comes to reading polls and managing interest groups, she's a good one. Her vulnerability in the Democratic primary comes from the left, and to keep liberal challengers from gaining support, she needs to hold union support. Coming out against the TPP and the Cadillac tax is a great way to win over unions.
But it's not a great way for Clinton to show she's willing to make some unpopular decisions if they lead to better policy — and that has political benefits that don't show up in narrow issue polls.
I don't truly know what's in Clinton's heart — perhaps I'm wrong, and despite all evidence to the contrary, she holds all these positions deeply — but as a close reader of her record, I'm not convinced that Clinton, in office, wouldn't support policies like the Cadillac tax or negotiate trade deals like the TPP. And as someone trying to understand Clinton's likely governing philosophy, it's unnerving.
And this is a broader problem for Clinton. Her political weakness, fairly or not, is that the voters and the media — or maybe it's media, and thus, the voters — have decided that she's unusually poll-tested and calculating, even for a politician. Politically convenient policy changes don't help, and they cut against what should be her greatest asset: that she's an extraordinary policy mind who understands these issues better than her challengers, and so can be trusted to make better decisions on them.
Bernie Sanders: GOP voters are considering me. Democratic 2016 candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders joins Morning Joe to discuss his campaign, why Republicans are considering his candidacy, climate change. Iowa, NH focus groups show Bernie support. Top Talkers: Bernie Sanders is likely to win the New Hampshire primary, according to the latest Bloomberg focus group of Democratic voters in the state. Sanders: I differ with Clinton in many areas. Ahead of the first Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders talks to Chris Hayes about trade, guns, and his presidential rival
Bernie Sanders gets his first congressional endorsment. Insurgent Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will officially pick up his first congressional endorsement Friday at a rally in Tucson, Arizona, from the area’s congressman, Rep. Raul Grijalva, who is also the co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Sanders has the support of one of four Democratic voters nationally, but – until now – zero out of 232 Democratic members of Congress. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s lock on the party’s leaders has left little room for endorsements for Sanders or Vice President Joe Biden, should he decide to jump in the race.
Political scientists say endorsements from party elite are the most determinate of success in party primaries, but Sanders has run an intentionally outsider campaign and his campaign believes endorsements are less important than pundits think.
In an interview with MSNBC Wednesday, Grijalva, whose endorsement was first reported by The Los Angeles Times, said he wanted to make his support for Sanders public before the first Democratic debate next week.
“I support Bernie’s message. I think it’s an important message. It’s a message that has unfortunately been muted for too long,” Grijalva said.
The congressman said he did not realize he was the first member of Congress to back Sanders, but added he hopes others will give Sanders the consideration he deserves. He does not, however, plan to lobby his colleagues to endorse Sanders.
“For some of my colleagues it’s been a rough process about deciding whom to endorse,” he said. “I’m not going to go out and solicit, it’s a personal decision … If people ask me why and want to discuss this with me, I’ll be more than glad to discuss it.”
Grijalva, whose district is heavily Latino, thinks Sanders can expand his support among Hispanic voters and wants to help the Democratic presidential candidate do that. “One of the accusations is that Bernie has no reach into communities of color. I think people are mistaken about that,” Grijalva explained.
Grijalva added that his endorsement is not meant as a sleight against Clinton, whom he respects and whose campaign courted him as well.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton's evolution on gay and lesbian issues.
Climate Change & Environment. The United States must lead the world in tackling climate change, if we are to make certain that this planet is habitable for our children and grandchildren. We must transform our energy system away from polluting fossil fuels, and towards energy efficiency and sustainability. Millions of homes and buildings need to be weatherized, and we need to greatly accelerate technological progress in wind and solar power generation.
Unless we take bold action to address climate change, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to look back on this period in history and ask a very simple question: Where were they? Why didn’t the United States of America, the most powerful nation on earth, lead the international community in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and preventing the devastating damage that the scientific community told us would surely come?
Introduced the gold standard for climate change legislation with Sen. Barbara Boxer to tax carbon and methane emissions.
Led the opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Secured $3.2 billion in the economic stimulus package for grants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in a program that has funded upgrades for more than 86,000 buildings and installed more than 9,500 solar energy systems.
Josh Green is on now speaking about his following article regarding Steve bannon at Briebart:
The New Vast Right-Wing Conspirator Wants to Take Out Both Clinton and Bush
Steve Bannon is using hedge fund money and Seinfeld royalties to try to stop the Clintons from retaking the White House. And the Bushes, too.
It’s nearing midnight as Steve Bannon pushes past the bluegrass band in his living room and through a crowd of Republican congressmen, political operatives, and a few stray Duck Dynasty cast members. He’s trying to make his way back to the SiriusXM Patriot radio show, broadcasting live from a cramped corner of the 14-room townhouse he occupies a stone’s throw from the Supreme Court. It’s late February, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is in full swing, and Bannon, as usual, is the whirlwind at the center of the action.
Bannon is the executive chairman of Breitbart News, the crusading right-wing populist website that’s a lineal descendant of the Drudge Report (its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, spent years apprenticing with Matt Drudge) and a haven for people who think Fox News is too polite and restrained. He’d spent the day at CPAC among the conservative faithful, zipping back and forth between his SiriusXM booth and an unlikely pair of guests he was squiring around: Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s right-wing UKIP party, and Phil Robertson, the bandanna’d, ayatollah-bearded Duck Dynasty patriarch who was accepting a free-speech award. CPAC is a beauty contest for Republican presidential hopefuls. But Robertson, a novelty adornment invited after A&E suspended him for denouncing gays, delivered a wild rant about “beatniks” and sexually transmitted diseases that upstaged them all, to Bannon’s evident delight. “If there’s an explosion or a fire somewhere,” says Matthew Boyle, Breitbart’s Washington political editor, “Steve’s probably nearby with some matches.” Afterward, everyone piled into party buses and headed for the townhouse.
“Honey badger don’t give a s---” is the Breitbart motto
Bannon, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, is the sort of character who would stand out anywhere, but especially in the drab environs of Washington. A mile-a-minute talker who thrums with energy, his sentences speed off ahead of him and spin out into great pileups of nouns, verbs, and grins. With his swept-back blond hair and partiality to cargo shorts and flip-flops, he looks like Jeff Spicoli after a few decades of hard living, and he employs “dude” just as readily.
Ordinarily, Bannon’s townhouse is crypt-quiet and feels like a museum, as it’s faithfully decorated down to its embroidered silk curtains and painted murals in authentic Lincoln-era detail. When I first stoppped by in January, about the only sign that I hadn’t teleported back to the 1860s was a picture on the mantle of a smiling woman on a throne with a machine gun in her lap (it was Bannon’s daughter Maureen, a West Point grad and lieutenant in the 101st Airborne Division; the throne belonged to Saddam Hussein—or once did). Until Bannon showed up, the only sounds I heard were faint noises from the basement, which might have been the young women he calls the Valkyries, after the war goddesses of Norse mythology who decided soldiers’ fates in battle. More on them later.
On this February night, however, the party is roaring. Along with his CPAC triumph, a secret project he’d conceived was nearing fruition: His lawyers were almost finished vetting a book about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s murky financial dealings that he’s certain will upend the presidential race. “Dude, it’s going to be epic,” he tells me. I sip my “moonshine”—his wink at the Dynasty guests—and wonder, as people often do, whether Bannon is nuts. On my way out, the doorman hands me a gift: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” printed above an image of a honey badger, the insouciant African predator of YouTube fame whose catchphrase, “Honey badger don’t give a s---,” is the Breitbart motto.
Bannon’s life is a succession of Gatsbyish reinventions that made him rich and landed him squarely in the middle of the 2016 presidential race: He’s been a naval officer, investment banker, minor Hollywood player, and political impresario. When former Disney chief Michael Ovitz’s empire was falling to pieces, Bannon sat Ovitz down in his living room and delivered the news that he was finished. When Sarah Palin was at the height of her fame, Bannon was whispering in her ear. When Donald Trump decided to blow up the Republican presidential field, Bannon encouraged his circus-like visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. John Boehner just quit as House speaker because of the mutinous frenzy Bannon and his confederates whipped up among conservatives. Today, backed by mysterious investors and a stream of Seinfeld royalties, he sits at the nexus of what Hillary Clinton once dubbed “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” where he and his network have done more than anyone else to complicate her presidential ambitions—and they plan to do more. But this “conspiracy,” at least under Bannon, has mutated into something different from what Clinton described: It’s as eager to go after establishment Republicans such as Boehner or Jeb Bush as Democrats like Clinton.
“I come from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic, pro-Kennedy, pro-union family of Democrats,” says Bannon, by way of explaining his politics. “I wasn’t political until I got into the service and saw how badly Jimmy Carter f---ed things up. I became a huge Reagan admirer. Still am. But what turned me against the whole establishment was coming back from running companies in Asia in 2008 and seeing that Bush had f---ed up as badly as Carter. The whole country was a disaster.”
As befits someone with his peripatetic background, Bannon is a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde figure in the complicated ecosystem of the right—he's two things at once. And he’s devised a method to influence politics that marries the old-style attack journalism of Breitbart.com, which helped drive out Boehner, with a more sophisticated approach, conducted through the nonprofit Government Accountability Institute, that builds rigorous, fact-based indictments against major politicians, then partners with mainstream media outlets conservatives typically despise to disseminate those findings to the broadest audience. The biggest product of this system is the project Bannon was so excited about at CPAC: the bestselling investigative book, written by GAI’s president, Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Published in May by HarperCollins, the book dominated the political landscape for weeks and probably did more to shape public perception of Hillary Clinton than any of the barbs from her Republican detractors.
Jeb Bush is about to come in for the same treatment. On Oct. 19, GAI will publish Schweizer’s e-book, Bush Bucks: How Public Service and Corporations Helped Make Jeb Rich, that examines how Bush enriched himself after leaving the Florida governor’s mansion in 2007. A copy obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek examines Bush’s Florida land deals, corporate board sinecures, and seven-figure salary with Lehman Brothers, whose 2008 bankruptcy touched off the financial crisis. “It’s not as cinematic as the Clintons, with their warlords and Russian gangsters and that whole cast of bad guys,” says Bannon. “Bush is more prosaic. It’s really just grimy, low-energy crony capitalism.”
While attacking the favored candidates in both parties at once may seem odd, Bannon says he’s motivated by the same populist disgust with Washington that’s animating candidates from Trump to Bernie Sanders. Like both, Bannon is having a bigger influence than anyone could have reasonably expected. But in the Year of the Outsider, it's perhaps fitting that a figure like Bannon, whom nobody saw coming, would roil the national political debate.
Most days, Bannon can be found in his Hyde persona, in the Washington offices of Breitbart News. Operating from the basement of his townhouse—known to all as the Breitbart Embassy—Breitbart’s pirate crew became tribunes of the rising Tea Party movement after Barack Obama’s election, bedeviling GOP leaders and helping to foment the 2013 government shutdown. The site has also made life hell for Democrats by, for example, orchestrating the career-ending genital tweeting misfortune that cost New York Representative Anthony Weiner his seat in Congress in 2011. Tipped to Weiner’s proclivity for sexting with female admirers, Bannon says, the site paid trackers to follow his Twitter account 24 hours a day and eventually intercepted a crotch shot Weiner inadvertently made public. The ensuing scandal culminated in the surreal scene, carried live on television, of Andrew Breitbart hijacking Weiner’s press conference and fielding questions from astonished reporters.
On occasion, this partisan zeal has led to egregious errors. Just before our lunch in January, a Breitbart reporter published an article assailing Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Loretta Lynch—but went after the wrong woman. She wasn’t, as the site reported, the Loretta Lynch who was once part of Bill Clinton’s defense team. The embarrassed reporter asked for time off. Bannon, allergic to any hint of concession, refused: “I told him, ‘No. In fact, you’re going to write a story every day this week.’ ” He shrugs. “We’re honey badgers,” he explains. “We don’t give a s---.”
But Bannon realizes that politics is sometimes more effective when it’s subtle. So he’s nurtured a Dr. Jekyll side: In 2012 he became founding chairman of GAI, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization staffed with lawyers, data scientists, and forensic investigators. “What Peter and I noticed is that it’s facts, not rumors, that resonate with the best investigative reporters,” Bannon says, referring to GAI’s president. Established in Tallahassee to study crony capitalism and governmental malfeasance, GAI has collaborated with such mainstream news outlets as Newsweek, ABC News, and CBS’s 60 Minutes on stories ranging from insider trading in Congress to credit card fraud among presidential campaigns. It's essentially a mining operation for political scoops that now churns out books like Clinton Cash and Bush Bucks.
What made Clinton Cash so unexpectedly influential is that mainstream news reporters picked up and often advanced Schweizer’s many examples of the Clintons’ apparent conflicts of interest in accepting money from large donors and foreign governments. (“Practically grotesque,” wrote Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, who’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination. “On any fair reading, the pattern of behavior that Schweizer has charged is corruption.”) Just before the book’s release, the New York Times ran a front-page story about a Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra, who gave tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation and then flew Bill Clinton to Kazakhstan aboard his private jet to dine with the country’s autocratic president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. Giustra subsequently won lucrative uranium-mining rights in the country. (Giustra denies that the Clinton dinner influenced his Kazakh mining decision.) The Times piece cited Schweizer’s still-unpublished book as a source of its reporting, puzzling many Times readers and prompting a reaction from the paper’s ombudswoman, Margaret Sullivan, who grudgingly concluded that, while no ethical standards were breached, “I still don’t like the way it looked.”
For Bannon, the Clinton Cash uproar validated a personal theory, informed by his Goldman Sachs experience, about how conservatives can influence the media and why they failed the last time a Clinton was running for the White House. “In the 1990s,” he told me, “conservative media couldn’t take down [Bill] Clinton because most of what they produced was punditry and opinion, and they always oversold the conclusion: ‘It’s clearly impeachable!’ So they wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber.” What news conservatives did produce, such as David Brock’s Troopergate investigation on Paula Jones in the American Spectator, was often tainted in the eyes of mainstream editors by its explicit partisan association.
In response, Bannon developed two related insights. “One of the things Goldman teaches you is, don’t be the first guy through the door because you’re going to get all the arrows. If it’s junk bonds, let Michael Milken lead the way,” he says. “Goldman would never lead in any product. Find a business partner.” His other insight was that the reporters staffing the investigative units of major newspapers aren’t the liberal ideologues of conservative fever dreams but kindred souls who could be recruited into his larger enterprise. “What you realize hanging out with investigative reporters is that, while they may be personally liberal, they don’t let that get in the way of a good story,” he says. “And if you bring them a real story built on facts, they’re f---ing badasses, and they’re fair.” Recently, I met with Brock, who renounced conservatism and became an important liberal strategist, fundraiser, and Clinton ally. He founded the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America and just published a book, Killing The Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government. Brock’s attitude toward Bannon isn’t enmity toward an ideological opponent, as I'd expected, but rather a curiosity and professional respect for the tradecraft Bannon demonstrated in advancing the Clinton Cash narrative. What conservatives learned in the ’90s, Brock says, is that “your operation isn’t going to succeed if you don’t cross the barrier into the mainstream.” Back then, he says, conservative reporting had to undergo an elaborate laundering to influence U.S. politics. Reporters such as Brock would publish in small magazines and websites, then try to get their story planted in the British tabloids and hope a right-leaning U.S. outlet such as the New York Post or the Drudge Report picked it up. If it generated enough heat, it might break through to a mainstream paper.
“From their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus”
“It seems to me,” says Brock of Bannon and his team, “what they were able to do in this deal with the Times is the same strategy, but more sophisticated and potentially more effective and damaging because of the reputation of the Times. If you were trying to create doubt and qualms about [Hillary Clinton] among progressives, the Times is the place to do it.” He pauses. “Looking at it from their point of view, the Times is the perfect host body for the virus.”
It wasn’t the only one. In June, when the Clinton Cash frenzy hit its apex, Bannon said: “We’ve got the 15 best investigative reporters at the 15 best newspapers in the country all chasing after Hillary Clinton.” There’s more coming, Bannon reveals, including a graphic novel of Clinton Cash, in January, and a Clinton Cash movie set to arrive in February, just as the presidential primary voting gets under way.
In the ’90s, right-wing activists enjoyed a long period of ascendancy, and then collapsed. Then, as now, their prime target was a Clinton, their great ally the House Republicans. What halted this uprising was the sheer lunacy of its perpetrators. The classic example is House Oversight Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana, who became convinced that the 1993 suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster was actually murder—a theory he sought to prove by reenacting the crime in his backyard with a pistol and a watermelon. Democrats seized on the episode to impugn his credibility, branding him “Watermelon Dan.” “We used the watermelon and the phantom Vince Foster sightings again and again," says Chris Lehane, a Clinton White House staffer and field marshal in the partisan wars of the ’90s. "The phrase didn’t exist then, but that’s when the right-wing conspiracy jumped the shark.”
Bannon believes that episodes like these killed conservatives’ credibility, and with it, their political influence. He’s set out to balance conservatives’ wilder impulses with professionalism, a running theme in his own life. Born into a working-class family within sight of the naval base in Norfolk, Va., he signed up straight out of college, and spent four years at sea aboard a destroyer, first as an auxiliary engineer in the Pacific, then as a navigator in the north Arabian Sea during the Iranian hostage crisis. By the time he arrived in the Persian Gulf in 1979, the U.S. was preparing its ill-fated assault on Tehran, and Bannon’s faith in his commander in chief had dimmed: “You could tell it was going to be a goat f---.” His battle group rotated out just before Carter’s Desert One debacle.
Bannon became a special assistant to the chief of Naval operations at the Pentagon, earning a master’s degree in national security studies at Georgetown University at night. But he was restless. The siren of Reagan-era Wall Street capitalism drained the military life of its luster, so he resolved to make the leap. “Somebody told me,” he says, “if you want to go to Wall Street, you have to go to Harvard Business School.” HBS accepted him, and Bannon, at 29, matriculated in 1983.
Bannon’s Harvard stint coincided with Wall Street’s boom, which fueled fantasies among his classmates of the full-on, debauched 1980s investment-banker lifestyle. Bannon became a grind, made first-year honors, and blanketed the top firms with applications for summer associateships. He was universally rejected. Classmates told him that his age and Navy background were obstacles—he hadn’t come up through the right schools.
One day, a Goldman Sachs representative invited Bannon to a campus recruiting party: Thinking he could talk himself into a job, he donned a suit and headed over. “I get there, and there’s like 700 people jammed into this tent,” he says. “I said, ‘F--- it. There’s no chance.’ So I stood off on the side with a drink and these two other schmendricks standing next to me. And I talk to these guys. We have the greatest conversation about baseball, and I find out after half an hour it was John Weinberg Jr., whose dad runs the firm, and a guy named Rob Kaplan, who became a senior partner.” That night the Goldman executives gathered to discuss prospective hires. One later recounted the scene. “They said, ‘Well, Bannon, I guess we’re gonna reject him. He’s too old for a summer job,’ ” Bannon says. “And these guys say, ‘Oh no, we talked to him. He’s terrific.’ Literally, a complete crapshoot. But I got a job.”
Bannon landed in Goldman’s New York office at the height of the hostile takeover boom. “Everything in the Midwest was being raided by Milken,” he says. “It was like a firestorm.” Goldman didn’t do hostile takeovers, instead specializing in raid defense for companies targeted by the likes of Drexel Burnham and First Boston. The first few years, he worked every day except Christmas and loved it: “The camaraderie was amazing. It was like being in the Navy, in the wardroom of a ship.” Later, he worked on a series of leveraged buyouts, including a deal for Calumet Coach that involved Bain Capital and an up-and-comer named Mitt Romney.
Two big things were going on at Goldman Sachs in the late ’80s. The globalization of world capital markets meant that size suddenly mattered. Everyone realized that the firm, then a private partnership, would have to go public. Bankers also could see that the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking was going to fall, setting off a flurry of acquisitions. Specialists would command a premium. Bannon shipped out to Los Angeles to specialize in media and entertainment. “A lot of people were coming from outside buying media companies,” he says. “There was huge consolidation.”
After a few years, in 1990, Bannon and a couple of Goldman colleagues set off to launch Bannon & Co., a boutique investment bank specializing in media. At the time, investors preferred hard assets—manufacturing companies, real estate—and avoided things like movie studios and film libraries, which were harder to price. Bannon’s group, drawing on data such as VHS cassette sales and TV ratings, devised a model to value intellectual property in the same way as tangible assets. “We got a ton of business,” he says.
When the French bank Crédit Lyonnais, a major financier of independent Hollywood studios, almost went bankrupt, Bannon & Co. rolled up its loan portfolio. When MGM went bust, it worked on the studio’s financing. When Polygram Records got into the film business, Bannon’s firm handled its acquisitions.
And then, serendipitously, Bannon wound up in the entertainment business himself. Westinghouse Electric, a client, was looking to unload Castle Rock Entertainment, which had a big TV and movie presence, including Billy Crystal’s films. Bannon reeled in an eager buyer: Ted Turner. “Turner was going to build this huge studio,” he says, “so we were negotiating the deal at the St. Regis hotel in New York. As often happened with Turner, when it came time to actually close the deal, Ted was short of cash. ... Westinghouse just wanted out. We told them, ‘You ought to take this deal. It’s a great deal.’ And they go, ‘If this is such a great deal, why don’t you defer some of your cash fee and keep an ownership stake in a package of TV rights?’ ” In lieu of a full adviser’s fee, the firm accepted a stake in five shows, including one in its third season regarded as the runt of the litter: Seinfeld. “We calculated what it would get us if it made it to syndication,” says Bannon. “We were wrong by a factor of five.”
After Société Générale bought Bannon & Co. in 1998, Bannon, no longer needing a day job, dove into Hollywood moguldom, becoming an executive producer of movies, including Anthony Hopkins’s 1999 Oscar-nominated Titus. He met a hard-partying talent manager named Jeff Kwatinetz who had discovered the band Korn and managed the Backstreet Boys. As Bannon was selling his company, Kwatinetz was launching one of his own, a management outfit called the Firm whose clients included Ice Cube and Martin Lawrence. Newly flush and sensing adventure, Bannon became a partner and a key player in the Firm’s great coup, its acquisition of former Disney chief Ovitz’s company, Artists Management Group. Ovitz had spent $100 million building a media giant he thought would conquer Hollywood, but AMG was bleeding money. Selling to the Firm was a last-ditch bid to save face. Instead, as Vanity Fair recounted, Bannon was dispatched to Ovitz’s Beverly Hills mansion to deliver the final humiliation in person, an offer for AMG of $5 million, less than the value of Ovitz’s home.
The Hollywood ether soon convinced Bannon that his passion wasn’t financing films, but making them. He was souring on Wall Street and what it had come to represent. “Goldman in the ’80s was like a priesthood, a monastic experience where you worked all the time but were incredibly dedicated to client services, to building and growing companies,” he says. He underwent a conversion like the one Michael Lewis has described, watching with horror as staid private partnerships such as Goldman Sachs became highly leveraged, publicly traded companies operating like casinos. “I turned on Wall Street for the same reason everybody else did: The American taxpayer was forced to cut mook deals to bail out guys who didn’t deserve it.”
Bannon’s political awakening was also spurred by the Sept. 11 attacks, which led him, in 2004, to make a Reagan-venerating documentary, In the Face of Evil (“A brilliant effort … extremely well done,” said Rush Limbaugh). This introduced him to Schweizer, a Cold War scholar whose book, Reagan’s War, was the basis of the film. It also brought him into Andrew Breitbart’s orbit. “We screened the film at a festival in Beverly Hills,” Bannon recalls, “and out of the crowd comes this, like, bear who’s squeezing me like my head’s going to blow up and saying how we’ve gotta take back the culture.”
His films are peppered with footage of lions attacking helpless gazelles, seedlings bursting from the ground into glorious bloom
Breitbart, who also lived in Los Angeles, had a profound influence on Bannon. When they met, Breitbart was starting his website, after having worked with Drudge and having helped Arianna Huffington launch the Huffington Post. Bannon lent his financial acumen and office space. He marveled at Breitbart’s visceral feel for the news cycle and his ability to shape coverage through the Drudge Report, which is avidly followed by TV producers and news editors.
“One of the things I admired about him was that the dirtiest word for him was ‘punditry,’ ” says Bannon. “Our vision—Andrew’s vision—was always to build a global, center-right, populist, anti-establishment news site.” With this in mind, he set out to line up investors.
Bannon continued making documentaries—big, crashing, opinionated films with Wagner scores and arresting imagery: Battle for America (2010), celebrating the Tea Party; Generation Zero (2010), examining the roots of the financial meltdown; The Undefeated (2011), championing Palin. In the Bannon repertoire, no metaphor is too direct. His films are peppered with footage of lions attacking helpless gazelles, seedlings bursting from the ground into glorious bloom. Palin, for one, ate it up and traveled to Iowa, trailed by hundreds of reporters, to appear with him at a 2011 screening in Pella that the press thought might signal her entrance into the 2012 presidential race. (No such luck.) Breitbart came along as promoter and ringmaster. When I spoke with him afterward, he described Bannon, with sincere admiration, as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement.
In 2010, Breitbart News hit a wall. The site published video, furnished by a conservative activist, of a speech to the NAACP by a Department of Agriculture official named Shirley Sherrod, in which she appeared to advocate anti-white racism. Within hours, she was fired, as the story blanketed cable news. It soon became clear that the Breitbart News video was misleadingly edited—that Sherrod’s point was the opposite of what was portrayed (Breitbart blamed James O’Keefe, the activist who supplied the tape). Fox News, which aggressively promoted the video, banned Andrew Breitbart as an on-air guest. Bannon, who was raising capital for the site’s relaunch, suddenly encountered “nuclear winter.”
But in a gauge of how media standards have shifted since the ’90s, the ostracization of Breitbart News didn’t last long. Less than a year later, when the site caught Weiner tweeting pictures of his genitals, Andrew Breitbart was welcomed back on Fox News. The experience taught Bannon the power of real news.
On the morning of March 1, 2012, with the relaunch just days away, Andrew Breitbart was walking in his Brentwood neighborhood when he collapsed. He died soon after of heart failure, at 43. Bannon got the news while in New York pitching investors. At the funeral, Drudge asked Bannon what he planned to do. “We’re going ahead with the launch,” he replied. Bannon stepped in as executive chairman.
Breitbart’s genius was that he grasped better than anyone else what the early 20th century press barons understood—that most readers don’t approach the news as a clinical exercise in absorbing facts, but experience it viscerally as an ongoing drama, with distinct story lines, heroes, and villains. Breitbart excelled at creating these narratives, an editorial approach that's lived on. “When we do an editorial call, I don’t even bring anything I feel like is only a one-off story, even if it’d be the best story on the site,” says Alex Marlow, the site’s editor in chief. “Our whole mindset is looking for these rolling narratives.” He rattles off the most popular ones, which Breitbart News covers intensively from a posture of aggrieved persecution. “The big ones won’t surprise you,” he says. “Immigration, ISIS, race riots, and what we call ‘the collapse of traditional values.’ But I’d say Hillary Clinton is tops.”
The website, which Breitbart News Network CEO Solov says draws 21 million unique users a month, has often managed to inject these narratives into the broader discourse. It was Breitbart News, for example, that first drew attention to the child migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border last summer that killed any chance of Congress passing immigration reform. “They have an incredible eye for an important story, particular ones that are important to conservatives and Republicans,” says Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican. “They’ve become extraordinarily influential. Radio talk show hosts are reading Breitbart every day. You can feel it when they interview you.”
Lately, the site has championed Trump’s presidential candidacy, helping to coalesce a splinter faction of conservatives irate over Fox News’ treatment of the Republican frontrunner.
Fighting crony capitalism from Bannon’s Lincoln-esque dining room.
Tallahassee is about as far as you can get in the U.S., geographically and psychically, from the circus of the presidential campaign trail. That’s why Bannon chose to locate the Government Accountability Institute there—that, and the fact that Schweizer had moved down from Washington. “There’s nothing to do in Tallahassee, so I get a lot more work done,” Schweizer jokes, on my recent visit. GAI is housed in a sleepy cul de sac of two-story brick buildings that looks like what you’d get if Scarlett O’Hara designed an office park. The unmarked entrance is framed by palmetto trees and sits beneath a large, second-story veranda with sweeping overhead fans, where the (mostly male) staff gathers every afternoon to smoke cigars and brainstorm.
Schweizer began his career as a researcher at the conservative Hoover Institution, digging through Soviet archives. In 2004 he co-authored a well-regarded history of the Bush family, The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty, that drew on interviews with many of its members, including Jeb. But Schweizer grew disillusioned with Washington and became radicalized against what he perceived to be a bipartisan culture of corruption. “To me, Washington, D.C., is a little bit like professional wrestling,” he told me. “When I was growing up in Seattle, I’d turn on Channel 13, the public-access station, and watch wrestling. At first I thought, ‘Man, these guys hate each other because they’re beating the crap out of each other.’ But I eventually realized they’re actually business partners.”
Schweizer’s interest turned toward exposing this culture, and his books became more denunciatory. In 2011 he published Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison. The book caught the attention of 60 Minutes and led Congress to pass a law, the STOCK Act, aimed at curbing the abuses Schweizer documented. Bannon encouraged these investigations and eventually offered Schweizer a job. “He told me, ‘I know people who will support this kind of work,’” Schweizer says. In 2012, GAI set up shop.
Schweizer, 50, is friendly, sandy-haired, and a little pudgy, the sort of fellow you’d meet at a neighborhood barbecue and instantly take a liking to. (Bannon nurses this regular-Joe appeal by forbidding him from wearing a tie when he’s on TV.) Bannon and Schweizer had two principles when they conceived the Clinton Cash project. First, it would avoid the nuttier conspiracy theories. “We have a mantra,” says Bannon. “Facts get shares, opinions get shrugs.” Second, they would heed the lesson Bannon learned at Goldman: specialize. Hillary Clinton’s story, they believed, was too sprawling and familiar to tackle in its entirety. So they'd focus only on the last decade, the least familiar period, and especially on the millions of dollars flowing into the Clinton Foundation. Bannon calls this approach “periodicity.”
As with many of the Clintons’ troubles, the couple’s own behavior provided copious material for investigators. When Clinton became secretary of state, the foundation signed an agreement with the White House to disclose all of its contributors. It didn’t follow through. So GAI researchers plumbed tax filings, flight logs, and foreign government documents to turn up what the foundation withheld. Their most effective method was mining the so-called Deep Web, the 97 percent or so of information on the Internet that isn’t indexed for search engines such as Google and therefore is difficult to find.
Bannon “weaponizes” scoops through mainstream outlets.
“Welcome to The Matrix,” says Tony, GAI’s data scientist, as he maps out the Deep Web for me on a whiteboard (we agreed I wouldn’t publish his last name). A presentation on the hidden recesses of the Web follows. “The Deep Web,” he explains, “consists of a lot of useless or depreciated information, stuff in foreign languages, and so on. But a whole bunch of it is very useful, if you can find it.” Tony specializes in finding the good stuff, which he does by writing software protocols that spider through the Deep Web. Since this requires heavy computing power, Tony struck a deal to use the services of a large European provider during off-peak hours. “We’ve got $1.3 billion of equipment I’m using at almost full capacity,” he says. This effort yielded a slew of unreported foundation donors who appear to have benefited financially from their relationship with the Clintons, including the uranium mining executives cited by the New York Times (who showed up on an unindexed Canadian government website). These donations illustrate a pattern of commingling private money and government policy that disturbed even many Democrats.
Clinton Cash caused a stir not just because of these revelations, but because of how they arrived. GAI is set up more like a Hollywood movie studio than a think tank. The creative mind through which all its research flows and is disseminated belongs to a beaming young Floridian named Wynton Hall, a celebrity ghostwriter who’s penned 18 books, six of them New York Times best-sellers, including Trump’s Time to Get Tough. Hall’s job is to transform dry think-tank research into vivid, viral-ready political dramas that can be unleashed on a set schedule, like summer blockbusters. “We work very long and hard to build a narrative, storyboarding it out months in advance,” he says. “I’m big on this: We’re not going public until we have something so tantalizing that any editor at a serious publication would be an idiot to pass it up and give a competitor the scoop. ”
To this end, Hall peppers his colleagues with slogans so familiar around the office that they’re known by their abbreviations. “ABBN — always be breaking news,” he says. Another slogan is “depth beats speed.” Time-strapped reporters squeezed for copy will gratefully accept original, fact-based research because most of what they’re inundated with is garbage. “The modern economics of the newsroom don’t support big investigative reporting staffs,” says Bannon. “You wouldn’t get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. We’re working as a support function.”
The reason GAI does this is because it’s the secret to how conservatives can hack the mainstream media. Hall has distilled this, too, into a slogan: “Anchor left, pivot right.” It means that “weaponizing” a story onto the front page of the New York Times (“the Left”) is infinitely more valuable than publishing it on Breitbart.com. “We don’t look at the mainstream media as enemies because we don’t want our work to be trapped in the conservative ecosystem,” says Hall. “We live and die by the media. Every time we’re launching a book, I’ll build a battle map that literally breaks down by category every headline we’re going to place, every op-ed Peter’s going to publish. Some of it is a wish list. But it usually gets done.”
Once that work has permeated the mainstream—once it’s found “a host body,” in David Brock's phrase—then comes the “pivot.” Heroes and villains emerge and become grist for a juicy Breitbart News narrative. “With Clinton Cash, we never really broke a story,” says Bannon, “but you go [to Breitbart.com] and we’ve got 20 things, we’re linking to everybody else’s stuff, we’re aggregating, we’ll pull stuff from the Left. It’s a rolling phenomenon. Huge traffic. Everybody’s invested.”
“We’ve got $1.3 billion of equipment I’m using at almost full capacity”
Over the summer, Hillary Clinton failed to emerge as the overwhelming frontrunner everyone expected. She’s been weighed down by the Clinton Foundation buckraking and the revelation that she kept a private e-mail server as secretary of state and destroyed much of her correspondence. Recently, the scandals have merged. In August e-mails surfaced showing that Bill Clinton, through the foundation, sought State Department permission to accept speaking fees in such repressive countries as North Korea and the Congo. A poll the same day found that the word voters associate most with his wife is “liar.” On Oct. 22, Hillary Clinton will testify on these matters before the Select Committee on Benghazi. Her troubles aren’t going away.
Veteran Democrats such as Lehane concede that Bannon and his ilk have been more effective than conservatives who targeted Bill Clinton 25 years ago. “They’ve adapted into a higher species,” he says. There’s more on the way. “We’ve got two more waves of stuff on Clinton corruption," says Bannon, including a focus on how the donors highlighted in Clinton Cash violated many of the principles liberals hold dear: “You look at what they’ve done in the Colombian rain forest, look at the arms merchants, the warlords, the human trafficking—if you take anything that the Left professes to be a cornerstone value, the Clintons have basically played them for fools. They’ve enriched themselves while playing up the worst cast of characters in the world.”
While this is surely unwelcome news for Clinton, Lehane argues that where the Clintons are concerned, their opponents invariably become consumed by partisan zeal and undermine their own cause. “Remember the old Pink Panther movies when Clouseau would walk in and the chief inspector would be there, and he’d just start losing his marbles, no matter what?” he says. “That’s how these guys are.”
Bannon does, indeed, have a touch of Clinton Madness. When we met in January, Bill Cosby’s serial predations had just exploded into the news after laying dormant for many years. Bannon was certain this signaled trouble for Bill Clinton, whose own sexual history some conservatives long to revive as a way of hampering his wife’s campaign. His conviction stems from the group of young, female Breitbart News reporters whom he’s dubbed the Valkyries. When I expressed skepticism about the value of reintroducing old scandals, Bannon countered that the Valkyries—a sort of in-house focus group of millennial voter sentiment—were unfamiliar with Clinton contretemps that most older people consider settled. "There’s a whole generation of people who love the news but were 7 or 8 years old when this happened and have no earthly idea about the Clinton sex stuff,” he says.
Bannon’s motto: “Honey badger don’t give a s---.”
It’s impossible to predict how Bannon’s plots and intrigues will ultimately affect the presidential race. It’s not even clear on whose behalf he’s acting—his own or someone else’s? Are Seinfeld royalties enough to take on Clinton and Bush? Or do others have a stake? Solov, the CEO, won’t say. “I can’t go into that,” he says. “It’s privately owned.” Bannon wouldn’t comment either. However, a prominent conservative says Robert Mercer, the reclusive co-founder of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and a major donor to Texas Senator Ted Cruz, has invested $10 million. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, is listed in 2013 tax documents as a GAI board member.
Even without knowing the identity of his backers, Bannon’s designs are clear enough. While he’d blanch at the comparison, he’s pursuing something like the old Marxist dialectical concept of “heightening the contradictions,” only rather than foment revolution among the proletariat, he’s trying to disillusion Clinton’s and Bush’s natural base of support, recognizing, as Goldman Sachs taught him, that you’re more effective if others lead the way.
To succeed, Bannon will need to activate the anger and disgust with cronyism that’s as powerful among supporters of Sanders as it is among fans of Trump. In Tallahassee, as GAI’s phone keeps ringing, the vehicle for achieving this is clear. Editors and reporters at prominent magazines and newspapers, including ones that had passed when approached with Clinton Cash revelations, are calling to ask when the next salvo will arrive—and might they arrange an exclusive?
For many, the answer will be yes. “We’re going to go to the investigative units, not the political reporters, and just give them the stuff,” says Bannon. “We have faith they’ll take the stories and do the additional reporting.” The thought pleases him, and he grins. “Just like last time, we’ll go out and say, ‘Hey, here’s what we’ve got. You guys take it from here.’ ”
Regardless of it all during what is a week of Bloomberg Focus Group and news stories, please stay in touch.
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