2016 Nov 24^th

In the Saturday-Sunday edition of “The Wall Street Journal” there, on the Opinion  page is an article titled “Steve Bannon on Politics as War.” The article is, in fact, primarily about Steven K. Bannon’s attempt to rehabilitate Steven K. Bannon.

To rehabilitate himself he must begin by attacking the media that presented these awful untruths about him. “He blames these attacks on a lazy media noting for instance that the renegade Jew line wasn’t Breitbarts. Conservative activist David Horowitz has taken credit for writing the line himself in a piece about Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol.” And of course we can believe every word of that. Bannon is frantically ducking any and all anti-Semitic accusations.

Bannon claims that Breitbart is “the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America.” He then spends some time naming the Jewish writers he employs “These claims of anti-Semitism aren’t serious. It’s a joke” But then there was the testimony of his ex-wife who claimed that he didn’t want his children going to school with “a bunch of Jews.” Bannon claims he never said that but it is a curious thing for a wife to make up out of whole cloth. All you have to do to get a flavor of Bannon’s world view is to go to the Breitbart website.

Then we should be curious about the neo-Nazi and other white nationalist groups’ fervent support of Bannon, Breitbart and Trump. The talking point for the “BBT” people is that they can’t help who supports them. Of course they can, if they don’t want the support of these people then they shouldn’t come out with programs and ideas the neo-Nazis find attractive.

Recently Trump has said that he would not support the prosecution of Hillary Clinton.  This immediately got under the skin of the Breitbart people and the information was published under the headline “Broken Promise.” Bad form boys! Never attack the King. That item, with its headline, quickly vanished from the Breitbart website.

Giving Bannon an entire page with which to white wash himself is very good of the WSJ; unfortunately both Bannon and Trump have far too much baggage for their denials to be effective.