Liberal Forum

Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'A Leninist' Who Wants To ‘Destroy the State’

8-22-16

I met Steve Bannon—the executive director of Breitbart.com who’s now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafort at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse on Nov. 12, 2013.

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics.

He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today.

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too.

I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals.

He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

Riding on the Metro to the party, I read an article that had just been posted on National Review Online and in TownHall.com by Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist, in which he opposed the tactics used by the Tea Party in shutting down the government.

I then asked Bannon whether or not he had read Sowell's piece, since Bannon was in favor of the very Tea Party tactic that Sowell had criticized.

“National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also.”

He added that “no one reads them or cares what they say.”

His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress.