Barbara Iverson

(Rex Features via AP Images)

Steve Bannon on the phone, December 9, 2016

Bannon forgets to say, “off the record?” This is a wonderfully informative interview. Good for Robert Kuttner. Here are a couple of things that struck me in the interview story from American Prospect, but Kuttner.

“I’m changing out people at East Asian Defense; I’m getting hawks in. I’m getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State.”

But can Bannon really win that fight internally?

“That’s a fight I fight every day here,” he said. “We’re still fighting. There’s Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying.”

Bannon went on:

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “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.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

From his lips to Trump’s ear.