Bannons War on Frontline, Tonight A Review
“ Bannon’s War,” a “Frontline” film on the life and career of Steve Bannon. It’s a perception regularly echoed in this telling portrait of the adviser primarily responsible for shaping Donald Trump’s message for most of the presidential campaign—and the one delivered in President Trump’s memorably dark inaugural address. “This American carnage stops right here, and stops right now,” the nation heard on the celebratory day meant to symbolize the blessings of democracy, the peaceful transition of power.
An old friend of Mr. Bannon, interviewed for this film, reflects affectionately on the ease with which she recognizes his lines and his views in Mr. Trump’s public pronouncements. Prime among those views, the film makes clear, is an enduring belief in the value of chaos and disorder to undermine the establishment, usurp its power.
To be sure, it’s hard to know just how sturdy Mr. Bannon’s faith is now, given the continuing riot of embarrassments, disclosures, wildly conflicting official pronouncements—each more astounding than that of the day before—currently emanating from the Trump White House. This was, perhaps, not the valuable chaos Mr. Bannon had in mind.
Those beliefs—“bring on the apocalypse,” one commentator describes it—had taken root early. As a junior at Virginia Tech, he ran for student body president and won a surprise victory by running on a platform in which he attacked his rivals as tools of the administration—of the establishment—and by claiming for himself the mantle of “an outsider.” It was, one of the film’s Bannon historians observes, “very Trumplike.”
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The Bannon who arrived in Washington as Donald Trump’s chief strategist—and was, to universal astonishment, awarded a seat on the National Security Council despite his lack of credentials or anything resembling foreign-policy experience—had lost none of his ingrained belief in the value of disruption. In the film’s most riveting section there’s a description of the Bannon-directed effort to ensure the rollout, immediately after Mr. Trump assumed office, of one controversial executive order after another, not least the order aimed at restricting Muslims from entering the U.S.
Mr. Bannon and President Trump, the film notes, wanted the ensuing outrage, the protests, the shock and, not least, the media’s cameras. They were sending a message: Change had come; Trump was making good on his promises.
Since that golden time, the president’s chief strategist has seen a sharp reduction in his status. He’s been removed from his seat at the National Security Council, mainly, it is said—in this film as everywhere else—as a result of Mr. Trump’s inability to tolerate the publicity showered on Mr. Bannon as a mastermind. He has largely faded from view. But in this hard-eyed and absorbing hour, the man Donald Trump now describes as someone who had, after all, only joined the campaign at a late stage, comes vividly to life.
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