Has anyone read Devil's Bargain? The new book by Josh Green on Bannon and Trump?

[Hamlette]

I want the dirt but don't know if I can stand to read about Trump or Bannon right now. Maybe ever.

Maybe I can enlist you all to read it and just tell me the dirt. Yeah? Or at least tell me if I can stomach it.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Here's an article about it.

http://www.salon.com/2017/07/18/a-new-book-on-the-2016-election-reveals-steve-bannon-is-exactly-like-his-caricature/

There are some funny comments. My favorite is: "Well, I will side with Trump for once: I wouldn't want Christie's phone anywhere near my face either. It probably reeks of hamburgers and shame."

[Hortensis]

9. Yes, it should supply a long stream of anecdotes.

From a Newsweek review:

"...this is a case that Green makes persuasively: that Trump's win is largely due to Bannon using the candidate as the vessel for his nationalist ideas. He recounts an episode from late in the election, when some accused Trump’s campaign of running a TV ad rife with anti-Semitic insinuation. Many were disgusted. Bannon was unfazed. “Darkness is good,” he told the man who would be president. “Don’t let up.”

In due time, the Age of Trump will find its Hunter S. Thompson, but it might be years before anyone has the necessary distance to capture the competing currents that daily buffet the political landscape like furious storms over the face of Mars. Devil's Bargain is not that book, yet it is addictive. Think of it, then, as a not especially healthful handful of deep-fried morsels. You could do much worse, and if you’re on social media, you almost certainly have. Snack away."

[greyl]

2. Looks damn interesting, audio version is over 8 hours.

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency at Amazon.

From the reporter who was there at the very beginning comes the revealing inside story of the partnership between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump - the key to understanding the rise of the alt-right, the fall of Hillary Clinton, and the hidden forces that drove the greatest upset in American political history. Based on dozens of interviews conducted over six years, Green spins the master narrative of the 2016 campaign from its origins in the far fringes of right-wing politics and reality television to its culmination inside Trump's penthouse on election night.

The shocking elevation of Bannon to head Trump's flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, hit political Washington like a thunderclap and seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist who'd never run a campaign and was despised by Democrats and Republicans alike.

Yet Bannon's hard-edged ethno-nationalism and his elaborate, years-long plot to destroy Hillary Clinton paved the way for Trump's unlikely victory. Trump became the avatar of a dark but powerful worldview that dominated the airwaves and spoke to voters whom others couldn't see. Trump's campaign was the final phase of a populist insurgency that had been building up in America for years, and Bannon, its inscrutable mastermind, believed it was the culmination of a hard-right global uprising that would change the world.

Author made the rounds on TV tonight and was impressive.

[Hamlette]

4. yes, that's why I started thinking about it. Josh Green seems a decent guy. n/t

[WinkyDink]

3. The subject, I think, might be accorded too much influence by the author. Now, Trump and PUTIN,

THERE'S a "Devil's Bargain."

In any case, I have no desire to read about Bannon, the same way I choose not to read about slugs, vomit, tongue-piercing, and Kim Kardashian.

[hlthe2b]

6. NPR (Fresh Air-Terry Gross) interviewed the author yesterday... You can find the interview

podcast here for 7/18:
http://www.npr.org/podcasts/381444908/fresh-air

[m-lekktor]

7. I want to read it, I will eventually get the kindle version! nt

[Hortensis]

8. Not yet. Finally gave in and ordered it retail. It'd take another

couple months at least for used to start becoming available, so indulged the urge.

But you don't have to read it. Apparently it's full of "stories," and people are already starting to quote bits like these:

"Both campaigns battled for a group of voters who would ultimately decide the race. ... Trump's data analysts gave them a nickname: 'double haters.' These were people who disliked both candidates but traditionally showed up at the polls to vote. They were a sizable bloc: 3 to 5 percent of the 15 million voters across seventeen battleground states that Trump's staff believed were persuadable."

("Double haters." Typically always dislike both candidates but vote anyway. Some of the negative comments here on DU must have been from this type, but Comey's letter reportedly persuaded most to vote Rump. Huge swing. Bizarre.)

Trump, thinking being president would be a snap: "I deal with people that are very extraordinarily talented people," he told Green, just after wrapping up nomination. "I deal with Steve Wynn. I deal with Carl Icahn. I deal with killers that blow these [politicians] away. It's not even the same category. This" — he meant politics— "is a category that's like nineteen levels lower. You understand what I'm saying? Brilliant killers."

"Chuck Schumer was deeply worried that Bannon's nationalism might fracture the Democratic coalition: "I know what you're doing, and I'm not going to let it happen," the Senate Dem leader told Bannon in the early days of the administration."

[Hamlette]

10. I'm with Schumer, great quote.