How Bannon fights for Trump agenda–even when it means fighting Trump

Stephen K. Bannon with President Donald J. Trump at a White House meeting with auto industry leaders. (White House photo)

The executive chairman of Breitbart News is to reshape the Republican Party by primary challenging establishment politicians in the 2018 political cycle, especially senators, according to a report in the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

All GOP incumbents are vulnerable, except for Texas’ Sen. Ted Cruz, said Stephen K. Bannon, who took a leave of absence from Breitbart from August 2016 to August 2017, first as the CEO of candidate Donald J. Trump’s campaign and then as the president’s chief White House strategist.

Bannon’s goal is the replace Senate Majority Leader A. Mitchell “Mitch” McConnell (R.-Ky.), who he said leads the most corrupt and incompetent group of individuals in this country.

The Daily Mail report was confirmed by a source familiar with Bannon’s private meetings with conservatives around Washington.

“They are scared,” Bannon is telling conservatives, about McConnell and other members of the establishment. “When they can see what can be done with small contributions from average Americans, they are very worried about what we can do with less and we are going to primary all of them.”

Fresh off his contributing to the victory of Judge Roy Moore in the Alabama GOP primary over Sen. Luther Strange, Bannon is adding more names to his list of targets.

Moore’s victory signaled a new era in modern Republican history.

In the Moore v. Strange contest, the president pulled out all the stops, sending his own advisors to help the incumbent, along with Trump holding one rally and Vice President Michael R. Pence holding another.

Never before has a president’s most senior aide left the White House and one month later campaigned against that president’s endorsed candidate—and won.

When Bannon took on the establishment in the Alabama race, he was on the other side of the National Rifle Association and McConnell, who raised more than $8 million for the Strange effort.

In his private meetings, the source told BLP Bannon is reaching out to groups typically neglected by the party regulars, like minority conservatives, like the Black Americans for a Better Future.

At his closed meeting with the BAFABF they should have confidence in America and Americans, the source said.

“Foreign workers are not smarter than Americans,” he said. “The pursuit of wealth and the bottom line is not the only thing we have to worry about, with economics, we also have to think of how to run a civil society.”

Another one of Bannon’s topics was a discussion of the white paper, “Black Entrepreneurs Key to Economic Improvements 2017,” which was written by Raynard Jackson, the leader of Black Small Business Leaders.

Jackson told BLP he has known Bannon for many years.

“Steve has been instrumental in helping me get this group started,” he said. “Steve is serious about replacing the people who are preventing our economic freedom.”

The former chief strategist is also inviting insurgent candidates to meet with him at the “Breitbart Embassy,” the well-appointed Capitol Hill townhouse that is Breitbart’s east coast hub.

Before the runoff with Strange, Bannon hosted Moore and his wife at the Embassy. Another high-profile outsider to visit was Corey Stewart, who is running for the 2018 GOP nomination for Senate.

Stewart told BLP the two men discussed strategy and how best to energize the voters, who voted for the president in 2016.

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