Steve Bannon is a talker. All you have to do is tee up an issue he wants to discuss, and the former chief strategist for President Donald Trump will talk your ear off. Mr. Bannon – a big-time MAGA influencer and podcaster – was the featured guest at a Monitor Breakfast this week, and he did not disappoint.
Mr. Bannon held forth on the Israel-Iran conflict over the latter’s nuclear program, and his view that the United States should not intervene directly. He complained about the “media apparatus of the old Republican Party, the National Review, Fox News,” and the “forever-war types.” World War III is here, he said, and the Trump base is divided. But if the U.S. does attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Mr. Bannon predicted most Trump supporters would rally behind him.
The discussion was bracing, and was covered extensively across major media. The Monitor’s Cameron Joseph wrote his story at the table as we talked. Our YouTube video can be viewed here.
The value of our breakfasts also shone through in the opportunity to interact in person with a newsmaker. Mr. Bannon is known for his at-times unkempt appearance, but on this Wednesday morning at the St. Regis Washington, he was clean-shaven and wore a jacket, and his longish hair was combed back. He had a stack of print newspapers under his arm, which he plunked down at the table, the Financial Times on top.
It was also a pleasure to introduce the MAGA firebrand to some liberal colleagues, including Bill Press, former co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” and now a podcaster and columnist. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he wrote, tongue in cheek, in his commentary. “I had breakfast with Steve Bannon.”
Lo and behold, Mr. Press found common ground with Mr. Bannon, including his conclusion that Israel should “finish what it started” without U.S. help, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to steer the U.S. into joining his war.
Another friend across the table, George Condon of National Journal, says he got a kick out of watching me trying to interrupt Mr. Bannon. Indeed, with 30 reporters in the room, I wanted to squeeze in as many questions as possible. But he was quite skilled at speaking in paragraphs without pausing to take a breath. Mr. Bannon had said he needed to leave 10 minutes early for an appointment, but when the time came, he called to an aide across the room, “Tell them I’ll be late.”
Mr. Bannon also quickly brushed off questions he didn’t want to discuss – such as when he last spoke with the president. But on Thursday morning, after being spotted entering the West Wing, he confirmed to me that he was there three hours and had lunch with POTUS.
“He wanted to top breakfast with Christian Science Monitor,” he told me by text.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Trump announced that he will decide his course of action on Iran within the next two weeks.
The timing of our breakfast, in fact, proved to be fortuitous, given the urgency of the news. We had set it up a month ago, Mr. Bannon noted when we sat down. “I guess in some regards,” he said, “it’s divine providence that we’re here.”
