Steve Bannon, the man seen as the power behind Donald Trump’s throne, has declared that the president will take the US back from a “corporatist, globalist media” that opposes his brand of economic nationalism.
Trump is “maniacally focused” on fulfilling his campaign pledges, Bannon warned, predicting a daily fight against the media he has branded as the opposition party.
“The mainstream media ought to understand something: all those promises are going to be implemented,” Bannon told a gathering of thousands of conservatives near Washington on Thursday, who feted him and the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus.
Bannon is a liberal bete noire whose confrontational, populist brand of Republican politics also upends decades of conservative orthodoxy. He has emerged as Trump’s most powerful aide and been dubbed “Trump’s Rasputin” or, in Twitterspeak, #PresidentBannon. On Thursday, he stepped out of the shadows to make rare public remarks.
He painted a picture of the White House at war with vested interests in the media. “The corporatist, globalist media are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda that Donald Trump has.”
“He’s going to continue to press his agenda and as economic conditions get better, as more jobs get better, they’re going to continue to fight..
“Every day is going to be a fight. That is the promise of Donald Trump … All the people who’ve came in and said you’ve got to moderate. Every day in the Oval Office he tells Reince and I: ‘I committed this to the American people, I promised this when I ran, and I’m going to deliver on this.’”
The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) erupted in cheers and applause, with some delegates standing and punching the air.
Bannon, 63, cut a casual figure with a dark open-necked shirt and light beige trousers on stage alongside Priebus, in a more traditional suit and tie, as the pair made their latest attempt to bury reports of discord. “We’re basically together from 6.30 in the morning to 11 at night,” Priebus said.
But Bannon, who described his own West Wing office as the “war room”, soon launched into his attacks on the media. “If you look at the opposition party and how they portrayed the campaign, how they portrayed the transition, how they portrayed the administration, it’s always wrong.”
Priebus, seeking to explain Trump’s win, said: “What we were starving for was somebody real, somebody genuine, somebody who actually was who he said he was.”
Bannon gave a clear insight into the way the Trump team is approaching its rightwing agenda, setting out three “verticals”: national security and sovereignty; economic nationalism; and “deconstruction of the administrative state”.
He added: “One of the most pivotal moments of modern American history was his immediate withdrawal from TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership].”
Bannon is a near-constant presence every time cameras cover a Trump press conference or follow the president into the Oval Office. He has gained a place on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council, elevating him above the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and the director of national intelligence.
Dan Cassino, a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said: “It seems like we are getting his ideas coming out of Donald Trump’s mouth to a great extent.
Crucially, Cassino argues, Bannon determines what media Trump consumes and shapes his worldview. “The information flow seems to be going through Breitbart and Fox News rather than through the national security apparatus. That’s troubling.”
CPAC, which draws more than 10,000 conservative activists each year, has not traditionally been natural Trump turf. He was booed when he appeared in 2011.
On the equivalent opening morning last year, speaker after speaker studiously avoided mentioning Trump, who at that time was busy upending the Republican primary race. He was well behind Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in a straw poll of delegates and pulled out of his scheduled speech, anticipating a hostile crowd.
The president is due to address CPAC on Friday in wholly different circumstances. “Well, I think by tomorrow this will be TPAC,” said Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump.
A few “Make America Great Again” caps were visible among the attendees but establishment Republican senators, congressmen and governors were relatively scarce.
The pro-Trump Breitbart News was prominent. The tone was triumphant and aggressive, championing gun ownership rights and tough law enforcement while criticising and mocking liberals.
But tensions were clear as Dan Schneider, leader of the American Conservative Union, took the stage to denounce the “alt-right”, the rebranding of the far right that has been accused of racism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism. “There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,” he told the audience.
“That term – alt-right – it had been used for a long time in a very good and normal way, but this group has hijacked it.”
A short distance away, outside the main hall, the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, wearing a general admission badge, told reporters that he “coined the term” alt-right and rejected Schneider’s criticism.
“He didn’t even do basic research on what the alt-right is and he denounced it,” Spencer complained. “That’s pretty pathetic … He just called us names.”
Asked if he feels he now has an ally in the White House, Spencer said: “In terms of Donald Trump, I would say that it’s not so much that he’s alt-right, it’s that he’s a nationalist and a populist and so he’s connected to us on that basic level. He doesn’t articulate our ideas – he’s not an identarian – but his arrow points in our direction.”
Challenged about a salute he gave last November, he said: “‘Heil Trump!’ was a moment of exuberance. It was an ironical statement.”
As Spencer talked to a large group of reporters, a delegate who gave his name as “Grizzly Joe”, wearing a stars and stripes shirt, confronted him angrily: “Get the fuck out of here. You don’t represent us. You’re a piece of shit. I hope everybody got that. You’re a fucking piece of shit. He’s a fucking white supremacist piece of shit.”
Spencer was escorted out by security soon after. He posted a video online saying he was “politely asked to leave”.
Vice-President Mike Pence closed out the first day of the conference on Thursday evening to a rapturous reception from the crowd, which often rose to its feet amid the former Indiana governor’s remarks.
Pence’s speech echoed the themes he took to the campaign trail – sharing in his boss’s pledge to “Make America Great Again” but offering little in the way of specifics. Pence, like Trump, also gloated about how their insurgent campaign had succeeded despite being written off by opponents.
“President Trump turned the blue wall red,” Pence said of Trump’s success in the so-called Rust Belt states that were long a stronghold of Democrats.
“You know what? The establishment never saw it coming.”
His remarks were characteristic of the Trump administration’s continuance of the campaign. Last week, Trump returned to the stump with a rally in Florida.
And on Thursday, Pence played the role of Trump’s dutiful lieutenant, furthering the narrative that the president was already succeeding even as a new CBS poll found that six in 10 Americans did not feel Trump understood the complicated problems a president must face.
Thursday’s speakers also included the Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, Texas senator Ted Cruz, and education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Breakout sessions included such topics as “Fake climate news camouflaging an anti-capitalist agenda – and what President Trump plans to do about it”.
CPAC also means merchandise. This year the products include The Deporables’ Guide and Godless America, and T-shirts with slogans including “Border wall construction” and “God is great, beer is good & liberals are crazy”.
Meanwhile, America’s deep divisions were laid bare in a powerful article published by the Atlantic magazine under the headline “I was a Muslim in Trump’s White House”. In it, Rumana Ahmed says she was the only hijab-wearing Muslim woman in the West Wing under the Obama administration and always felt welcome and included.
But when she continued to work for the national security council under Trump, the new staff looked at her with “cold surprise”, she recalls. “The diverse White House I had worked in became a monochromatic and male bastion.”
“This was not typical Republican leadership, or even that of a businessman. It was a chaotic attempt at authoritarianism.”
Ahmed quit after just eight days. “When Trump issued a ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all Syrian refugees, I knew I could no longer stay and work for an administration that saw me and people like me not as fellow citizens, but as a threat.”
