MARK THOMPSON (HOST): Is [Steve Bannon] done, Angelo?
ANGELO CARUSONE: No. I think he's just humiliated. And that's the thing. Part of, when you think about what he's done do I think that his power has been reduced? Yeah, I do. I mean, that is absolutely true. There's no doubt about that. He has lost influence, not just with Trump but with a constituency. Part of what made Bannon so powerful and influential is that he, by way of Breitbart and the Trump campaign, had created a nexus for Breitbart to basically bring together white nationalists or the white genocide movement, which is white nationalists, ethno-nationalists, and white supremacists, the men's rights movement, and this sort of online messageboard communities that really drove Gamergate and things like that. So, like the Milo [Yiannopoulos] trolls, basically.
And so, tying together those different constituencies gave him a lot of disruptive power. It did. And influence. It was influential in the Brexit movement. It certainly helped fuel the Trump campaign. It was very much an influence in -- that coalition was what Trump used to tie together and weave together his narrative, even before Bannon joined his campaign. So, he had influence, by way of that coalition. What's happened now, and why I think it's fair to say that outside of his role within the White House, and sort of his relationship with the president, is that, the more you start to isolate parts of that audience -- so, in this case, a little bit of a fracture over the die hard Trump supporters that will move over to other publications like The Gateway Pundit or maybe they'll just get it directly from Mike Cernovich or -- they don't necessarily need the relationship with Bannon in the same way that they did in the past, which means his coalition shrinks.
And, you understand movements. I mean, that's -- once you start to lose or part of your movement gets diluted, your power is necessarily waned. But I would say he's out when Sean Hannity turns on him the way Alex Jones did yesterday.
[...]
Just because his influence is reduced doesn't mean his destructive potential has been eliminated or eroded. And as an example of that, he does know how to push Trump's buttons. And, if you're a chaos agent, spinning up the person currently occupying the president's office so that he himself then begins to engage in destructive actions because we all know that he lashes out, is a really scary thing to think about. Because he doesn't care if Trump's mad at him or says mean things. Because as long as Trump is doing destructive, crazy things in order to invalidate the critiques that Bannon is making, he's actually accomplishing one of the objectives and interests that Steve Bannon would have. The more chaos he injects into the ecosystem, the better it is for Bannon.
