David Brooks interviews Steve Bannon

MAGA activist Steve Bannon went to prison yesterday. The New York Times columnist David Brooks interviewed Bannon a few days before he reported for his sentence. Here are a few snippets of their conversation:

You said something I’ve got to ask you about, that Trump’s a moderate. In what areas is the MAGA movement farther right than Trump?

I think farther right on radical cuts of spending, No. 1. I think we’re much more hard-core on things like Ukraine. President Trump is a peacemaker. He wants to go in and negotiate and figure something out as a deal maker. I think 75 percent of our movement would want an immediate, total shutdown — not one more penny in Ukraine, and massive investigations about where the money went. On the southern border and mass deportations, I don’t think President Trump’s close to where we are. They all got to go home.

Also, on artificial intelligence, we’re virulently anti-A.I. I think big regulations have to come.

President Trump is a kindhearted person. He’s a people person, right? On China, I think he admires Xi Jinping. But we’re super-hawks. We want to see an elimination of the Chinese Communist Party.

Do you worry that your broader movement will be fatally poisoned by antisemitic elements, the conspiracy crazies?

We’re the most pro-Israel and pro-Jewish group out there. What I say is that not just the future of Israel but the future of American Jews, not just safety but their ability to thrive and prosper as they have in this country, is conditional upon one thing, and that’s a hard weld with Christian nationalism.

If I can make one comparison: Early in my career, I worked for Bill Buckley. His manner at National Review reminds me a little of some of the things you do. He created an intense sense of belonging: We’re the conservative movement. We’re all in this together. Every day we’re marching forward. But he also had a strong sense of who was a wack job, a conspiracist. And he was going to draw a line. Pat Buchanan was on the other side of the line.

So what I admire about Buckley is obviously the intense thing of belonging. What I don’t admire is the no fight. It’s very much an intellectual debating society, right?

I use you and George Will as examples of this all the time. Brilliant guys, but this is a street fight. We need to be street fighters. This is going to be determined on social media and getting people out to vote. It’s not going to be debated on the Upper East Side or Upper West Side.

I’ve found that most people are pretty reasonable. You can have a conversation, and you’ll at least see where they’re coming from.

I think you’re dead [expletive] wrong.

That’s where we disagree.

No, it’s 100 percent disagree. What are you talking about? They think you’re an exotic animal. You’re a conservative, but you’re not dangerous. You’re reasonable. We’re not reasonable. We’re unreasonable because we’re fighting for a republic. And we’re never going to be reasonable until we get what we achieve. We’re not looking to compromise. We’re looking to win.

Now, the biggest element that Buckley had that the book “Bowling Alone” had, and you talk about, is the atomization of our society. There’s no civic bonding. There’s no national cohesion. There’s not even the Lions Club things that you used to have before. People tell me all the time: “You changed my life. I ran for the board of supervisors, and now I’m on the board of supervisors.” They have friends that they never had met before, and they’re in a common cause, and it’s changed their life. They’re on social media. Every day, they have action they have to do.

This was Hannah Arendt’s point that loneliness is a seedbed for authoritarianism. But you’re not about conversing with the other side, you’re just fighting with the other side.

What do you mean, not conversing with? There’s nothing to talk about.

Well, how about you have a conversation with the Biden administration. The Biden administration has spent a lot of money. And now, when I go to Central Ohio, they’ve got an Intel plant coming in. You go to Upstate New York, they’ve got a Micron plant. These are benefits for the working class.

Some of that stuff’s OK. But on the fundamental direction of the country, we are separate. We are two different worldviews. And those worldviews can’t be bridged.

When did you come to see the world this way? I mean, obviously, you were at Harvard Business School and Goldman Sachs. Did you have a front-row seat and think, “Oh, this sucks”?

I took Michael Porter’s classes at Harvard back in the ’80s, and globalization was — Harvard, at that time, treated this as the second law of thermodynamics. It was a natural property that could not be questioned. And then I went to the M. & A. department at Goldman Sachs and I worked with Hank Paulson. I was put on a lot of things to sell companies. You could just see America was being gutted. You had Mike Milken and the junk bond guys, and they were after these companies. And you go out there, and the companies were not particularly well run.

The guys were always going to the country club, and the management was very detached from labor — you see this evisceration, you saw these jobs going, and they were never coming back.

And then I read Christopher Lasch. I was just doing my thing, had my own finance firm. And then 9/11 happens. And everybody’s down singing “God Bless America.” And I said, “I wonder how long this ‘God Bless America’ phase is going to go.” I was adamantly opposed to Iraq and Afghanistan. And one of the things that got me the most was I couldn’t believe that George W. Bush didn’t have his daughters go into the military. How do you do this? I remember reading guys saying we could have much better recruiting if we had those two as symbols.…

Finally, I’ve got to ask you about what’s about to happen to you — going to prison.

I spent my 20s on a Navy ship. If I have to spend my 70s in a prison, I’m still fighting. This show will be bigger. My message will be stronger.

You’re not concerned?

No. I’ll get the message out and fight for this. History is a process. I’m kind of honored, in one way, that they hate me so much they feel they have to put Bannon away. Their thing is that, if we put Bannon in prison or get him away from his microphone, that’ll help us win. It will be the exact opposite.

Every day is a fight. People in this movement, when they talk to me, they say they have a purpose. Once they have a purpose, you can’t stop this movement. We’re not going to win everything. Just like in Europe, you’re going to have defeats. Some days are going to be cloudy. But the sunlit uplands are in front of you. Just keep your head down and keep grinding.

Read the entire interview here.