Devil's Bargain
Devil's Bargain
Joshua Green
Marc Andreessen
Best (?) book so far on the Republican side of the 2016 race, and a deep dive into the intellectual origins of Bannonism and to some extent Trumpism. - Marc Andreessen
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Devil's Bargain

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

Joshua Green
By
Joshua Green
3.8
5874
ratings on Goodreads

In "Devil's Bargain," Joshua Green presents a riveting narrative that dissects the most unexpected political alliance of modern times, one that catapulted Donald Trump from reality TV stardom to the pinnacle of American power. With unparalleled access and meticulous research, Green traces the origins of this partnership back to the far-right fringes of American politics, revealing how Steve Bannon's controversial strategies and vision found their perfect conduit in Trump. This book offers an inside look at the seismic events that reshaped the American political landscape, culminating in the 2016 election—a story of ambition, manipulation, and the transformation of the Republican Party. Green's masterful storytelling brings to light the astonishing elevation of Bannon, a figure both maligned and underestimated, to the helm of Trump's struggling campaign. The narrative unfolds like a political thriller, detailing Bannon's audacious plots against Hillary Clinton and his role in crafting the populist insurgency that propelled Trump to victory. "Devil's Bargain" is not just the story of two men's rise to power; it's an exploration of the dark, uncharted currents that swayed the American electorate, and a reminder of the profound consequences when the worlds of entertainment, politics, and nationalist ideology collide. Essential reading for understanding the forces that elected Trump, Green's book is a compelling account of the most dramatic upset in American political history.

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Released
2017
18 Jul
Length
302
Pages

1

recommendations

recommendation

Best (?) book so far on the Republican side of the 2016 race, and a deep dive into the intellectual origins of Bannonism and to some extent Trumpism. - Marc Andreessen
Bannon thrived on the chaos he created and did everything he could to make it spread. When he finally made his way through the crowd to the back of the town house, he put on a headset to join the broadcast of the Breitbart radio show already in progress. It was his way of bringing tens of thousands of listeners into the inner sanctum of the “Breitbart Embassy,” as the town house was ironically known, and thereby conscripting them into a larger project. Bannon was inordinately proud of the movement he saw growing around him, boasting constantly of its egalitarian nature. What to an outsider could look like a cast of extras from the Island of Misfit Toys was, in Bannon’s eyes, a proudly populist and “unclubbable” plebiscite rising up in defiant protest against the “globalists” and “gatekeepers” who had taken control of both parties. Just how Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty figured into a plan to overthrow the global power structure wasn’t clear, even to many of Bannon’s friends. But, then, Bannon derived a visceral thrill anytime he could deliver a fuck-you to the establishment. The thousands of frustrated listeners calling in to his radio show, and the millions more who flocked to Breitbart News, had left him no doubt that an army of the angry and dispossessed was eager to join him in lobbing a bomb at the country’s leaders. As guests left the party, a doorman handed out a gift that Bannon had chosen for the occasion: a silver hip flask with “Breitbart” imprinted above an image of a honey badger, the Breitbart mascot. — Bannon’s cult-leader magnetism was a powerful draw for oddballs and freaks, and the attraction ran both ways. As he moved further from the cosmopolitan orbits of Goldman Sachs and Hollywood, there was no longer any need for him to suppress his right-wing impulses. Giving full vent to his views on subjects like immigration and Islam isolated him among a radical fringe that most of political Washington regarded as teeming with racist conspiracy theorists. But far from being bothered, Bannon welcomed their disdain, taking it as proof of his authentic conviction. It fed his grandiose sense of purpose to imagine that he was amassing an army of ragged, pitchfork-wielding outsiders to storm the barricades and, in Andrew Breitbart’s favorite formulation, “take back the country.” If Bannon was bothered by the incendiary views held by some of those lining up with him, he didn’t show it. His habit always was to welcome all comers. To all outward appearances, Bannon, wild-eyed and scruffy, a Falstaff in flip-flops, was someone whom the political world could safely ignore. But his appearance, and the company he kept, masked an analytic capability that was undiminished and as applicable to politics as it had been to the finances of corrupt Hollywood movie studios. Somehow, Bannon, who would happily fall into league with the most agitated conservative zealot, was able to see clearly that conservatives had failed to stop Bill Clinton in the 1990s because they had indulged this very zealotry to a point where their credibility with the media and mainstream voters was shot. Trapped in their own bubble, speaking only to one another, they had believed that they were winning, when in reality they had already lost.
— Joshua Green, Devil's Bargain

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