I learned a new fact about Steve Bannon this morning. It’s a rather exhilarating fact.
Bannon became a vital figure in Trump’s orbit during the early days of his political rise. The two met late in 2010, when David Bossie, the veteran conservative activist, brought Bannon along on a trip to Trump Tower to offer advice about how Trump might prepare for a presidential run. Like Trump, Bannon was a businessman and born deal-maker. With experience on Wall Street and in Hollywood, he was nothing if not high energy, a mile-a-minute talker with a volcanic temper who rarely slept and possessed a media metabolism to rival Trump’s own. And Bannon, too, had a healthy self-regard. On his office wall hung an oil painting of Bannon dressed as Napoleon in his study at the Tuileries, done in the style of Jacques-Louis David’s famous neoclassical painting — a gift from Nigel Farage.
No. Really?
I don’t suppose we’ll ever get the chance to see the original, if it exists, but pending that glory the Daily Beast has given us a version:
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY KELLY CAMINERO
Their attitudes toward Russia differ slightly though.
Comments
6 responses to “Steve Bonaparte”
First, Trump as Time MOTY; now Bannon as Napoleon. What self-regarding fantasy will be revealed next? Ivanka as Catherine the Great, perhaps? Donny Jr. as one of the Caesars? It’s a narcissocracy.
Well at the moment it’s looking more like Donny Jr. as Capone or Madoff or Abramov.
Well, it is a sort of tradition…
https://gr310rl.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/hitler-in-shining-armor1.jpg
Ivanka would never be depicted as Catherine the Great, because the latter was fat — something Ivanka must never, ever be, on pain of disappointing and shaming her father.
Perhaps Bannon’s feelings re:Russia will change as his depiction as Napoleon surfaces there. After all, in Russia, the defining colloquial reference to/popular imagination of insanity is of someone claiming to be Napoleon. I bet the jokes have already started coming in, time to get the search terms into Cyrillic and try to at least squeeze a giggle out of this latest debacle.
Hahaha quite, hence my last sentence.
…and the Russia thing is sort of a tradition, too.