The Dark Art of the Smear

Two things must be said about , Joshua Green’s new book about chief White House political strategist Stephen K. Bannon: (1) It is not especially good. (2) You won’t be able to put it down. I certainly couldn’t, surrendering a weekend I should have rightly spent with the kids. I spent it instead with a 63-year-old nationalist whom magazine all but called the shadow President of the United States.                      (Penguin Press $27) is based on a prescient story Green wrote for in 2015: “This Man Is the Most Dangerous Political Operative in America: Steve Bannon runs the new vast right-wing conspiracy—and he wants to take down both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush.”                      At the time, Bannon was the chairman of Breitbart News, the alt-right site that would eventually help clear away Trump’s 16 Republican competitors like so much dry brush. Green interviewed Bannon and his associates for what he says was 20 hours of tape. He talked to Trump, too: “a wide-ranging 90-minute interview in his Trump Tower office” (is Trump capable of a conversation that isn’t “wide-ranging”?).