Bannon on 60 Minutes: I Hold Bush Admin 'Geniuses' in 'Complete Contempt'

Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon blasted the “geniuses” in former President George W. Bush’s administration for selling out American workers and getting the country stuck in the Middle East in a 60 Minutes interview with CBS anchor Charlie Rose.

Bannon took offense at establishment Republicans associated with the Bush administration who went out of their way to question President Donald Trump’s competence during the 2016 campaign even though nearly all of their “genius” ideas—like Paul Wolfowitz’s brand of nation-building and neoconservatism—turned out to be disastrous.

“I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt,” Bannon told Rose, adding that the former Bush administration officials get him riled up with anger like nothing else. “They’re idiots, and they’ve gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump.”

Bannon blasted “the geniuses in the Bush administration that let China in the W.T.O.,” and reminded Rose that the “genius in the Bush administration told us, ‘Hey, they’re going to be a liberal democracy. They’re going to be free-market capitalism.’ The same geniuses that got us into Iraq.”

Bannon also denounced George W. Bush and “his entire national security apparatus,” which included people like Condi Rice, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell and Dick Cheney.

Consistent with the disdain he has always had for the bipartisan permanent political class in Washington’s “Boomtown,” Bannon also blasted “the Obama crowd,” which he said was “almost the same.”

“Clinton crowd, almost the same,” he continued. “It’s three administrations.”

The Breitbart News executive chairman clashed in the White House with national security adviser H.R. McMaster, who represented the foreign policy views of the Bush foreign policy establishment. Bannon’s absence in the White House was almost immediately felt when Trump’s first speech without Bannon as his chief strategist, which was about increasing America’s involvement in Afghanistan, was heralded as a “classic neocon speech,” with some fanboys even saying that neocon Paul Wolfowitz is now president.