Bannon Threw Kushner-in-Law Into The Shark Tank... And Laughed

Anyone who doesn't understand that the hand behind troubles Kushner-in-law is suffering lately is Steve Bannon's probably has an attention span as short as Señor Trumpanzee's. The two have been in a vicious turf war from day one and Bannon's allies made it clear the last time The Kush scored a point against Darth Bannon that he was about to see his world cave in on him. Joe Scarborough remembers-- and his remembrances have been further reinforced by some inside info since then. This weekend the Daily Mail even published a piece about it-- a piece disseminated here by Kushner-in-law crony Matt Drudge.

Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough claimed Friday morning that presidential strategist Steve Bannon is now effectively running the country-- uttering the phrase "President Bannon" seven times in 35 seconds for dramatic effect.

And he said Bannon, not U.S. intelligence agencies, is behind a series of embarrassing leaks about Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner's alleged Russia ties.

"Steve Bannon has been leaking-- I believe, based on everything that I've heard-- has been leaking these stories," Scarborough said.

"People very close to Steve Bannon were telling me before the stories were leaked that he was going to be leaking these stories."

"Two days after I heard this-- two days!-- [there was a] front-page New York Times story about the links between Kushner and Russia," he added. "A coincidence? Absolutely not."

Two White House correspondents confirmed on Friday that Bannon has fed them negative information about Kushner in the past-- but wouldn't say when, or whether they had used the dirt in their published reporting.

Bannon did not respond to a request for comment about Scarborough's accusation.

Palace-intrigue stories about tensions among Bannon, Kushner and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus have been plentiful since President Donald Trump took office in late January.

Some accounts describe a zero-sum-game atmosphere inside the West Wing, with the three top aides undercutting each other in the hope of creating power vacuums ripe for filling.

"He has a job and wants to keep it," MSNBC panelist Mark Halperin said Friday of a scheming Bannon, "and will do what's necessary to do that."

Most recently, Kushner has faced tough questions about a meeting last year with the KGB-trained CEO of a Russian bank under U.S. government sanctions.

The Kremlin has framed the meeting as "ordinary business," saying the two were discussing a real estate venture and nothing more.

..."What we saw yesterday is Time magazine was right. Steve Bannon is president of the United States," he said, referring to a February cover story that branded Bannon "the great manipulator."

"Donald Trump doesn't know anything about policy. Donald Trump doesn't know anything about politics. Donald Trump doesn't know anything about anything," Scarborough alleged.

"He can get up and give a good speech. You listen to him talk about any topic and he wanders from sentence to sentence to sentence. So Steve Bannon is now the President of the United States. And that was more clear yesterday than ever before."

Later, Scarborough vented that by siding with Bannon on the Paris pullout, Trump was shooting himself in the foot politically.

By then, however, Trump's name was nowhere to be found in the host's rhetoric.

"President Bannon is on the wrong side of the majority," he declared.

"President Bannon may be right when President Bannon is looking at President Bannon's primary base. But when President Bannon is looking at the overall scope of American voters-- you can talk about the past three decades-- President Bannon's not even reading the polls right for today."

Scarborough said Trump's decision would ultimately be seen as a sop to "a small subset of the population that President Bannon's obsessing on" in order to secure re-election.

Who knew that if you turn Donald Duck upside down... you get Don the Con?

This is the management style of a weak and foolish man. The history of Donald J. Trumpanzee predicts this is exactly how he'd run a dysfunctional, chaotic presidency. It's just that Kushner-in-law and Ivanka probably never imagined they could be the victims of it just like everyone else who's decided to debase themselves by serving Trump's venomous and primitive psychosis.

Salome's Last Dance