In Exile, Bannon Sounds the #MeToo Alarm

On Jan. 7, a few days after he’d been brutally excommunicated by President Donald Trump for his indiscretions with author Michael Wolff, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon sat down to watch the Golden Globe Awards in the back room of the townhouse he lives in near Capitol Hill. As Oprah Winfrey and a parade of black-clad actresses turned the awards ceremony into a national platform for #MeToo activism, Bannon became more and more agitated. What bothered him was the political threat that the women’s movement poses to Trump and Republicans—a concern newly relevant, given the spousal-abuse scandal that’s seized the White House for days and is certain to intensify the problem Bannon identified back in January.

Whatever his flaws, Bannon is a shrewd analyst of American politics and of our collective national anxieties. It was Bannon who, earlier than almost anybody else, spotted the anti-establishment backlash that gave rise to Trump. From his couch that night in January, watching Oprah command the Golden Globes stage with a message of female empowerment, Bannon was sure that he was witnessing the next great political backlash—this one aimed at Trump and “patriarchs” like him, whose behavior had galvanized a potent counteraction.