Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency by Joshua Green

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

by Joshua Green

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Politics & Power

The bargain in the title ran both ways: Bannon got a candidate who could win, and Trump got a strategist in August 2016, when his campaign was headed for a serious loss. In Green's telling, you see the machine Bannon built first, with Breitbart and roughly $10 million of Mercer money.

Core ideas
  • Gamers as a hidden force: A backlash by young male gamers against his gold-farming business showed Bannon an online force he later tried to mobilize through Breitbart.
  • Research as news: Bannon's Government Accountability Institute produced Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash and fed its research to cash-strapped outlets like The New York Times.
  • The irony: Green doubts Trump wins without Bannon, but Trump lacked the focus for a nationalist agenda and followed cable coverage instead.
Published2017
Pages302
ISBN9780735225039
ReadDec 2025

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