It’s being reported now that Steve Bannon is having second thoughts about Roy Moore after staunchly defending him earlier:
DAILY BEAST – Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon is keeping the door open to ditching Roy Moore as the sexual-assault allegations against the Alabama Republican Senate candidate continue to pile up.
Publicly, the Trump confidant and Breitbart chairman has stood behind Moore, who is now accused of attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl. Bannon has also railed against what he and his allies dub “fake news” and the GOP establishment for trying to push Moore out of the race.
“This is just another desperate attempt by Mitch McConnell to keep power, and it’s not going to work,” Bannon said on Monday’s episode of Breitbart News Daily. “You know, people in Alabama see through this. The good folks of Alabama are going to be able to weigh and measure this… This is an orchestrated hit from the Uniparty.”
But over the past few days, Bannon has begun privately taking the temperature of those in his inner circle to see what they think of the Moore allegations and to get their sense of how to proceed, according to four knowledgeable sources. Late last week, the Breitbart chairman said, “I will put him in a grave myself,” if he determines that Moore was lying to him about the numerous accusations, a source close to Bannon relayed.
Bannon emphasized, to both friends and colleagues, that he’s uncomfortable with the charges of sexual harassment and child molestation that have been levelled at Moore. But he wasn’t convinced that the initial flood of on-record testimony, starting with the first Washington Post story last week, was anything more than a hit job. And he believes it may have been planted by #NeverTrump operatives to put the screws to Moore’s campaign.
Several of Bannon’s most trusted allies have already told him that it would be “insane,” as one put it, to believe at this point that the Moore accusations are baseless. They have also warned that the time is rapidly approaching when he would have to disavow Moore before it appeared as though he was simply caving to political pressure. (Critics of Bannon, of course, argue he should never have backed Moore in the first place.)
It is unclear if those points have completely resonated. Bannon is currently in Japan, where he went to deliver a speech. He is scheduled to fly back at the end of the week.
It’s probably true that Bannon is now having second thoughts about Moore after some of his big endorsers and supporters have fallen away in light of recent allegations.
But Bannon hasn’t abandoned Moore yet and it remains to be seen if he will. After Hannity’s ultimatum last night, however, I suspect it won’t be long before he makes a statement on this.
As a side note, do you think Bannon’s ‘inner circle’ leaked this to put the screws to Bannon to dump Moore?