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With a sideways look, Ailes continued to stare him down, as though waiting for Bannon to show more of his cards. “Really,” Bannon said. “He’s on the program. It’s his program.” Pivoting from Trump himself, Bannon plunged on with the Trump agenda. “Day one we’re moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s all in. Sheldon’—Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire, far-right Israel defender, and Trump supporter—‘‘is all in. We know where we're heading on this.” “Does Donald know?” asked a skeptical Ailes. Bannon smiled—as though almost with a wink—and continued: “Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying. The Saudis are on the brink, Egyptians are on the brink, all scared to death of Persia ... Yemen, Sinai, Libya ... this thing is bad... . That’s why Russia is so key... . Is Russia that bad? They’re bad guys. But the world is full of bad guys.” Bannon offered all this with something like ebullience—a man remaking the world. “But it’s good to know the bad guys are the bad guys,” said Ailes, pushing Bannon. “Donald may not know.” The real enemy, said an on-point Bannon, careful not to defend Trump too much or to dis him at all, was China. China was the first front in a new cold war. And it had all been misunderstood in the Obama years—what we thought we understood we didn’t understand at all. That was the failure of American intelligence. “I think Comey is a third-rate guy. I think Brennan is a second-rate guy,” Bannon said, dismissing the FBI director and the CIA director. “The White House right now is like Johnson’s White House in 1968. Susan Rice”— Obama’s National Security Advisor—“is running the campaign against ISIS as a National Security Advisor. They’re picking the targets, she’s picking the drone strikes. I mean, they’re running the war with just as much effectiveness as Johnson in sixty-eight. The Pentagon is totally disengaged from the whole thing. Intel services are disengaged from the whole thing. The media has let Obama off the hook. Take the ideology away from it, this is complete amateur hour. I don’t know what Obama does. Nobody on Capitol Hill knows him, no business guys know him—what has he accomplished, what does he do?” “Where’s Donald on this?” asked Ailes, now with the clear implication that Bannon was far out ahead of his benefactor. “He’s totally on board.” “Focused?” “He buys it.” “T wouldn’t give Donald too much to think about,” said an amused Ailes. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019887