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Bannon snorted. “Too much, too littlhe—doesn’t necessarily change things.” 7 OK Ok “What has he gotten himself into with the Russians?” pressed Ailes. “Mostly,” said Bannon, “he went to Russia and he thought he was going to meet Putin. But Putin couldn’t give a shit about him. So he’s kept trying.” “He’s Donald,” said Ailes. “It’s a magnificent thing,” said Bannon, who had taken to regarding Trump as something like a natural wonder, beyond explanation. Again, as though setting the issue of Trump aside—merely a large and peculiar presence to both be thankful for and to have to abide—Bannon, in the role he had conceived for himself, the auteur of the Trump presidency, charged forward: “China’s everything. Nothing else matters. We don’t get China right, we don’t get anything right. This whole thing is very simple. China is where Nazi Germany was in 1929 to 1930. The Chinese, like the Germans, are the most rational people in the world, until they’re not. And they’re gonna flip like Germany in the thirties. You’re going to have a hypernationalist state, and once that happens you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” “Donald might not be Nixon in China,” said Ailes, deadpan, suggesting that for Trump to seize the mantle of global transformation might strain credulity. Bannon smiled. “Bannon in China,” he said, with both remarkable grandiosity and wry self-deprecation. “How’s the kid?” asked Ailes, referring to Trump’s son-in-law and paramount political adviser, thirty-six-year-old Jared Kushner. “He’s my partner,” said Bannon, his tone suggesting that if he felt otherwise, he was nevertheless determined to stay on message. “Really?” said a dubious Ailes. “He’s on the team.” “He’s had lot of lunches with Rupert.” “In fact,” said Bannon, “I could use your help here.” Bannon then spent several minutes trying to recruit Ailes to help kneecap Murdoch. Ailes, since his ouster from Fox, had become only more bitter towards Murdoch. Now Murdoch was frequently jawboning the president-elect and encouraging him toward establishment moderation—all a strange inversion in the ever-stranger currents of American conservatism. Bannon wanted Ailes to suggest to Trump, a man whose many neuroses included a horror of forgetfulness or senility, that Murdoch might be losing it. “Tll call him,” said Ailes. “But Trump would jump through hoops for Rupert. Like for HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019888