Steve Bannon’s Disastrous “Off the Record” Interview Proves Once Again We’re Living in a Bizarro ‘West Wing’

Amid everything else in the political three-ring-circus that’s been happening this week, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon made headlines when he initiated a conversation with a reporter for the liberal American Prospect magazine and proceeded to run down President Trump’s North Korea posturing, call far-right ethno-nationalists “losers,” and his enemies within the administration. The interview, which was never declared to be off the record, whether or not Bannon was under that assumption or not, drew immediate comparisons to Anthony Scaramucci, whose aggressive not-off-the-record remarks to The New Yorker (including a few choice ones for Bannon himself) got him in hot water and may have helped lead to his ouster as White House Communications Director.

Chatter immediately turned to what Bannon was thinking. Why was the alt-right pioneer coming for ethno-nationalists? Why undermine Trump on North Korea? Was he stupid or crazy, or was he just trying to manipulate the liberal media to his advantage? And that’s when we realized. It’s happening again. Once again, the Trump administration is acting like some Bizarro Universe version of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing. Instead of the idyllic world of Sorkin’s idealistic liberals, of course, we have Trump and his motley crew of mean looking old white men.

In this case, Bannon’s possibly-calculated “off the record” moment with the American Prospect brings to mind nothing so much as the third-season episode “The U.S. Poet Laureate,” which begins with President Bartlet doing a bunch of local-news interviews via satellite, and after the last one is over, he chit-chats with the anchor and ends up brutally insulting his opponent in the upcoming election, Robert Ritchie:

Bartlet pulling the old “I didn’t know I was on the record” thing in order to get a story out without having the responsibility of (intentionally) putting the story out ended up being a pretty savvy campaign move in West Wing land. It remains to be seen if Steve Bannon — if indeed he was trying to manipulate the news with a fake off-the-record confession — ends up being quite as successful. In the meantime, we can all wait and see what beloved West Wing storyline the Trump administration ruins for us next.

(Hat tip to friend of Decider, Oliver Pangborn, for jogging our memory.)

Stream The West Wing's "The U.S. Poet Laureate" on Netflix.