War for Eternity by Benjamin R. Teitelbaum

Author:Benjamin R. Teitelbaum
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062978455
Publisher: HarperCollins

13

Dinner at the Embassy

I ARRIVED LATE, A LITTLE BEFORE FIVE IN THE EVENING, delayed during my walk from the train station by hordes of youths in MAGA hats and their clerical chaperones who had swarmed downtown Washington, D.C., for the anti-abortion March for Life in January 2018. As I turned the corner and walked up the sidewalk toward the townhouse, I saw Andy Badolato standing outside berating someone on his cell phone, sweating robustly while wearing shorts and a polo shirt in the 30-degree air. He was there to receive me. Steve knew I was coming and had asked his most notorious fixer to park me in the ground level of what he still calls “the Breitbart embassy.”

Like a cruise liner, Steve Bannon’s Washington townhome goes from stark to gaudy as you ascend floors. You enter the first floor into a dimly lit TV den with low ceilings and a large worn leather couch flanked by a steel table and chairs that look like they were taken from a 1990s sports bar—a space that is part run-down bachelor pad, part war room. As you move farther into the house, French doors open onto a conference room overflowing with papers and laptops, all facing a mounted monitor on the wall and a poster of D.C. that one could easily mistake for a target map.

I sank into the couch and got comfortable. I’d been through the routine plenty of times before, and had come to suspect that the waiting exercise was a deliberate strategy to humble me ahead of a meeting. Meanwhile, Andy was on and off the phone, a bottle of beer in his hand. He segued from making a business pitch to a lawyer to a conversation with someone interested in Trump’s famed border wall with Mexico (was this a business pitch, too?).

After more than an hour, I was summoned. “Dinner party is starting, boss wants you upstairs.”

Steve greeted me with a handshake and a hug as I entered. “Welcome, Ben.” The walls of the second floor are painted with pastel scenes from Greek antiquity, while the carpeting—royal blue with white stars—says home. A dozen other guests trickled in and mingled with Steve in front of a minibar. Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for Trump recently fired for presenting at a conference sponsored by the controversial H. L. Mencken Club years earlier, made a quiet entrance. The other attendees were Brazilians.

Then the main attraction entered, the guest in whose honor Steve had arranged the dinner. Everyone made space and broke out in cheers as he and Steve walked across the room to greet each other. One of the younger Brazilians standing next to me was fighting back tears. With smiles and laughs we made our way to the long, impressively laden table. We sat down and said grace, reciting the Lord’s Prayer with our heads bowed, as is the routine for the Brazilian guest. Of course I joined them in this.

The mood wouldn’t become jovial again until, after a few

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