Many of Hudson’s members are part of the very groups Bannon despises. They must have winced to hear him refer sarcastically to “the geniuses in the foreign policy elite,” who gave America “essentially the Bay of Pigs and Venezuela, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Korea and the Vietnam War and Afghanistan, all at one time.” Of course, they did not occur at the same time, and they were hardly the fault of whichever administration was in power at the time. Trump, he continued, “didn’t do this. The deplorables who voted for President Trump didn’t do this. This is the geniuses of both political parties.” [sic]…

The appearance before Hudson indicated one thing: Even a moderate center-right think tank felt it necessary to invite and include Steve Bannon at a conference on strategy in the war against terrorism and ISIS, thus legitimizing him as someone whose views must be considered when making foreign policy. Clearly, leaving the White House has only made Steve Bannon someone who has perhaps more influence than he had when he was in the administration.