Trump, of course, egged on by Bannon, instead offered a turbocharged anti-immigrant nationalism that promised to revive working-class fortunes, a message that resonated particularly among Rust Belt voters who’d previously voted Democratic. He was certain that Republican Party leaders would recognize this. “What Reince [Priebus] and Paul Ryan realize now,” Bannon told me after the election, “is that our message was the right one and that it’s gonna deliver Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to the Republican Party for a generation.” This was the Trump hammerlock.

Had Trump delivered on his promise and instituted the kind of working-class populism Bannon was espousing in 2016, he’d likely be in a better position than he is today. Certainly, Bannon would be. But that never happened. “There was only a plan to get elected,” says Sam Nunberg, a former Trump staffer. “There was never a plan to govern.”

Instead, the Trump administration proved chaotic from the outset and the Trump-Bannon marriage quickly blew apart. Once in office, Trump lost any interest he’d had in economic populism and signed a tax cut that favored the rich, while Bannon, who clashed with colleagues and members of Trump’s family and had no experience in or talent for policymaking, was quickly forced out of his chief strategist job.