China Media Says Bannon Arrest Shows ‘True Nature’ of Trump Administration

A Chinese state-backed newspaper has claimed that the Thursday arrest of Steve Bannon—the former chief strategist to President Donald Trump—on fraud charges reveals the “true nature” of the administration with which Beijing is grappling.

Global Times—owned by the People’s Daily newspaper, which is the official publication of the Chinese Communist Party—published an article about Bannon’s arrest on Friday, asking whether the ultimate goal of the administration is “politics or business?”

Chinese state media has been at the forefront of Beijing’s confrontation with the U.S., which has been supercharged by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Trump and his Republican allies are now pushing for a broad decoupling with China, while even his Democratic opponents are also expressing their desire to contain Beijing.

State media has long sought to portray Trump and his administration as incompetent and corrupt. Bannon’s arrest on Thursday—amid allegations he skimmed donations from an online fundraising campaign to help build Trump’s controversial border wall with Mexico—handed state media another opportunity to malign the White House, though Bannon left the administration in 2018.

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“The arrest of Steve Bannon, the man who opened the White House door for Donald Trump, further exposed the true nature of the Trump administration—a troop of businessmen who treat the political arena like a business,” Global Times wrote.

“It will serve as a ‘lesson’ to teach those who are not familiar with the U.S. political sphere how dirty and corrupted that really is,” the newspaper added, citing “Chinese observers.”

Bannon pleaded not guilty at his court hearing Thursday, hours after he was arrested aboard a luxury yacht off the coast of Connecticut. Bannon is accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through the “We Build the Wall” fundraising campaign, which authorities said raised more than $25 million.

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Bannon is a prominent critic of China, and during his time guiding Trump’s campaign and first months in the White House framed the predicted Washington, D.C.-Beijing confrontation as an era-defining contest

“Bannon’s arrest encouraged heated discussions in China, where he is known as an ‘ardent China hawk,’ and some criticized him for ‘using ‘anti-China’ rhetoric as a scam to make his money,” Global Times wrote.

“By simple deduction, Americans should be asking the question why Trump surrounded himself with convicted and suspected criminals, as well as asking what kind of person their president really is, suggested Chinese observers,” the article continued.

Trump distanced himself from Bannon on Thursday. “I haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time,” the president said, adding the wall fundraising campaign was “something I very much thought was inappropriate to be doing.” Trump said he felt the campaign “was being done for showboating reasons.”

The president publicly criticized Bannon after the latter left the White House under a cloud in 2018. Trump bestowed Bannon with the nickname “Sloppy Steve,” claiming his former chief strategist “cried when he got fired and begged for his job.”