Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency
by Joshua Green
View on GoodreadsBloomberg reporter Joshua Green's 2017 history of Steve Bannon's path through Breitbart, the Goldman Sachs years, the Mercer family alliance, and the takeover of the 2016 Trump campaign — written with extensive Bannon access during the campaign and early administration.
Core ideas
- The book's central argument is that Bannon brought an intellectual scaffolding — economic nationalism, cultural war, hostility to globalist institutions — that turned Trump's instincts into a coherent ideological program with policy hooks.
- The Mercer-family financial backing is the book's underappreciated structural element — without Robert and Rebekah Mercer's funding of Breitbart and the 2016 campaign infrastructure, the Bannon project doesn't have its operational base.
- The "devil's bargain" framing is the title's claim: Bannon needed Trump's celebrity-and-instincts, Trump needed Bannon's strategy-and-base, and the alliance worked because each could give what the other couldn't generate alone.
Published2017
Pages302
ISBN9780735225039
ReadDec 2025
