28 MICHAEL WOLFF . SIEGE 29 That Friday morning, he came down from the residence into the i the workingman smelled of cigarettes, crushed your hand in his, and was Oval Office in a full-on rage so violent that, for a moment, his hair came hard as brick—and not from working out in a gym. This remembrance undone. To the shock of the people with him, there stood an almost ; of things past, of (if it ever existed) a leveled world where a workingmar entirely bald Donald Trump. was proud of his work and identity, was inspiring, Bannon believed, : The president's sudden change of heart sent the entire Republican global anger. It was a revolution—this worldwide unease and fear anc Party into a panic. If Trump carried out his threat not to sign the bill, he day-by-day upending of liberal assumptions—and it was his. The globa would bring on what they most feared: a shutdown. And he might well hegemon was in his sights. He was the man behind the curtain—and h blame the shutdown on his own party. might as well be in front of it, too—trying to snatch the world back fron Mark Meadows, the head of the House Freedom Caucus and a its postmodern anomie and restore something like the homogenized an: staunch Trump ally in Congress, called the president from Europe to say neighborly embrace of 1962. that after the vote on Thursday afternoon most members had left town for And China! And the coming Gétterdammerung! To Bannon, thi the congressional recess. Congress wouldn't be able to undo the previous was way-of-life stuff. China was the Russia of 1962—but smarter, mor day’s vote, and the shutdown was due to commence in mere hours. tenacious, and more threatening. American hedge funders, in their secre Mitch McConnell rushed Defense Secretary Jim Mattis into action to support of China against the interests of the American middle class, wet tell the president that American soldiers would not be paid the next day if | the new fifth column. he didn't sign the bill. This was a repeat performa