On Thursday, Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon sat down together for a center stage interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). That’s significant because the two are often portrayed as being enemies. Rush Limbaugh joked that the Leftmedia anticipated the event as if they “expect fisticuffs to break out.” No such luck — the two men first sought to put to rest rumors of a contentious relationship between them. But Bannon, who has not spoken publicly since the inauguration, also seized the opportunity to display his impressive acumen. Bannon usually looks like he just stepped off the shrimp boat and is clearly uncomfortable in a suit, but he’s also a former Navy officer, Harvard graduate and successful business man, so obviously he’s more than meets the eye. (Besides, Joe Biden once described Barack Obama as “articulate and bright and clean” — look what eight years of that got us.)

Bannon laid out three specific goals, reiterating that they were the very goals Trump campaigned on: setting foreign policy aright, rejuvenating the economy, and what Bannon insightfully termed the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” On the economy, he elaborated, “We’re a nation with an economy — not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being.” And as for the immovable bureaucracy, the Leftmedia and leftists in general, he warned, “If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. … Every day it is going to be a fight.” Charles Krauthammer may have summed up Bannon’s statements best, stating, “He sort of gave intellectual heft to Trumpism.” Bannon’s a mover and shaker, alright, but he’s not the bogeyman leftists make him out to be.