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USA TODAY

With the appointments of Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff and Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon as chief strategist and senior counselor, the president-elect is keeping voters guessing about which Donald Trump will be running the White House — the deal-making real estate entrepreneur or the flame-throwing Twitter virtuoso.

Priebus is the Wisconsin-vanilla establishment Republican who published the 2013 autopsy of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign calling for GOP outreach to all the people Trump insulted and abused throughout 2016. Bannon joined Trump straight from running Breitbart.com — the slavishly pro-Trump website favored by the white nationalists, xenophobes and anti-Semites known as the alt-right.

Thus, within days of his surprise victory, Trump managed to both guarantee strife within his White House and aggravate the bitter national cultural divide he has tried to calm since he built an election victory by widening it.

Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker and Sarah Palin confidant, is a politics and media daredevil who reshaped Breitbart.com from the home of politically incorrect bomb throwers across the conservative movement into something rigid and dark. When a Breitbart reporter was allegedly assaulted by a Trump campaign staffer, Bannon loyally threw the reporter overboard rather than be critical of Trump.

That loyalty paid off with hundreds of millions of page views. So did its provocations. Breitbart referred to conservative strategist and publisher Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew.” It has asked whether you’d prefer your daughter to be a feminist or have cancer, and it has said birth control makes women unattractive and crazy. In August, when Trump hired Bannon, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke agreed with a white nationalist radio host that their movement had largely “taken over” the GOP. Now the alt-right friendly site is positioned to be the house organ of the Trump administration.

Bannon is 'straw man of the hour': Other views

At the other end of the spectrum, Priebus is a behind-the-scenes party functionary who built Wisconsin's Republican Party into a battle-tested machine. He is also House Speaker Paul Ryan’s pal, a critical connection for the success of President Trump's agenda. That's a bridge Bannon would be happy to burn, all but shouting “off with his head” when it comes to Ryan keeping his job.

But that didn’t seem to faze the speaker when CNN’s Jake Tapper asked him about Bannon. “I have no concerns. … I trust Donald’s judgment,” Ryan said. Ryan and Trump should think again.

The Bannon appointment is salt in the wound for the African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, Jews and other Americans who were Trump’s campaign punching bags and still feel wounded and bewildered as Trump transitions from campaigning to governing. As President Obama said Monday, there are big differences between building a government and seeking votes.

The dueling approaches of Priebus and Bannon might have worked on the campaign trail by telling different stories to different voters, but are likely to become a problem when the Trump White House makes tough calls and needs to speak with one voice. Should Trump's bipolar approach to appointments continue in other personnel decisions, Trump could undermine his own presidency.

Regardless of whether the staffing moves turn into a management nightmare, Bannon's presidential appointment recasts Trump's post-election efforts at uniting Americans as window dressing. If Trump is serious about being a president for all Americans, he should reconsider whether an avatar of the alt-right belongs in the West Wing.

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