For those of us who wish (or hope) that Donald Trump may ultimately settle into something resembling a conventional president, his ex-chief strategist Stephen Bannon offered a glimmer of encouragement last week.

Bannon, of course, was removed from his White House perch last month by Trump’s no-nonsense chief of staff, General John Kelly, and has retreated to Breitbart News to resume the struggle that first brought him to Trump’s attention. For a populist insurgent, Bannon’s venue for his first post-White House appearance was unconventional—an interview with Charlie Rose on CBS’s 60 Minutes—but the message was not just conventional but historic.