ROME -- Steve Bannon, mastermind behind the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2016, is hunkered down this week in Rome, the city he calls "the center of the political universe." Bannon, who is an avid admirer of Italy's Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, head of the increasingly dominant right-wing political party the Lega, has scheduled meetings here with as many as ten leaders of other European populist parties, from Western as well as from Eastern Europe.