Stephen Bannon is leaving his role as Donald Trump\u2019s chief strategist, the White House announced Friday, ending a his tenure at the exact same momente that the administration is being attacked in the media over the president\u2019s remarks on violence in Virginia.<\/p>\n
His exit caps a tumultuous four weeks in which a slew of senior officials have announced their departures, including the former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, former press secretary Sean Spicer and former communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who was hired and fired within the space of 11 days.<\/p>\n
Bannon\u2019s departure was agreed on mutually with new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and his last day on the job will be Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said.<\/p>\n
The benchmark S&P 500 Index rallied as much as 0.4 percent, rebounding from its second-biggest drop of 2017, touching its daily high point after the New York Times confirmed Bannon\u2019s departure. It remained up 0.1 percent in afternoon trading in New York. Investors interpreted his departure as removing a powerful advocate for a protectionist agenda and direct confrontation with China over trade.<\/p>\n
Bannon, 63, the chief executive of Trump\u2019s presidential campaign and an architect of his election victory, was the leading champion of conservative populism within the administration. The former chairman of Breitbart News, Bannon served as a link to the so-called \u201calt-right\u201d movement attuned to the attitudes of the most conservative elements of the president\u2019s base.<\/p>\n
\u201cSteve played an integral part in the president\u2019s journey to the White House,” said former Trump adviser Sam Nunberg. “Steve went into the White House and didn\u2019t betray his values, worked every day to advance the agenda that the president was elected on. Trump\u2019s voters may get upset that America\u2019s not being made great again. We\u2019ll find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sebastian Gorka, a Bannon ally who previously worked with him at Breitbart News, also may face removal from his post as a counter-terrorism aide to the president, said two people with knowledge of the situation.<\/p>\n
The possible dismissal of Gorka suggests that Kelly is looking to root out Bannon allies and other officials prone to igniting public firestorms. Last week, Gorka told the BBC it was \u201csimply nonsensical\u201d for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discuss military matters related to recent provocations by North Korea. He subsequently accused the media of distorting his remarks.<\/p>\n
Bannon had advocated that the president delve into racial issues and applauded Trump\u2019s widely criticized handling of the Charlottesville situation. The president appeared to press forward with that strategy with a series of tweets Thursday morning decrying the removal of Confederate statues.<\/p>\n
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California called Bannon\u2019s ouster \u201cwelcome news, but it doesn\u2019t disguise where President Trump himself stands on white supremacists and the bigoted beliefs they advance.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPersonnel changes are worthless so long as President Trump continues to advance policies that disgrace our cherished American values,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
A person close to Bannon portrayed his departure as unrelated to the backlash against Trump\u2019s comments this week that appeared to confer legitimacy on white supremacists following the violence in Virginia. The person said Bannon had turned in his resignation on Aug. 7 to take effect on Aug. 14. The announcement was delayed following last weekend\u2019s melees in Charlottesville to put distance between those events and his exit, the person said.<\/p>\n
Bannon, whose relationship with Trump was forged through campaign battles, has been one of the president\u2019s closest advisers, skilled at infighting and cultivating the media. His departure strengthens Kelly, who has sought to better organize a West Wing known for chaos and disorder.<\/p>\n
The move also will bolster Bannon\u2019s rivals within the administration, including National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and top economic aide Gary Cohn, with whom Bannon frequently clashed over policy. During an interview Sunday with NBC News, McMaster pointedly and repeatedly refused to say whether he could effectively work with Bannon going forward.<\/p>\n
The American Prospect, a progressive magazine, on Wednesday published an interview with Bannon in which the president\u2019s chief strategist discussed his efforts to undermine fellow Trump aides and seemed to undercut the president on key foreign policy issues.<\/p>\n
Bannon told the magazine political opponents at the State Department and Pentagon were \u201cwetting themselves\u201d over his plans to root out employees he disagreed with over policy. And despite the president\u2019s threats of a swift military response to provocations from North Korea, Bannon conceded \u201cthere\u2019s no military solution here\u201d that wouldn\u2019t result in millions of deaths.<\/p>\n
Even before the interview, the president signaled Bannon\u2019s fate could be in jeopardy. Asked about Bannon\u2019s job security during a freewheeling press conference Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, the president was noncommittal. He said Bannon was \u201cnot a racist\u201d and was treated unfairly by the press, but contended he \u201ccame on very late\u201d to his presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
There were also signals in recent days that friends of the president were souring on Bannon.<\/p>\n
Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax Media and a frequent confidant of the president, said earlier this week that Trump was \u201cnot getting good advice from the people that are around him\u201d in the aftermath of the president\u2019s comments on the violence in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhoever is advising him that now is the time to argue in favor of confederate monuments, is not giving him good advice,\u201d Ruddy said in an interview before Bannon\u2019s ouster.<\/p>\n
Trump had been considering removing Bannon even in the months before the Charlottesville controversy, frustrated with perceptions that his adviser was the one pulling the strings at the White House. He was angered by a Saturday Night Live sketch that depicted Bannon as the grim reaper, sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office while Trump was given a child\u2019s table. A Time magazine cover labeling Bannon \u201cThe Great Manipulator\u201d also hurt his standing, as did his portrayal as a key to the president\u2019s electoral success in a recent book by Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Joshua Green.<\/p>\n
The president was also frustrated by perceptions that his senior aide was behind leaks to the media. Scaramucci, who was fired last month after less than two weeks on the job, said repeatedly he believed Bannon was a leaker.<\/p>\n
But moving Bannon outside the White House raises new risks. Even if he continues to support the president, he may become aggressive in attacking the administration\u2019s more traditional Republican players and policies. He has ample access to funding through his close relationships with conservative billionaire Bob Mercer and other major Republican donors.<\/p>\n
Some in the White House disagreed with the decision to oust Bannon, and argued that the move weakened the president\u2019s ability to translate his ideas into policy.<\/p>\n
Bannon was the administration\u2019s most effective advocate for delivering on the Trump campaign agenda, said one official who requested anonymity to discuss internal dynamics. His removal also will isolate Stephen Miller, the president\u2019s senior adviser who\u2019s best known for his efforts to curtail immigration, the person argued, and leave Trump more vulnerable than ever to the so-called \u201cglobalists\u201d on his team.<\/p>\n
The official also discounted the notion that Bannon\u2019s removal was a victory for liberals who had long advocated for his dismissal, arguing that his power will only increase once he leaves.<\/p>\n
Bannon may once again devote his attention to media interests, Ruddy said in an interview on Friday after the departure was announced.<\/p>\n
\u201cSteve is a media guy,\u201d Ruddy said. \u201cHe thrives in it and has done very well in it. I assume he\u2019ll be back in some role at Breitbart and using that as a platform for radio or television.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kurt Bardella, a Republican communications specialist who worked for Bannon at Breitbart but later denounced him, echoed the view, predicting the strategist would “feel liberated” by his departure.<\/p>\n
“Now, he will be able to operate openly and freely to inflict as much damage as he possibly can on the \u2018globalists\u2019 that remain in the Trump Administration,” Bardella said. – Bloomberg.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen Bannon is leaving his role as Donald Trump\u2019s chief strategist, the White House announced Friday, ending a his tenure at the exact same momente that the administration is being attacked in the media over the president\u2019s remarks on violence in Virginia. His exit caps a tumultuous four weeks in which a slew of senior … Continue reading “Steve Bannon to leave White House”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":20467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[12422,2970,12423,12421,3435],"class_list":["post-20466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-bob-mercer","tag-donald-trump","tag-gary-cohn","tag-steve-bannon","tag-white-house"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/steve-bannon.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20466"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20468,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20466\/revisions\/20468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}