Bannon Is OUT Of The White House, But Does That Just Make Him Even More ‘Dangerous?’
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Steve Bannon, the former Goldman Sachs banker, film financier, and leader at Breitbart, is out as the chief strategist for President Donald Trump’s White House.
Bannon, whose controversial nativist views have been called supportive of white supremacy and anti-immigrant xenophobia, was seen as the “mastermind” of the Trump campaign’s success in 2016.
“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
This move comes after multiple elected officials, including some Republicans, called for the removal of Bannon in the wake of the racist violence that engulfed Charlottesville, Virginia nearly a week ago.
However, according to sources who spoke to The New York Times, the real engine behind Bannon’s departure is either the president or Bannon himself.
Earlier on Friday, the president had told senior aides that he had decided to remove Mr. Bannon, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion. But a person close to Mr. Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week….
One White House official, who would not be named discussing the president’s thinking, said Mr. Trump has wanted to remove Mr. Bannon since he ousted Reince Priebus as his chief of staff three weeks ago; Mr. Bannon had been aligned with Mr. Priebus. But Mr. Trump changed his mind as several defenders of Mr. Bannon warned the president that he risked losing supporters who saw Mr. Bannon as a conduit of their views.
It was an interview given to the American Prospect, a liberal-leaning outlet, that turned Trump against Bannon. In the interview, Bannon said there is “ no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it,” contradicting the president’s “fire and fury” rhetoric. Bannon pointed out that until there was a plan that wouldn’t end up with “ ten million people in Seoul” dying in “the first 30 minutes [of conflict] from conventional weapons,” any talk of war was just bluster.
Bannon’s time in the White House was not without controversy, obviously, stemming from the moment the Trump transition team announced his appointment alongside Priebus.
Less than a month after Trump’s inauguration, Bannon made the cover of Time magazine, something that reportedly bothered the president. He was also reportedly angry that Saturday Night Live showed Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump ceding the Resolute Desk to Bannon (played by a Grim Reaper) while Trump sat a child’s desk and played with toys.
Bannon is also the subject of an FEC complaint which alleges that while serving as the “chief executive” of the Trump campaign, Bannon was paid by a Super PAC run by Trump-supporting billionaires in violation of campaign finance law.
The money behind Bannon came from billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, who financially supported Breitbart and are even bankrolling ex-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos after he was fired from the site after a vague endorsement of pedophilia.
(Yiannopoulos, who claims he was abused as a boy, says he was just joking and that his comments were taken without proper context.)
It’s unclear what precisely about Bannon and Trump appeals to them. “I don’t think it’s about Trump. Trump is just a vehicle,” an unnamed conservative operative told Politico last November. He argued that their efforts are less ideological and more a desire to be “players” in the political game. It’s not just the Democrats and liberals they want to “beat,” but also the other moneyed interests bankrolling GOP politics and conservative media.
Yet, if they are bothered at all by charges of racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia that are leveled at Bannon and Trump, they’ve not been bothered enough to roll back their financial support of them. In April, when Bannon was reportedly close to resigning during his feud with presidential son-in-law and unpaid White House adviser Jared Kushner, it was the Mercers who talked him into staying.
In the American Prospect interview, Bannon said that when he leaves the White House, he’s likely to head back to Breitbart. In April, during the Kushner feud, former spokesman Kurt Bardella told MSNBC it would be “open war” with the White House if Bannon was ousted. It’s unclear how his removal will play out in the Trumpist media. Folks like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will likely remain loyal to Trump, if only because Breitbart is technically a competitor for their audience.
However, according to Axios, White House sources seem to indicate that Bannon will remain loyal to the president. Along with his deep ties to the Mercers, Bannon may be falling on his sword for Trump. “One senior White House official said it seemed like Bannon was setting himself up to be a martyr — the nationalist hero fired by the ‘globalists,’” Jonathan Swan reported.
Sources close to Bannon told Swan that the now-former chief strategist will remain a loyal soldier, freed from the limitations of being an employee of the people. “Get ready for Bannon the barbarian” one unidentified source said, adding that Bannon will offer “a strong defense” of the Trump agenda but will now be able to “go ‘medieval’” on their “enemies.”
While many on the left are celebrating Bannon’s ouster, if he does continue to support the president from the outside, he could become even more “dangerous.”
Bannon can manipulate the president, and if Trump still feels amiably towards Bannon the two will likely still speak with each other. However, the true power Bannon wields is his ability to use Breitbart and his films to drive his agenda with Trump’s base, the people Trump cares about the most.
It’s possible that Bannon’s effectiveness was limited inside the White House, given that there are rules governing his conduct and his inability to do things in secret. Mass outrage to his appointment to the National Security Council led to his dismissal after the firing of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Free of his role in the administration, Bannon can simply be Bannon. He can draw on fear, ignorance, and anger to fuel the Trump base via Breitbart far more effectively than he could control the press (or the president) in support of any White House “strategy.”
Bannon’s removal is just the latest in a series of steps taken by Chief of Staff John Kelly to instill some disciplined in this amateurish and chaotic White House. Some speculate that he wanted Bannon gone so he could exert more control over the president (and who has access to him), but from the outside Bannon could use his media savvy to manipulate Trump more than he ever could as his direct subordinate.
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