He’s out.
After only seven months of being the president, Donald Trump has taken the step of firing his popular Chief Strategist and former campaign CEO Steve Bannon. Officially, Bannon is stepping down from his job, but it’s clear where the impetus for this action came from.
This is a big change at the White House, and it marks the fifth major shakeup in the Trump administration since the president took office (the others being the resignation of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and the dismissals of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.
A number of analysts have thus termed the Trump presidency “extremely turbulent,” and some political leaders such as Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee have said the White House needs “radical change” to overcome this friction. “[Bannon’s dismissal] does not… remove the person who’s creating the most drama in the White House, and that’s Donald Trump,” said one top Republican strategist. “He’s going to continue to do what he’s going to do.”
Many would argue that as the former executive chairman of Breitbart News (a position to which he’s returning), Bannon was the force behind the populist movement that swept the country and brought Trump into office. Just prior to Trump’s inauguration, a group of 20 conservative leaders wrote a letter to the President-elect that read in part, “While others may come and go in the White House, we feel sure that with Steve and Kellyanne [Conway] at your side, you will always hear the voices of those of us who have supported you through thick and thin, despite the efforts by some to ‘manage’ you and your message.”
Certainly, even Trump has given credit to Bannon for helping him win the election of 2016. But the real question with Bannon’s dismissal is why it occurred. Is it because Bannon had been behind many of the leaks that exposed non-nationalist plots and positions by people and administration factions other than his own? For a good deal of time, it appeared that there was a serious rift between a group led by Bannon and Priebus and another led by alleged globalists such as the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn. In an interview in the liberal web outlet The American Prospect, Bannon had railed against “Goldman Sachs lobbying” inside the White House.
Meanwhile, a recent article in the Daily Mail newspaper credited Ivanka Trump for being behind Bannon’s dismissal, saying that Bannon’s “far-right views” conflicted with her “Jewish faith.” And even more recently, there was supposed friction between Bannon and National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who refused to answer a press question about conflicts between himself and Bannon.
If Bannon was indeed behind the leaks that have damaged much of the White House’s credibility, then his dismissal may at least be partially justified. However, conservatives may be right to worry that darker forces may be at work.
Simply put, it may be that the “Deep State” and globalists have essentially told Trump that his “populist agenda” isn’t going to cut it and that Bannon had to go. Republican Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, who recently ran for Senator in his home state said in a statement, “it looks like the establishment and the Washington swamp have taken control of the White House with Bannon’s departure.”
Bannon himself is on record as having said that “No administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction where it should go. The tensions in the White House are slightly different than the tensions in the country; it’s still a divided country. Fifty percent of the people did not support President Trump. Most of those people do not support his policies in any way, shape or form.”
He later told Bloomberg News, “If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America.”
To the Washington Post, Bannon appeared optimistic about the future. “If the Republican Party on Capitol Hill gets behind the president on his plans and not theirs, it will all be sweetness and light… be one big happy family,” he told the paper. Of his return to Breitbart News, Bannon commented, “I feel jacked up,” he said. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition.”
As for the president, Trump tweeted, “I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great! Thanks, S.” and “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at Breitbart News… maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!”
Some of the actions that Bannon can take credit for during his White House tenure are the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and Trump’s making Israel his first stop on an overseas trip as president. But in an interview with The Weekly Standard, Bannon claimed that the president’s latest falling poll numbers are no accident. Bannon even hinted that the forces working to topple President Trump, perhaps via impeachment, may be gaining ground. “The Trump presidency that we fought for — and won — is over,” he said.
“We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll [now] be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over… The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on [his platform]. They’re not populists; they’re not nationalists; they had no interest in his program. Zero.”
Whether “the people” will now turn on the president remains to be seen. If Trump backs off the agenda items of his original platform — immigration reform, trade reform, tax code changes, Obamacare repeal, deregulation and a boost to jobs and wages — it’s possible voters may sour on Trump and seek his replacement — if not in 2020, then perhaps even sooner in the form of Vice President Pence.
Two questions are: will anyone be able to execute such a platform better than Trump, and will they even be permitted to? If an outsider like Trump isn’t allowed to enact a conservative, populist agenda, who will be?
