Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo courtesy Wikimedia.
President Donald Trump has been shuffling senior staff at a brisk pace of late, including firing of chief strategist Steve Bannon on Friday. Following his dismissal, Bannon announced he would be turning to the right-wing online blog he ran since the death of founder Andrew Breitbart in 2012.
“The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,” said Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow. “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”
Only hours after being dismissed by the president, Bannon was already leading an editorial meeting for the online venue. “We have a duty to the country to be the vanguard of ‘The Movement,’” he reminded staff, according to one person on the call.
Since returning to Breitbart News, the portal has already published stories critical of many current Trump staffers, including criticizing “New York Democrat globalists” in the administration such as first daughter Ivanka Trump, senior advisor Jared Kushner and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn as well as “hawks” like national security advisor H.R. McMaster and his deputy, Dina Powell.
In an interview with the Weekly Standard following his dismissal, Bannon seemed to lay down the line for the next phase of his relationship with the White House.
“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll 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.”
Meanwhile, the “War Room” strategy of Bannon’s White House seems to be on pause, with most promises such as countering the rise of China, trade and immigration still unfulfilled. According to an administration official, Bannon’s white boards he used to map out political strategies were now in storage.