By Aaron Miller-
Steve Bannon,. the former chief strategist of President Trump, has been booted out of the White House, according to reports.
The White House decided to terminate Bannon’s appointment, after Bannon was found to be too forward in making public statements that sometimes contradicted that of the U.S president. Bannon’s appointment in the White House was controversial from the outset, with a number of commentators questioning his credentials for a post as high as any in the White House.
Bannon is the founder and former editor of Breitbart, a fringe online publication not known much by the American media before he joined the Trump administration. Bannon was believed to be the main influence of Donald Trump, and also reported to have been the driving force behind the Muslim ban from 7 countries announced by the U.S president which was overruled by a Supreme Court U.S judge. It is widely believed that an interview given by Bannon to a liberal magazine, ‘the American Prospect’, angered Trump and his top aides who found the former editor’s comments to have undermined the views and position of the president. Bannon claimed there was no military solution to North Korea and called the far right ”a collection of clowns”. Bannon also said that the left’s focus on racism would allow him crush the Democrats, in what was an audacious declaration that irked many influential politicians, not least of all, President Trump.
After just six months in the job, the 63 year old former editor and journalist who joined Trump in a war with the media, will probably now be made a scape goat of by the American media. Only last year, Bannon was heading the management of Mr.Trump’s campaign which fed well into the populist ideologies conveyed by Donald Trump. Earlier reports in the year that mr.Bannon’s persona and ideals were at sharp odds with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and his son- in law, Jarred Kushner, as well as well as Trump’s original chief of staff, Reince Preibus, was a precursor to a inevitable end to his powerful position at some point, but there was no telling how soon that final blow would arrive. Speculations early in the month that his time in office was up had been made, but nothing definitive about his future in the White House had been pronounced. Bannon was an iofficer in the United States navy for seven years in the 70’s and 80’s, and served as a surface warfare officer in the pacific fleet, and was also a special assistant at the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon.
In 1980, he assisted with the operation eagle claw at the Persian gulf. He also worked at the Goldman Sachs as an investment banker after his military service.
Bannon’s departure leaves a major void in the White House, depriving it of a man seen by some as Cardinal Richelieu in cargo pants, an unkempt schemer adept at manipulating the president, who was famously depicted as a childlike naif to his aide’s Grim Reaper in a Saturday Night Live sketch. The characterization – summed up in a Time magazine cover that hailed “the great manipulator” – reportedly annoyed the famously thin-skinned president.
Josh Green, the author of the book Devil’s Bargain about Bannon and Trump, told the Guardian: “Bannon may be the only person in the White House with clear and distinct politics of his own.”
His absence means more power and influence for figures such as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and the national economic council chair, Gary Cohn, who have few, if any, ideological ties to the Republican party and the conservative movement.