President Trump’s chief strategist could become the latest casualty of a White House shake-up that has seen a crackdown on leaks, several high-profile departures and an overhaul of the West Wing chain of command.
Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s closest and most controversial aides, was already in a precarious position internally over what chief of staff John Kelly believed was his role in orchestrating a whisper campaign against national security adviser H.R. McMaster when the racial violence that broke out over the weekend revived scrutiny of his ties to the alt-right movement, several sources inside and outside the White House told the Washington Examiner. The riots in Charlottesville, Va., could accelerate Bannon’s exit from the White House or cement his demotion from the influential chief strategist post.
One source close to the White House said Bannon’s critics within the West Wing are “making their move” on him in the wake of controversy over the violence in Charlottesville on Saturday. Democrats have accused Bannon of personally supporting white nationalism and hammered Trump last year over his decision to bring Bannon into the campaign. He and his allies deny the charge, saying Democrats provide no evidence for these allegations.
A social media campaign to “#FireBannon” gained traction shortly after an anti-racist protester and two police officers died in connection with the demonstrations in Virginia.
And critics of the White House have saddled Bannon with the blame for Trump’s slow response to the violence.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Monday called Bannon an “alt-right white supremacist sympathizer” and suggested Bannon caused Trump to withhold condemnation of the racist groups involved for two days.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., called on Trump to remove Bannon over his “bigoted policies” on Sunday.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., declined to single out Bannon in a statement Monday that nonetheless encouraged Trump to disavow the “repugnant attacks” the alt-right had unleashed on McMaster.
Bannon has struggled to shed his image as an alt-right doyen since severing public ties to Breitbart, the fiery news outlet he controlled before joining the White House. At the Republican convention last year, he infamously described Breitbart as “the platform for the alt-right,” a characterization that has clung to the website and fueled waves of attacks on Bannon’s employment in the administration.
Although Bannon has previously found himself at the center of internal power struggles over access and influence in the West Wing, people familiar with the situation say Bannon currently faces what could be the most serious challenge to his role so far thanks to Kelly’s preference for McMaster and to the recent ouster of his closest internal ally, former chief of staff Reince Priebus.
“I think everyone’s access to the president has been limited once Kelly got there, as it should be. That’s how the White House is supposed to work,” said one source close to the White House. “But I don’t think that’s because Steve’s influence or standing in the White House has been diminished. I mean, it may have been, but I don’t think his access to the president was limited because they wanted to diminish his standing in the White House. That’s how the White House is supposed to work. The chief of staff has to make sure the president is getting good information… he’s got to know what the president is being told. That affects everyone.”
One White House official said Bannon’s suspected involvement in a string of negative stories about McMaster quickly caught Kelly’s eye — and not in a good way.
“Steve tried to distance himself from the McMaster situation after Kelly arrived because he knew Kelly won’t stand for that stuff around here,” the official told the Washington Examiner. “But I think it’s too late. [Bannon] got caught in the crosshairs and was already branded as someone who enjoys causing trouble.”
The White House official said some of Trump’s legislative priorities may slip through the cracks if the president dismisses Bannon before the end of September, when Republicans and Democrats must settle a spending battle.
“You can pretty much forget about border wall funding in the spending package if Steve isn’t here pushing for it,” the official noted.
Bannon’s allies have argued that Trump would alienate swaths of the populist movement he built with Bannon if he decided to fire his chief strategist, who still commands respect among activists and media well beyond the island of Breitbart.
And his ties to deep-pocketed Trump donors could play a role in sparing him from an unceremonious exit.
Robert Mercer, a billionaire businessman who has donated extensively to Trump and conservative causes, and his daughter Rebekah Mercer have a relationship with Bannon that predates their support of the president. The Mercers have poured significant financial resources into Breitbart and helped shape the administration in its earliest days thanks to Rebekah Mercer’s official position on the executive committee of the Trump transition team.
It is unclear how the famously press-shy Mercer family would react to the removal of Bannon from the White House. A spokesman for Robert Mercer did not provide a comment on the possibility.
Sheldon Adelson, another major Republican donor, also has a close relationship with Bannon and would likely be irked by any attempt to oust him from the White House, one source said.
Even so, a spokesman for Adelson told Axios on Monday that the Las Vegas billionaire did not support a sustained attack on McMaster by one of the groups Adelson funds, the Zionist Organization of America.
Bannon’s internal feud with McMaster spilled into public view shortly after Kelly’s arrival, although several sources have said tensions between the two men have simmered for months.
Unlike Bannon’s dustups with Priebus and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, however, his rivalry with McMaster grew out of genuine ideological differences that cannot be easily reconciled. While Bannon ultimately formed an alliance of convenience with Priebus and smoothed over territorial disputes with Kushner, who has served as a factotum within the administration, Bannon and McMaster came to the White House with completely divergent world views and have clashed over issues from Afghanistan troop levels to the future of the Iran deal.
Bannon has pushed for the “America First,” populist, non-interventionist foreign policy that Trump espoused during the campaign. McMaster, on the other hand, has brought a conventional approach to the National Security Council and has pushed Trump toward the kind of foreign policy any other Republican administration might have been expected to pursue.
A source close to the White House said the media has fanned the flames of conflict between Bannon and McMaster to the point where their policy disagreements have become a major internal rift.
“As a result of the media circus, it’s becoming a bigger issue, but it was a manufactured sort of crisis,” the source said.
“And these are not like, nasty, sort of petty, childish fights. These are intellectually high-minded debates,” the source added. “But it’s been turned into a sort of high school playground 3 o’clock fight. It’s just nonsense. They’re putting forward their views on various issues, and they disagree.”
Gabby Morrongiello contributed to this report.
