Steve Bannon, the bomb-throwing media figure and nationalist mascot who was once one of Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers, stepped down on Tuesday from his post as executive chairman of Breitbart.
The news is the last step in the former White House chief strategist’s sudden and ignominious fall from Trump’s grace, which came after Bannon was quoted making abrasive comments about the president and his family in a new book by Michael Wolff. Bannon was harshest toward Don Jr., who came under fire last year for his campaign meeting with a Russian lawyer. Bannon called the meeting “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” and said that investigators would “crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV.”
To no one’s surprise, President Trump did not take kindly to the betrayal. Instead, he went on the attack against Bannon, dubbing him “Sloppy Steve” and releasing a statement insisting that “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency” and that “when he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.” Bannon tried to backpedal, expressing “regret” and saying Don Jr. was “both a patriot and a good man,” but the damage was done. On Monday, a White House spokesperson said there was no “way back” for Bannon; on Tuesday, he was gone from Breitbart.
Wolff’s book was not the first time Bannon has criticized President Trump. Days after he departed the White House in August, Bannon told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that “the Trump presidency that we fought for and won is over.” But as he returned to his job at Breitbart, which he had overseen as executive chairman since 2012, he and Trump remained friendly, and Bannon had high hopes that he would continue as one of America’s leading policy minds with the president’s ear.
“I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he said then. “I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart.”
Only after the breakup did Bannon see that Breitbart needed Trump more than it needed him. So the president and the machine churn on, while Bannon finds himself on the outside looking in.
“He’s gone from the top of the mountain to the deepest valley, and it was all self-inflicted,” a friend of Bannon’s told the Washington Post. “Breitbart was his voice and it’s been taken away from him, leaving him with nothing.”
