Steve Bannon has returned to Breitbart News hours after it was revealed he would be leaving his post as White House chief strategist.
“Steve Bannon returned to Breitbart News as Executive Chairman of Breitbart News and chaired our evening editorial meeting,” tweeted Charlie Spiering, the White House correspondent for Breitbart News.
Breitbart CEO Larry Solov said he expects Bannon’s return to be a triumphant one.
“Breitbart’s pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back. The sky’s the limit,” Solov said, according to Spiering.
Bannon left Breitbart in 2016 to join Trump’s campaign to serve as CEO. His late inclusion to the Trump cause in August also saw veteran pollster Kellyanne Conway become campaign manager.
Bannon brought his populist signature to Trump’s brand, which helped energize Trump’s base. Bannon’s ouster Friday came after he gave several on-the-record interviews, in which he defended the president’s stances on Confederate monument preservation following a violent weekend protest in Charlottesville, Va.
During his time working with Trump, Bannon reportedly clashed with a number of his colleagues, including former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
Allies of Bannon had come to aid his cause by pushing damaging stories about his opponents, including labeling them as leakers.
When the White House put out a statement acknowledging Bannon’s exit, it was filled with praise.
“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. said. “We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”
Despite the praise, Joel Pollak, the senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News, raised eyebrows when he tweeted earlier in the day the hashtag “#WAR”, after it was revealed Bannon would be ending his tenure as Trump’s chief strategist.
— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) August 18, 2017
Pollak, during an appearance on MSNBC, rejected the notion that he is outright challenging Trump and his administration going forward. He said that if Trump sticks to the issues on which he was elected, then he would see positive headlines not only from Brietbart, which Bannon used to lead, but other conservatives outlets as well.
“I think that’s also going to mean a lot more pressure on the president,” Pollak said. “He’s asking the base to trust him, and the base will. They will give him the benefit of the doubt even with Steve Bannon out of the White House.”
Bannon reportedly told journalist Joshua Green that he is “going to war” for Trump to take on his opponents “on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.”
In a separate interview with the Weekly Standard, Bannon said, “the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” He added that there will be “all kinds of fights” moving foward.
He added that his departure from the Trump administration was planned in order to coordinate with his one-year anniversary of joining the Trump campaign in August 2016.
“On August 7th, I talked to [Chief of Staff John] Kelly and to the President, and I told them that my resignation would be effective the following Monday, on the 14th,” he said. “I’d always planned on spending one year. General Kelly has brought in a great new system, but I said it would be best. I want to get back to Breitbart.”
