Brash Bannon’s future in White House uncertain
Trump refuses to give assurance over his far-right chief strategist’s fate after Virginia violence
Washington, Aug. 16: The uncertainty over Steve Bannon’s future in the White House continued as President Donald Trump refused to give any assurance over his far-right chief strategist’s fate, in wake of the violence in Charlottesville over the weekend.
Over the last few days, there has been an increasing demand to fire Bannon with critics labelling him as a white supremacist.
“Look, I like Mr Bannon. He’s a friend of mine. But Mr Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr Bannon came on very much later than that,” Mr Trump told reporters at a news conference at the Trump Towers in New York.
“I like him, he’s a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that. He’s a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard. But we’ll see what happens with Mr Bannon. But he’s a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump was responding to questions if he still had confidence in Mr Bannon. A day earlier, The New York Times had reported that Robert Murdoch asked Mr Trump to fire Bannon.
For months, Mr Trump’s national security adviser and his chief strategist have battled for influence behind the scenes, and their feud may force another shake-up at the White House.
The dispute between Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster and political strategist Stephen Bannon has reached a level of animosity that is destabilising Mr Trump’s team of top advisers just as the administration tries to regain lost momentum, three senior officials said.
Under pressure from moderate Republicans to fire Mr Bannon, Mr Trump declined to publicly back him on Tuesday, although he left his options open.
Whatever Mr Trump decides could chart the fate of a nuclear-weapons deal with Iran, US troop deployments to Afghanistan and White House staffing decisions — all issues over which Mr Bannon and Mr McMaster have sparred.
Mr Bannon has been in a precarious position before but Mr Trump has opted to keep him, in part because his chief strategist played a major role in his election victory and is backed by many of the President’s most loyal rank-and-file supporters.
“The President obviously is very nervous and afraid of firing him,” a source close to the White House told Reuters.
The source floated the possibility that Mr Bannon could be demoted instead of fired, noting that he might turn into a harsh critic of the administration if he is forced out of the inner circle.
Two other senior officials, both supporters of Mr McMaster who asked not to be identified, said he blames Mr Bannon for a series of attacks against him by right-wing website Breitbart News, which Mr Bannon used to lead, and other far-right conservative groups.
In recent weeks, Breitbart has published a series of articles making a case for Mr McMaster’s ouster on the basis that he is not a strong ally of Israel and that he has staffed the National Security Council with holdovers from the Obama administration.