What the commentators said

Steve Bannon never thought he would last long in the White House, said Andrew Buncombe in The Independent. He predicted that he would manage just eight months, and he was almost right. But in setting the tone for the Trump administration –“bullish, stubborn, populist” – he has established his legacy. It was Bannon who encouraged the president to use the mantra of “America first” – the key phrase in Trump’s inauguration speech; and if Bannon’s aim was to fashion a White House style that would “delight Trump’s base of supporters” at whatever cost to the president’s wider popularity, “his work is done”. What’s more, key Bannon allies remain inside the White House, said Jordan Weissmann on Slate. In particular, leading members of Trump’s trade team are committed to Bannon’s policy of confrontation with China, even if it means an all-out trade war. Bannon may have gone, but he will be “loudly rooting” for his ideas from the sidelines in his old role as boss of the right-wing website Breitbart News.

Bannon’s sacking should come as no surprise, said Freddy Gray on his Spectator blog. His habits of leaking to the press, and of stealing the media limelight, had clearly irritated the president: ever since he was sacked from the National Security Council in April he seems to have been sidelined. But who now will be setting strategy? Much power rests in the hands of the three “generals” – Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser H.R. Mcmaster, and Defence Secretary James Mattis: with authority in the hands of the military, some discipline may be restored to an “otherwise chaotic administration”. But they won’t guide the direction of policy, said Kori Schake in Foreign Policy. It’s true that Kelly, credited with Bannon’s sacking, now controls access to the Oval Office. But he has made clear that he won’t interfere with the president’s tweeting – and the expression on his face sometimes suggests he has no advance warning of what Trump might say in public. The plain truth is that “Donald’s gonna Donald”.