Paris exit highlights feud between Kushner, Bannon
President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord has intensified the spotlight on the White House rivalry between chief strategist Steve Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, with one cable commentator proclaiming the former Breitbart chairman is now the de facto commander in chief.
Bannon had been pushing the president hard to exit the pact, while Kushner reportedly lobbied Trump to stay. A beaming Bannon took a victory lap during Trump’s announcement in the Rose Garden Thursday, while fellow top adviser Kushner was nowhere to be found.
That sparked a bold assertion yesterday from MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough — that Bannon is really pulling the strings of a Trump puppet presidency.
“Steve Bannon is now the president of the United States and that was more clear yesterday than ever before,” said Scarborough on his “Morning Joe” program. “Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about policy. Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about politics. Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about anything.”
Scarborough added that Bannon is such a dominant White House force that he personally has been tipping off reporters to stories about Kushner’s alleged ties to Russia.
“Steve Bannon was running around, according to my sources, bragging to journalists a month-and-ahalf ago that he didn’t have to worry about Kushner and he was going to sideline Kushner because of Russia, that he has information on the Russia investigation,” said Scarborough. “Steve Bannon has been leaking — I believe, based on everything I’ve heard — has been leaking these stories.”
Those comments might have slid under the radar in conservative circles had it not been for the right-wing Drudge Report, which plastered stories about Scarborough’s remarks as banner headlines on its site: “BANNON ‘IS THE REAL PRESIDENT;’ LEAKED RUSSIA DIRT ON JARED?”
Publisher Matt Drudge is said to speak regularly with Kushner.
It comes as Kushner’s alleged ties to Russia dominated headlines this week.
He reportedly sought to establish a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Russia in December, and also met with the head of a Russian state-owned bank behind closed doors.
But Bannon is under his own cloud of suspicion, specifically for whether an unusual “retroactive” waiver allowing him to communicate with editors at Breitbart News, his previous employer, broke ethics laws.
Republican strategist Ford O’Connell told the Herald that Trump enjoys rivalries among his staffers and that who’s up and who’s down any given week often changes based on the news cycle.
“He absolutely wants his key staffers to compete and he feels when that occurs he gets the best product,” said O’Connell. “Sometimes they don’t necessarily shake it off and go back to their corner. Sometimes there are grudges that are held.”