So long, ‘Bannon the Barbarian’
Stephen Bannon, President Trump’s chief strategist and an architect of his winning 2016 campaign, has left the White House. Pugnacious and unapologetic about his controversial beliefs, Bannon was also a lightning rod for outside criticism of the Trump administration’s goals and policies.
As publisher of Breitbart News, Bannon was excellent at elevating a message. However, empowered at the White House, this hard-right nationalist message was both divisive and dangerous. Bannon was embraced by white supremacists, including David Duke. At Breitbart, he railed against “globalists.” In the White House, he declared that the Trump administration was in an unending battle for “the deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Bannon’s message is looking less attractive to the country after a week of racial unrest and a morally vacuous response from President Trump.
Three of Trump’s advisory councils disbanded after their privatesector members either resigned en masse or threatened to do so: the Manufacturing Council, the Strategic & Policy Forum, and the Arts and Humanities Committee.
According to Gallup, Trump’s job approval rating was at 34 percent over Aug. 11-13 — the lowest rating yet, by some measures.
Adding to the pressure, Bannon was engaging in a very public feud with his own colleagues in the administration.
Bannon had a long-running battle with Trump’s national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and had been feuding with Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, since the spring. He was also rumored to have displeased the boss by failing to brush off a series of media profiles describing him as the brains behind the Trump operation.
Bannon now joins a long list of ex-Trump administration employees. He also returns to Breitbart News, where he declared Friday that the “Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.” He darkly hinted to the Weekly Standard that he would now be free to speak his mind, and seemed to embrace the label “Bannon the Barbarian.”
He won’t be missed. But with every firing, the danger for Trump grows. Soon there will be no one left to blame for the chaos, the moral vacuum, and the disarray in the White House but the executive at the top.