President Trump is cheering his former chief strategist Steve Bannon's return to leading the influential conservative media outlet Breitbart News after his forced resignation from the White House.

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Trump tweeted from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club Saturday that Bannon may be "even better than ever before" in his return to Breitbart.

Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews...maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017

The White House has not said whether President Trump and Bannon have spoken since Bannon was forced to resign from his post Friday as chief strategist.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the departure, effective Friday, was "mutually agreed" upon by Bannon and Chief of Staff John Kelly.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sanders said in a statement to ABC News.

A source close to Trump told ABC News it was ultimately the president's decision to dismiss Bannon. The message was delivered this morning from Kelly, who was with the president at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Bannon was at the White House when he received the call that it was time for him to leave.

Bannon had submitted a letter of resignation to the president earlier this month with an effective date of Monday, Aug. 14, according to sources close to both Bannon and Trump. But amid the fallout from Trump's controversial response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend and earlier this week, Bannon's Aug. 14 resignation date came and went as the president considered Bannon's future, sources said. Meanwhile, several top Trump aides continued to make the case that he needed to go.

Prior to joining the Trump administration, Bannon served as executive chairman of Breitbart News. On Friday evening, in the top story on its homepage, Breitbart announced Bannon's return to the media company to again serve as executive chairman.

"'Populist Hero’ Stephen K. Bannon Returns Home to Breitbart," reads the headline.

Bannon has clashed with virtually every top official in the White House. Atop his list of in-house detractors were senior adviser Jared Kushner, national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and Chief of Staff Kelly.

One of McMaster's first moves was to remove Bannon from his seat at the National Security Council, a move that angered him. And his appointment as the council's chief political strategist was hugely controversial when it was first announced via executive order at the start of the administration.

Over the weekend, McMaster refused to say whether he would continue to work with Bannon.

Bannon joined the Trump campaign in August. He would become known as a fearless and critically influential adviser to the president, but has now become the latest high-profile aide to leave the White House. On July 21, press secretary Sean Spicer resigned, followed by Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was fired a few days later, serving just 11 days in that role.

On Tuesday, the president told reporters at Trump Tower that Bannon was a "good man” and “not a racist.”

"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," Trump said before adding, "but we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."

Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with Bannon in recent weeks, according to one senior White House official, and dissatisfaction from within Trump's inner circle was compounded Wednesday by his interview in American Prospect magazine, in which he seemed to undercut the president on North Korea.

"There's no military solution here, they got us," Bannon told the magazine.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Bannon confirmed rumors shared with ABC News by a source close to the former chief strategist that he would continue to work in the president's interests.

"If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents -- on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America,” Bannon told Bloomberg News.

After news of Bannon's demise first went viral, Breitbart's editor tweeted an ominous message: "#WAR."</s>Although it is still not sure if Donald Trump will go down in history as champion of bombastic, but empty threats, or as somebody who did what he threatened with, thus starting a dangerous local war with potentially global consequences, one thing is absolutely sure: Donald Trump, the eccentric billionare with a turbulent business career, a showman, proved with his entry into the White House, but as well as with the campaign waged by the so called liberals (in the best way of almost forgotten McChartism) to evict him from there, that the model of western democracy, especially its American version, is irreparable corrupted. If we look at the facts as they are, there can be no doubt about this.

Trump was elected as president of America, a country that was for decades, with good reason, viewed as the light-bearer of democracy. He was elected in accordance with the rules of the American democratic system, rules that are – basically – applied from the very beginning of the existence of the United States. Here we stumble upon the first “but”. Only to enter the race for the nomination for the presidential candidate, one must have money, very much money. In democracy, meaning the rule of the people, the people are robbed of the possibility to elect the best and forced to elect among the rich the one, who seems to be most capable. Or, and this is the second “but” (which was obviously the case in the last elections), people are left to choose and to decide who is the lesser evil.

This is why, choosing between Trump, who at that time presented a fresh and for America even radically changed foreign policy program and the former First lady and Secretary of State, an undisputed political hawk with no other foreign policy program that the continuation of toppling regimes in foreign countries and installing those who suited the US best and – not to forget – the continuation of the reborn Cold war, people opted for Trump, as lesser evil. Of course, when we use the term “people” we have in mind those who decided to use their voting right, which is usually about 50% of those registered as potential voters. And here is the third “but”. The President is elected by the minority of the Americans and imposed upon the majority.

This is how American democracy functions, at least in the last couple of decades. But, being strongly influenced by everything coming from America, similar trends are more and more present in Europe too. In other words, system we call democracy and we praise as “something that is not perfect, but there is nothing better than it” (as the legendary British prime minister form the times of WW 2, Winston Churchill once said), is giving all chances and opening all doors not to those who are capable, but to those who are rich. This very system often forces the voters to choose only between the greater and lesser evil. And in many countries (France was, at least until today, an exception) the voters are to such a degree fed up with politics, with politicians and with the scandals accompanying them, that they in significant numbers simply abstain from their right to vote, leaving it to the minority to impose its choice to the majority. And this should be the rule of the people?

But let us deal with facts, as they are. Trump was elected in the same way as all his predecessors. He was not unique (meaning the first) even because of the fact that his opponent won more popular votes, but he won the elections due to the electoral votes. To put it as simply as possible: he won in a democratic way and his victory was legitimate. And here begins the second chapter of the saga about the corrupted democracy. Despite the fact that he was democratically elected, despite the fact the legality of his election could not have been disputed, followers of the candidate who lost (and in whom the disoriented left leaning European liberals all of a sudden see a leftist - what she never was!) started with help of the mainstream media, either friendly to them or controlled by them (free media, is it?) an unprecedented campaign against Trump. His “main sin”, needless to say is, according to them, that he won due to the Russian meddling in the election process – which is a gigantic compliment to the Russian propaganda and secret services, but at the same time an even greater offence to the American voters. Parallel to this Trump’s mental health, his ability to perform the duties of the President and - more recently - his threat to start a nuclear war are being discussed. The champion of the anti-Trump campaign, the global TV network, CNN, already discusses his state of mind (his accountability, to put it bluntly), the degree of his connection with Moscow (a second detant is obviously something very frightening for Trump’s political adversaries) and finally the mechanisms of impeachment. The special prosecutor investigating the alleged ties between Trump and the Kremlin, already conveyed the so called grand jury, a citizen’s assembly which will in the best tradition of senator Joe McCharty’s investigations of the anti-American activities, decide – based on the reports of the US intelligence agencies which have until today presented no hard evidence, no “smoking gun”, proving that Moscow really did meddle in the presidential elections – if Trump was elected American president due to the will and support of the American votes (meaning electors), or due to the influence from Moscow.

Judging by the present state of affairs, it is not hard to anticipate their decision.

In the meantime nobody is mentioning any more the financial irregularities (to say the least) in the activity of the Clinton Foundation, or the unprotected e-mails the former Secretary of State sent from an unprotected mobile phone, thus breaking the law (what she, despite the evidence, denied to have done). Nobody is mentioning her role in the ill-fated Arab Spring, especially in the toppling of the Lybian regime and the murder of colonel Ghadafi. On the contrary! The promotion of her hastily written book, entitled “What really happened” is announced, with the clear aim to close the coffin of Trump’s presidency.

And Trump, although being a “foreigner” on the political scene is far from being naïve. He fully understands that it is for him to be or not to be. And he acts like a wounded animal, chased into a corner. He forgets everything he promised during the election campaign (with the exception of the wall along the border with Mexico), he forgets his words that “America will no longer impose the American way of life” on anybody and his politics (if the stumbling from one day into the other can be called politics) resembles more and more those of George W. Bush and Barack Obama (read: Hillary Clinton). And he repeatedly and with ever greater enthusiasm threatens with the American military might, which brought him on the verge of open war with seemingly unpredictable, but in reality very “down to the Earth” regime of North Korea. Kim Yong Un seems to be an enigma to the world, but let us not forget that he was educated in the West. He knows perfectly well whom he is dealing with, while Trump entered the war games without knowing anything about Kim – if we forget the slogans about the harsh dictatorship and the last bastion of communism and what else the military-industrial complex is “feeding” him with in order to always have an enemy, even at the risk of a world war.

Today’s world is on the brink of a confrontation with unforeseeable consequences. But, it is not Donald Trump who is to be blamed for this in the first place. Much more – the system that opened for him the doors of the White House and is now trying- mainly through the activities of the deep state – to throw him out of there. Both things, needless to say: democratically. Because of that, is it not the last minute to start thinking about what is really the system we call democracy and what is this system giving us (or taking from us)? So, it is not Donald Trump we are dealing with, it is democracy, better to say system we view as democracy and which has with the original meaning of the world less and less in common. After all, was it not the 2nd President of the United States, John Adams, who said: “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” And did we remember, do we remember?

Author (born 1943, graduated at the Law Faculty of the Zagreb University), is a long-time journalist, (TV and press), who served between 2001. and 2010. as foreign policy adviser to the second President of the Republic of Croatia, Mr. Stjepan Mesić.</s>Mr. Bannon can still wield influence from outside the West Wing. He believes he can use his perch at Breitbart — which has given a platform to the so-called alt-right, a loose collection of activists, some of whom espouse openly racist and anti-Semitic views — to publicly pressure the president.

And he may still play an insider’s role as a confidant for the president, offering advice and counsel, much like other former advisers who still frequently consult with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bannon had formed a philosophical alliance with Mr. Trump, and they shared an unlikely chemistry.

Mr. Bannon has indicated to people that he does not intend to harm Mr. Trump and he has promised to be somewhat reserved about other administration officials, including Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

“In many ways I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on. And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with,” Mr. Bannon said on Friday.

But his former colleagues in the West Wing are uncertain how long that will last.

Joel Pollak, a Breitbart executive, tweeted after Mr. Bannon’s departure was made public a single word with a hashtag: “#WAR.” Mr. Bannon called reporters to suggest Mr. Pollak had gone too far, but he also acknowledged his own disappointment at departing the White House.

He told The Weekly Standard: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”</s>Steve Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist, is leaving President Donald Trump’s administration, two senior White House officials told NBC News.

Bannon’s departure brings to a close his rocky tenure in the West Wing in which he clashed with many of Trump’s other top aides, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, stressed divisive nationalist themes as Trump's campaign chief, and is reported to have clashed with the White House National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster.

Trump did not endorse Bannon when asked about his future earlier this week and made his displeasure with the strategist known in April, hitting back at his strategist in a pair of interviews.

“You have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late," Trump told the New York Post then, downplaying Bannon's role as chief architect of his campaign victory. "I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary."

Trump also slammed Bannon in an interview with The Wall Street Journal as “a guy who works for me.”

Following those interviews, a source close to the president described Trump’s comments as a "warning shot," highlighting that the president "doesn't say these things in haste.” 



Story written by Andrew Rafferty</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon has been fired, two White House officials told CNN Friday.

A source told CNN that Bannon was given the option to resign but was forced out. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Bannon’s departure but did not say whether he was fired or resigned.

“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” Sanders said in a statement.

The President has privately stewed over Bannon in recent days, including Thursday night from his golf course in New Jersey. He was furious with his chief strategist after he was quoted in an interview with the American Prospect contradicting him on North Korea and asserting that he was able to make personnel changes at the State Department.

Bannon’s exit comes just seven months after Trump took office and three weeks after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff, looking to instill order in a chaotic White House beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a storm of controversies.

Bannon’s exit meant one of the White House’s most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump’s “nationalist” ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.

Bannon joined Trump’s campaign last year, moving from the sidelines as one of Trump’s top cheerleaders to a position atop his campaign apparatus.

He did not travel with the President during the first week of what White House officials described as a “working vacation” at Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Instead Bannon remained in Washington to work out of a temporary office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

This story is breaking and will update with additional news.</s>Steve Bannon, US President Donald Trump's chief strategist, has become the latest high-profile figure in the administration whose role has come to an abrupt end.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckerby Sanders confirmed that Bannon would no longer be showing up to work.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day," Sanders said in a statement on Friday. "We are grateful for his service and wish him the best."

The New York Times earlier reported what it termed as an apparent dismissal, citing sources.

The development comes as the White House reels from the fallout over Trump's response to a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville on August 12.

The former head of far-right outlet Breitbart News is described as being the nucleus of one of several competing power centres in what has been a chaotic White House.

He repeatedly clashed with other top White House advisers and often ran afoul of the president himself.

Bannon offered his resignation to Trump on August 7, according to one person close to the adviser, AP reported.

The resignation was to go into effect a week later, August 14, which was the one year anniversary of when he officially joined Trump's presidential campaign.

It was then held back a few days after the violence in Charlottesville.

But Bannon had been on shaky ground for weeks, and his standing appeared in jeopardy when Trump's new chief of staff, Kelly, embarked on a personnel review of West Wing staff.

Kelly had indicated to aides that significant changes could be coming, according to an official familiar with Kelly's plans but not authorised to speak publicly.

READ MORE: Stephen Bannon and the old/new anti-Semitism

The president had also repeatedly diminished Bannon's role in his campaign in recent remarks and refused to express confidence during an impromptu news conference Tuesday.

"He's a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard," Trump said. "But we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."

The decision whether to drop Bannon was more than just a personnel matter. The media guru is viewed in some circles as Trump's connection to his base and the protector of Trump's disruptive, conservative agenda.

"It's a tough pill to swallow if Steve is gone because you have a Republican West Wing that's filled with generals and Democrats," said former campaign strategist Sam Nunberg, shortly before the news of Bannon's departure broke. "It would feel like the twilight zone."</s>WASHINGTON --President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon has been fired, two White House officials told CNN Friday.

A source told CNN that Bannon was given the option to resign but was forced out. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Bannon's departure but did not say whether he was fired or resigned.

"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," Sanders said in a statement.

The President has privately stewed over Bannon in recent days, including Thursday night from his golf course in New Jersey. He was furious with his chief strategist after he was quoted in an interview with the American Prospect contradicting him on North Korea and asserting that he was able to make personnel changes at the State Department.

Bannon's exit comes just seven months after Trump took office and three weeks after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff, looking to instill order in a chaotic White House beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a storm of controversies.

Bannon's exit meant one of the White House's most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump's "nationalist" ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.

Bannon joined Trump's campaign last year, moving from the sidelines as one of Trump's top cheerleaders to a position atop his campaign apparatus.

He did not travel with the President during the first week of what White House officials described as a "working vacation" at Trump's golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Instead Bannon remained in Washington to work out of a temporary office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Bannon was supposed to be fired two weeks ago, a White House official told CNN's Jeff Zeleny, but it was put off.

CNN reports the President equivocated after an initial plan was to fire Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at same time, the official says, because Rep. Mark Meadows, the influential chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and others urged Trump to keep him on board.

The interview this week was enough for Meadows to change his view, a person close to him says.

The question now is whether Bannon will be an ally or a thorn in the side of the Trump administration outside the White House, where he is likely to return to his role as head of Breitbart, the right-wing news site he ran until he joined Trump's campaign a year ago.

In the administration, Bannon frequently butted heads with other advisers to the president, feuding with son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, chief economic adviser Gary Cohn and other more moderate members of the President's administration whom Bannon branded as "globalists."

Bannon was often suspected by colleagues of badmouthing them to reporters and he rubbed colleagues the wrong way by attempting to ramrod his ideological positions.

"Steve was never a team player," a senior administration official said.

Bannon viewed himself as the populist defender of Trump's campaign promises in the White House, working daily to tick off items from the list of promises that hung on the walls of his West Wing office.

Bannon focused especially on pushing a hardline trade agenda, recently working to cue up a series of trade policies to aggressively target Chinese foreign trade abuses and work toward rebalancing the trading relationship between the US and China.

The fiery chief strategist also led the charge against proposals by national security officials to deepen US military involvement in Afghanistan, feuding vocally during meetings of the National Security Council with national security adviser H.R. McMaster and working behind the scenes to water down hawkish proposals for troop increases and a longer-term US military commitment.

The President is meeting Friday with members of his national security team at Camp David to consider options for the future of the US war in Afghanistan as he nears a decision, but Bannon is not there -- and was not scheduled to be based on a list of attendees the White House sent out Friday morning.</s>WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's chief strategist and senior counsel Steve Bannon is on the way out according to multiple sources.

The news broke after President Trump told aides that he decided to remove Bannon.

According to the New York Times, Bannon already submitted his resignation to the president.

Details are still emerging, but in the wake of the Charlottesville riots, some critics blamed Bannon for escalating racial tensions through his connections with the Alt-Right.

Statement from the White House Press Secretary:

 White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve's last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.</s>Steve Bannon is out as White House chief strategist, ABC News has learned.

This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.</s>Steve Bannon has lost his job as chief White House strategist.

The White House described the departure as a mutual agreement between Bannon and chief of staff John Kelly.

"We are grateful for his service and wish him the best," said press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Bannon has been a larger-than-life character in Trumpworld: a right-wing provocateur whose rumpled wardrobe and radical politics belied his background at Goldman Sachs and Harvard Business School. (Bannon made a small fortune running his own investment banking firm. His compensation for one deal included a stake in residuals from the TV series Seinfeld.)

Bannon took over as Trump's campaign chairman a year and a day ago, and he was credited with bringing much-needed focus and discipline to what had been a seat-of-the-pants operation. Bloomberg Businessweek writer Joshua Green argues that without Bannon's skill at mobilizing disaffected white male voters, "I don't think Donald Trump would have been elected president."

The president, who doesn't like sharing the spotlight, often bristled at news stories that painted Bannon as the mastermind of his unlikely 2016 victory.

"Mr. Bannon came on very late, you know that," Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf resort on Tuesday. "I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that."

Trump offered only a half-hearted defense of his chief strategist, who has had a target on his back ever since joining the administration.

"I like him. He's a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that," Trump said. "But we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."

Long before he had a formal role in the campaign or the administration, Bannon had been a cheerleader for Trump as head of Breitbart News. Bannon took control of the website in 2012 and turned it into a platform for the "alt-right." His nationalistic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views proved a good match for Trump's.

"I'm an economic nationalist," Bannon told the Hollywood Reporter shortly after the November election. "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f***** over."

The take-no-prisoners style that was so successful during the campaign proved a liability, however, once Trump and Bannon reached the White House. The original, shock-and-awe travel ban spearheaded by Bannon was quickly rejected by federal courts. His efforts to strong-arm lawmakers into passing a repeal of the Affordable Care Act backfired. And Bannon feuded openly with other White House staffers, including Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law; national security adviser H.R. McMaster; and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn.

"Bannon really believes this stuff to a degree that's almost scary," Green told Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "I think that Trump is driven mainly by opportunism, by a desire to pursue whatever is going to get Donald Trump positive coverage on cable news now. And during the campaign, when nationalism — when Bannon's nationalism seemed to work for him, that was what he would espouse. But when that stopped working for him in February, after he became president, he was happy to bring in people [like McMaster and Cohn] who nationalists abhor."

Bannon raised eyebrows earlier this week when he granted an unsolicited interview to The American Prospect, a liberal magazine.

Although he was one of the few White House staffers who embraced the president's remarks on the deadly violence connected to a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Bannon dismissed the white nationalists at the center of the violent protests as a "fringe element," "losers" and a "collection of clowns," in the interview, published Wednesday.

It was a surprising comment from a man who successfully harnessed white nationalism, first at Breitbart and later in the Trump campaign.

Bannon argued it's self-defeating for Democrats to overplay the race card.

"If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats," Bannon told The American Prospect.

Green suspects Bannon "will keep fighting for this idea of an anti-immigrant nationalism, come hell or high water."

But now he'll be pursuing that agenda from outside the White House. And possibly taking aim at his former rivals on the inside.
Steve Bannon resigns as President Donald Trump's White House Chief Strategist.