Reports: Trump Has Decided To Remove Steve Bannon
BALTIMORE (WJZ/AP) -- President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon is leaving his White House post.
That's according to two people familiar with the decision who demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss private conversations.
Bannon was a key adviser to Trump's general election campaign and has been a forceful but contentious presence in a divided White House. The former leader of conservative Breitbart News pushed Trump to follow through with his campaign promises. But he's also sparred with some of Trump's closest advisers, including son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Bannon's job security in the White House had become tenuous recently — Trump offered only a "we'll see" on Tuesday when asked if Bannon would remain in his post — but Bannon has been telling allies that the president's comments about the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville would electrify the GOP base.
In an impromptu press conference in the lobby of his skyscraper earlier this week, Trump said there were "some very bad people" among those who gathered to protest Saturday. But he added: "You also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
In a pair of interviews Wednesday, Bannon cheered on the president's nationalist tendencies and suggested that a fight over Confederate monuments was a political fight he welcomes.
"The race-identity politics of the left wants to say it's all racist," Bannon told The New York Times. "Just give me more. Tear down more statues. Say the revolution is coming. I can't get enough of it."
In an interview with The American Prospect, a liberal magazine, Bannon dismissed Charlottesville white nationalists, calling them "losers," ''a fringe element" and "a collection of clowns."
This story will be updated as more details become available.
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