Bannon in Limbo as Trump Faces Growing Calls for the Strategist’s Ouster
Mr. Bannon also has admirers, including Representative Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican and the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, who said
that without Mr. Bannon, “there is a concern among conservatives that Washington, D. C., will influence the president in a way that moves him away from those voters that put him in the White House.”
And Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa and an immigration hard-liner, said that shoving out Mr. Bannon would leave conservatives “crushed.”
Mr. Bannon, who adamantly rejects claims that he is a racist or a sympathizer of white supremacists,
is in trouble with John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general and the new White House chief of staff.
For months, Mr. Trump has considered ousting Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist
and relentless nationalist who ran the Breitbart website and called it a “platform for the alt-right.” Mr. Trump has sent Mr. Bannon to a kind of internal exile, and has not met face-to-face for more than a week with a man who was once a fixture in the Oval Office, according to aides and friends of the president.
A person close to Mr. Bannon said that Mr. Bannon has denied
that he had anything to do with the campaign against General McMaster, and said he has tried unsuccessfully to stem the tide of negative news coverage about the national security adviser, whom he believes to be prodding the president toward possible war with North Korea and Venezuela.
But Mr. Trump still publicly flayed Mr. Bannon, insulting him as a guy “who works for me.” It was a far cry from the lofty status Mr. Bannon enjoyed when he joined Mr. Trump’s faltering campaign in August 2016, when as a rich former investment banker he held the status of a near-peer
and hell-raiser who shared his candidate’s daredevil approach to politics.
At a recent dinner at the White House with Mr. Kushner
and Mr. Kelly, before Mr. Trump decamped for a working vacation at his private golf club in Bedminster, N. J., the president listened while one of the guests, Mr. Murdoch, a founder of Fox News, said Mr. Bannon had to go.