U.S. President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Bannon for some time.As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Bannon’s future, the officials said. A person close to Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but it was delayed in the wake of the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.Bannon had clashed for months with other senior West Wing advisers and members of the president’s family.Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald TrumpBut the loss of Bannon, the right-wing nationalist who helped propel some of Trump’s campaign promises into policy reality, raises the potential for the president to face criticism from the conservative news media base that supported him over the past year.Bannon’s many critics bore down after the violence in Charlottesville. Outraged over Trump’s insistence that “both sides” were to blame for the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally, leaving one woman dead, human rights activists demanded that the president fire so-called nationalists working in the West Wing. That group of hard-right populists in the White House is led by Bannon.On Tuesday at Trump Tower in New York, Trump refused to guarantee Bannon’s job security but defended him as “not a racist” and “a friend.”“We’ll see what happens with Bannon,” Trump said.Bannon’s dismissal followed an Aug. 16 ...
|
