Bannon departs – but ‘Trump whisperer’ could have more influence from outside

Despite his exit from the White House, Trump’s longtime ally retains plenty of power – and a war with Republican leaders in Washington is firmly in his sights

As Steve Bannon’s departure from the White House amplified predictions of a brewing war between the so-called “alt-right” and the Republican establishment, there was speculation Donald Trump’s former chief strategist could hold even more influence on the president from the outside than he did during his tumultuous tenure inside the West Wing.

Those familiar with Bannon’s tactics suggested last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, only rallied the president’s base further, giving Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, more ammunition to go after the so-called ‘globalists’ in the White House, Republican leaders in Washington, and the US media from his reclaimed perch at Breitbart News.

“In many ways, he’ll have just as much or, at least over time, more influence on the outside than on the inside,” Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart spokesman and political commentator, told the Guardian.

The investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, and Trump’s failure to secure any legislative accomplishments would create plenty of opportunities for Bannon to influence the president again.

“As Trump continues to struggle … Steve will be all too ready and eager to be the Trump whisperer again,” Bardella said, adding of Bannon and Breitbart: “They’ve not been shy about their intention to, at least in their mind, hold the ‘globalists’ or GOP establishment accountable if they try to move Trump more to the middle and away from the nationalistic themes he campaigned on.”

Trump praised his departed chief strategist on Saturday, speaking out after a turbulent week that has left him increasingly isolated as the fallout from his remarks on neo-Nazis and the far right showed no sign of abating.

A day after Bannon became the latest high-profile official to depart the administration, Trump tweeted: “I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great! Thanks.”

The president later gave his blessing to Bannon’s return to Breitbart, tweeting: “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews ... maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!”

The president’s tweets marked his first public comments on the dismissal of Bannon, whose controversial role shaping the Trump administration’s agenda came to an end on Friday following months of speculation that his position was tenuous.

Bannon’s removal from office came as the White House struggled to contain the backlash from Trump’s response to the 12 August violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, when clashes between neo-Nazi protesters and anti-fascist activists culminated in a white supremacist allegedly rammed his car into counter protesters at a rally, leaving one dead and several injured.

Bannon, who had used his Breitbart news website as a platform for the so-called “alt right”, had played an instrumental role in crafting the nationalist message at the core of Trump’s presidential campaign.

Trump’s controversial insistence that “both sides” were to blame for last week’s violence in Charlottesville, placing neo-Nazis and white supremacists on the same moral footing as protesters from the left, was widely perceived as a testament to Bannon’s influence over the president.

It was unclear exactly why Bannon had been ousted, with some speculating Trump had become resentful of analysts claiming his chief strategist was the real power behind the throne.

Bannon gave a rare interview this week he claimed he thought was off the record, in which he broke with his boss on two key issues, calling the far right whose readership he had courted as editor of Breitbart News a “collection of clowns” and saying of North Korea: “There’s no military solution here, they got us.”

Conservatives felt Bannon had been scapegoated by his opponents in a move designed to mitigate the damage from Trump’s response to Charlottesville. “Media is the most powerful branch of government,” far-right commentator Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter in reaction to the news of Bannon’s removal. “Who will media decide Donald Trump has to fire next?”

Although White House officials claimed Trump fired Bannon, at the urging of his chief of staff John Kelly, sources close to the former chief strategist insisted he tended his resignation earlier this month.

His ousting marked the latest departure of a top administration official in recent weeks, following in the footsteps of former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former chief of staff Reince Priebus and Anthony Scaramucci, who served as director of communications for just a week.

As speculation mounted over his next move, Bannon swiftly returned to Breitbart as executive chairman, apparently even chairing the company’s evening editorial meeting.

In an interview with the conservative Weekly Standard, Bannon signalled he was prepared to go to war with his adversaries in the White House while declaring: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.”

“I feel jacked up. Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” Bannon said. “Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt.”

“I built a fucking machine at Breitbart,” he added. “And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”

The remarks were interpreted by political observers as a threat to the so-called “globalists” in the administration, such as Trump’s National Economic Council chair Gary Cohn and national security adviser HR McMaster, with whom Bannon clashed behind the scenes over issues such as trade, immigration, and foreign policy. The president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, both senior advisers in the White House, had also sparred with Bannon and sought his exit.

Bannon made clear in another Friday interview, with Bloomberg Businessweek’s Joshua Green, the author of a book on Bannon’s rise, that he was committed to aiding Trump from the outside.

“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 said.

It was unclear what else might be in store for Bannon, but speculation mounted over a possible television project to rival Fox News. According to Axios, those close to Bannon expected he might soon launch a channel, either as a standalone TV network or online streaming only, to the right of the conservative giant.

“They seem to think they’re still on the mission,” said Noah Rothman, an editor at the conservative Commentary Magazine.

Bannon had already “severely damaged” Trump’s position with respect to China and North Korea through his revealing comments in the American Prospect interview, Rothman added.

“He blew the treads off the administration’s strategy,” said Rothman, while adding of the Bannon-Breitbart wing: “They are undermining the president and undermining the country … all because of an obsession with a Chinese-American trade war.”

The reaction to the president’s response to Charlottesville shows the extent to which the Bannon worldview has become ingrained in the Republican base, and its potential to further infiltrate the party’s mainstream.

A CBS News poll found that 67% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the aftermath, even as a majority – 55% – of Americans disapproved of his response. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans said Trump was accurately assigning blame to “both sides”, a contrast to the flurry of elected Republican members of Congress who widely criticized Trump’s remarks. Other polls have similarly found views strongly divided along partisan lines.

Trump initially denounced both sides over the act of domestic terrorism, only to begrudgingly deliver a statement 48 hours later that explicitly condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis. But he reversed course once more in a dramatic press conference on Tuesday, equating the racially-motivated “Unite the Right” rally-goers, who chanted phrases such as “Jews will not replace us”, to counter-protesters from the left.

Trump’s remarks drew a sharp reaction from across the spectrum, with politicians, business executives, faith leaders and artists condemning the president for elevating neo-Nazis and white supremacists.

On Saturday the president and his wife announced they would not be attending the prestigious Kennedy Center arts awards as two of the five stars to be honoured – TV producer Norman Lear, and dancer Carmen de Lavallade – had said they would not attend the awards’ White House reception in the wake of Trump’s comments on Charlottesville.

This week several CEOs resigned from Trump’s business advisory panel, citing their disappointment with the president’s statements, forcing him to disband the so-called American Manufacturing Council all together. At least three major fundraisers canceled planned events at Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Among them was the American Cancer Society, which referred in a statement to its “values and commitment to diversity”.

And there was outcry from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have already grown frustrated with Trump’s inability to focus on his legislative agenda.

In recent weeks, the president escalated a war of words with his own party, attacking Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Arizona senator John McCain over the Republicans’ failure to repeal Barack Obama’s healthcare law last month. He also all but endorsed a primary challenge against Arizona senator Jeff Flake, a Republican who penned a book warning of the threat Trump posed to the conservative movement.

Trump’s thin-skinned demeanor and penchant for holding grudges led political observers to believe an all-out war might soon follow between the president and the Republican establishment.

For now, Republicans said they were increasingly concerned with Trump’s temperament and ability to lead the nation through turbulent times.

“It feels like violence is coming,” Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a vocal critic of Trump’s who refused to endorse him during the campaign, wrote in a Facebook post late Friday.

“What will happen next? I doubt that Donald Trump will be able to calm and comfort the nation in that moment,” he added. “He (and lots of others) will probably tell an awful combination of partial truths and outright falsehoods.”

“On top of the trust deficits that are already baked so deeply in, unity will be very hard to come by.”