On the morning he was being ousted as Donald Trumpâs chief strategist last Friday, Steve Bannon had already turned the page. âWhy do you sound unfazed?â a friend asked Bannon as news of his demise ricocheted across the web. âBecause,â Bannon replied, âweâre going to war.â Hours later, Bannon was calling into the editorial meeting at Breitbart News, rallying his troops to continue the battles he waged inside the White House. âWe have a duty to the country to be the vanguard of âThe Movement,ââ he told his staff, according to one person on the call. Bannonâs main targets are the West Wingâs coterie of New York Democrat âglobalistsââIvanka Trump, Jared Kushner and former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohnâas well as the âhawks,â comprised of National Security Adviser H.R McMaster and his deputy, Dina Powell. âHe wants to beat their ideas into submission,â Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow told me. âSteve has a lot of things up his sleeve.
The chaotic, war-torn West Wing of the past six months will be prologue, but the coming struggles will be as personal as they are ideological, waged not with leaks but with slashing Breitbart banners. On Sunday, Breitbart took renewed aim at McMaster, with a headline claiming he advocated âQuran Kissing.â But most of all, thereâs a deep animosity between Bannon and Kushner, amplified by a lack of respect. Bannon finds Kushnerâs political instincts highly questionable. âHe said Jared is a dope,â one Bannon ally recalled. The two clashed fiercely on personnel decisions and policy debates, both domestic and international, many of which Bannon lost. But Bannon, who was the only West Wing advisor to publicly support the presidentâs response to the violence in Charlottesville, is especially galled at being scapegoated as an anti-Semite in its wake. âItâs one of the attacks he takes most personally because itâs not true,â a Breitbart staffer told me. Bannonâs allies lay out a more complicated backstory. Bannon, they say, lobbied Trump aggressively to move Americaâs embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but was blocked by Kushner. And, according to three Bannon allies, Bannon pushed a tougher line against the Palestinians than Kushner did. In May, when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House, Bannon stayed home. âIâm not going to breathe the same air as that terrorist,â Bannon texted a friend.
