Steve Bannon and his team are treading lightly after President Trump publicly put his chief strategist on notice in an interview Tuesday night.
As President Donald Trump publicly throws shade at his White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Bannon and his “nationalist” White House allies are “laying low” and hoping that a purge isn’t imminent, according to administration officials speaking to The Daily Beast.
On Tuesday night, the New York Post published its interview with Trump from earlier that day in which the president appeared to distance himself from Bannon, one of his top aides.
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”
The president went on to point out that “Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will.”
According to Trump administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, Team Bannon was “blindsided by” Trump’s words in the Post, one official close to Bannon said. “Of course we didn’t know [that] interview was coming,” the official continued.
Another official told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Bannon and other America-First-style “nationalists” in Trump’s ranks are “still laying low for a bit more” as they figure out a way forward.
Bannon did not respond to a request for comment, but the White House communications office confirmed that the Post quoted Trump accurately, and that the president’s words spoke for themselves.
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President Trump’s quotes in the Post also acknowledged the reality of the heated infighting between the so-called “globalist” and “nationalist” officials in his three-month-old administration—a power struggle that the White House until just a few days ago was officially denying even existed.
Furthermore, it strains credulity when Trump claims that he “didn’t know” Bannon, or to suggest Bannon played a minor role at the tailend of the 2016 campaign. David Bossie, who would become Trump’s deputy campaign manager, introduced Trump to Bannon in 2011, and Trump appeared on Bannon’s Breitbart show during the presidential campaign for extremely friendly interviews.
And though Bannon was officially “not involved in [Trump’s] campaign until very late”—starting in August during the final big campaign reshuffle—Bannon had been in close contact with Trump and his team since at least 2015, and used his website to boost Trump’s insurgent White House run.
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Bannon and his allies "blindsided," are “laying low for a bit more” as they try to find a way forward https://t.co/xLRwL4CtBI
— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) April 12, 2017
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