The Steve Bannon – Jared Kushner White House War: It Looks Like Bannon Lost Big-Time
When the Steve Bannon – Jared Kushner war broke out in the White House, few people would have anticipated that it would be Bannon getting shown the door, rather than Kushner. On the other hand, since Kushner is actually Trump’s son-in-law, maybe it shouldn’t have been that surprising to Bannon just who Trump would end up siding with in the end.
In the Halcyon days of the Trump campaign and in the aftermath of the highly unexpected victory in the 2016 election, Steve Bannon could seemingly do no wrong in Donald Trump’s eyes. As noted by Mother Jones, despite the fact Bannon had made – or seemingly supported – racist, misogynistic, and anti-Semitic statements in his Breitbart online news service, Trump just loved the guy.
In fact, many of the points that Trump made during the campaign and afterward seem to be cribbed almost directly from Breitbart news. Perhaps that’s why he made Bannon the leader of his campaign, to begin with. It was a way of cutting out the middleman.
Bannon became so influential that – despite his utter lack of experience in national security matters and his ignorance of foreign policy and diplomacy, Steve Bannon was placed on the nation’s National Security Council as one of the principal advisers to the president. Interestingly, in the process of putting Bannon on the Council they removed the heads of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA.
All of this indicated the incredible influence and power that Steve Bannon had gathered to himself in the early days of the Trump administration. However, this wasn’t destined to last for very long.
Once a few weeks of the Donald Trump administration had actually passed in the White House, it quickly became apparent that a Steve Bannon – Jared Kushner schism was taking place in the executive branch. As it turned out, Kushner definitely didn’t want to share is influence over Donald Trump with anyone else, so he is rumored to have turned up the pressure on Bannon.
The bickering and name-calling back and forth between the two Donald Trump confidants became so obvious and extreme that Trump himself apparently – as reported by CNN– insisted that they stop bickering and pretend to be friends.
Unfortunately for Trump – and Steve Bannon as it turns out – this rapprochement between the two was apparently either extremely temporary or nonexistent. Only days ago, Bannon was finally removed from the National Security Council position that he had evidently wanted so badly.
Bannon’s views on American foreign policy are unusual to say the least. Bannon is an advocate of the idea that America goes through a cycle of collapses and rebirths, and he apparently believes another collapse – probably involving a major world war – is in the offing. Even stranger, he seems to be eager for this to occur.
So in retrospect, it might be just as well that Kushner somehow managed to force Bannon out of his most significant remaining position at the White House. While technically, Bannan is still a principal advisor to Trump on any number of matters, in truth his being further marginalized on a daily basis by Jared Kushner.
Trump seems to have made his choice between his two advisers, and Steve Bannon may need to start thinking about his old job at Breitbart news. In the great Steve Bannon – Jared Kushner war for Donald Trump’s loyalty and support, Kushner seems on the verge of knocking Bannon entirely out of the White House. In the end, Bannon apparently mistakenly thought that Donald Trump actually believed what Bannon was telling him, when in truth Trump has demonstrated he will shift his position on any issue to match whichever way the wind happens to be blowing.
[Featured Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images]
