Steve Bannon may have left the White House, but he’s nowhere near finished spouting his controversial views.
Bannon landed in hot water last week after some comments he believed to be off-the-record were published, showing that he contradicted Trump on a number of points.
In his first public comments since leaving the White House, Bannon claimed that, while he still supported Trump, he wasn’t sure that the administration could go on without his guidance.
“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon told The Weekly Standard. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
The problem, as Bannon sees it, is that “the Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success”. He called an attempt at Obamacare reform “half-hearted”, and railed against the lack of funding supplied by Republicans to help build the border wall between the US and Mexico.
Bannon believes that Trump’s presidency is about to enter a “more conventional” stage as the president is constrained by the staff around him.
Bannon, however, can keep fighting what he believes to be the good fight against fake news “on the outside”.
“I built a f***ing machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up,” Bannon said, referring to himself as “Bannon the Barbarian”.
It seems Trump is ready and raring for Bannon’s return to the Breitbart News Network.
“I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great!” the president tweeted after Bannon’s departure.
“Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at [Breitbart]… maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!” the president wrote in a follow-up tweet.