There’s a lot of speculation about Steve Bannon’s downfall following the publication of comments attributed to him that are included in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
Rebekah Mercer, Bannon’s main financial backer, has distanced herself and rebuked Bannon’s recent statements and agenda, which has led to other allies souring on him as well, per the NYT. On top of that, there are reports that the board of directors of Breitbart is considering ousting Bannon as chairman of the company. Also worth noting: Mercer has a minority stake in Breitbart News. Perhaps another Friday afternoon firing?
Bannon has not denied that he made the comments included in Wolff’s book.
Despite Trump characterizing Bannon as a “staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination”, Bannon was a top White House official with a lot of political momentum coming off Trump’s presidential victory whom conservatives hailed as a genius political strategist just months ago. He even had a seat on the National Security Council, albeit briefly. But after staunchly backing Roy Moore’s doomed senate campaign, Bannon is also taking the brunt of the blame for losing the Senate seat in Alabama — to a Democrat! His reputation and influence has all but disappeared in the span of just 12 months. Now even the alt-right and white supremacist crowd are turning on him. Ironically, some of that anger is because he was a source for much of Wolff’s book. One person was quoted on the racist site 4chan as saying “for all his talk, Bannon didn’t really understand that the media is the enemy.”