Share traders cheer – literally – as Bannon leaves White House

Controversial chief strategist Steven Bannon has left the White House. The official story is by mutual agreement. But most pundits think he was forced out.

Ironically, given his background as the founder of the alt-right news site Breitbart News, it was a braggart interview with liberal media that probably pushed him over the edge.

And it was double the irony in that the same publication that brought down Anthony Scaramucci — the New Yorker — was involved, and even the same reporter: Ryan Lizza.

Mr Lizza visited the White House with Mr Bannon late one Saturday night in March but only published an account of the meeting this week (re-headlined and updated this morning for Bannon's departure; read it here).

During the interview, the chief strategist lays out his populist vision, which probably did not leave many in the Republican establishment impressed.

Mr Lizza writes:

Bannon is one of the few Republicans in Washington actually to consider what has long been backed up by polling: many working-class voters who support Republicans are in favor of higher taxes on the rich.

In the interview, Mr Bannon says he favours breaking up banks, renegotiating trade deals and raising taxes on people earning over $US1 million, recasting the GOP as a party of the working class.

Compounding his problems, the chief strategist gave an interview to a second liberal publication, American Prospect, in which he criticised White House colleagues including chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, and claiming the White House had no realistic military option against North Korea.

He told the publication on August 16:

“Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

As with Mr Scaramucci's career-suicide call to the New Yorker, it remains a mystery why Mr Bannon delivered such a scoop-filled interview to a progressive rather than a conservative publication.

In any case, if the New Yorker article had put his career in jeopardy, the Prospect interview pushed it over the edge. 

"There's no military solution," might, ironically, be one of the most measured, sanest things the chief strategist has said -- but it directly undermined the president's "fire and fury" threat.

Chip on his shoulder
The one-time investment banker's views are informed by the situation of his blue collar father, who had his life-savings in shares wiped out by the GFC.

It wasn't so much that Mr Trump objected to Mr Bannon's voice-of-the-rustbelt policies. Indeed, the president pulled the US out of the TPP. And during the campaign, he even briefly floated a higher-taxes-for-the-rich line before ultimately adopting a more orthodox trickle-down policy, and a more conventional tax platform overall (bar tensions with Congress over a possible border tax and the potential for a deficit blowout given his plan for higher spending in various areas). 

It was more that he disliked the implication that his chief strategist was pulling the strings, reports hold.

Some also saw pressure in play from new chief-of-staff John Kelly, who was videoed wincing and looking at the floor as the president went off-script after just six minutes of his Trump Tower  "Infrastructure Day" briefing to launch into a free-form, Bannonesque defence of his original Charlottesville comments, complete with 23 minutes of bickering with the press.

Bannon in the White House on April 20, with then chief-of-staff Reince Priebus on his right. The two men were in a power-struggle. Now, both are gone. They both, in turn, sparred with the president's son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, who remains. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Jumped or pushed?
As with other recent departures, including chief-of-staff Reince Priebus, deputy chief-of-staff Katie Walsh, national security advisor Michael Flynn, deputy NSA advisor K T McFarland, press secretary Sean Spicer, communications director Mike Dubke and his short-lived successor Anthony Scaramucci, it was not immediately clear if Mr Bannon had jumped or been pushed.

The chief strategist had been an ardent voice for economic nationalism and out-and-out nationalism with his hardline anti-immigration views – positions that often put him in opposition to another of the president's advisors, Mr Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

There have been competing narratives about his position in the White House. Some said he was in "internal exile," with his power on the decline ever since Time's so-called "President Bannon" cover, which ran with the tagline "The Great Manipulator." April reports held that the president was annoyed.

Mr Trump's move to condemn white nationalists, albeit 48 hours after the killing in Charlottesville, seemed to confirm this chief strategist was on the out.

But his turnaround at his Trump Tower press conference, in which he returned to his original statement that there was blame on both sides, seemed to be very much channeling Mr Bannon – and it had predictably dire consequences as even Fox News hosts were stunned, and CEOs on Mr Trump's two business advisory councils voted to disband the panels.

Whether he was fired or quit, news of Mr Bannon leaving the White House had a dramatic response. Traders on the floor of the NYSE could be heard cheering in the background during a CNBC report that was one of the first to announce the news.

Listen to this Traders on floor of the NYSE break out in cheers and applause upon news of Steve Bannon's ouster: https://t.co/SnmS9w3YJl pic.twitter.com/f0vRRdtIAX

– Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) August 18, 2017

The major indexes, which have struggled this week amid White House chaos, turned green.

But many in Mr Trump's base – who were so heartened by the president's turnaround on Charlottesville — will now again be confused or angry.

The editor of Breitbart News summed up his feelings about Mr Bannon's ouster in a single word:

#WAR

— Joel B. Pollak (@joelpollak) August 18, 2017

It was later clarified that Mr Bannon would be re-joining Breitbart News, where he would lead a "war for Trump" and be "smart" competition against the mainstream media which has delivered so much fake news.

How long will that last?  

As long as the White House keeps delivering Bannon-friendly policies.

And that could be a while. Mr Trump chose Mr Bannon as his presidential campaign manager, quite late in the day, because the 63-year-old's nationalist stance amplified the candidates existing anti-immigration, anti-trade stance, which was so central to his campaign and winning blue-collar votes in the rust-belt states that delivered his electoral college win.

Mr Bannon's crime wasn't going against Mr Trump's policy, it was more being too blunt about it at times, and too much of a credit-hog at others. In the Trump White House, stealing the limelight is a sackable offence.