Steve Bannon vows to ‘go to war’ for Trump agenda
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist has vowed to go to war against the president’s opponents, after being fired from his job at the White House.
Steve Bannon, who has returned as head of ultra-conservative website Breitbart News, said he would fight for the agenda that won Mr Trump the election.
“I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he said. “It’s Bannon the Barbarian.”
Mr Bannon helped shape the America First campaign message but fell foul of more moderate White House forces.
The 63-year-old has been accused of voicing anti-Semitic and white supremacist views.
He is the latest high-profile figure to leave the White House team. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn; press secretary Sean Spicer; chief of staff Reince Priebus and communications director Anthony Scaramucci have all gone.
Mr Trump paid tribute to Mr Bannon in an early-morning tweet on Saturday.
There had been suggestions Mr Trump was under renewed pressure to sack Mr Bannon following the violence at a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend, when a car was driven into counter-protesters, killing a woman.
But he told the Weekly Standard that he had informed Chief of Staff John Kelly and Mr Trump on 7 August that he would announce his resignation on the 14th. The tumult over the violence in Charlottesville postponed the announcement, he said.
President Trump had hinted at the situation during his controversial press briefing on the Virginia violence on Tuesday.
Although the president had defended Mr Bannon as “not a racist”, saying he had received an unfair press, Mr Trump said “we’ll see what happens” about him.
The only statement about Mr Bannon’s sacking on Friday came from Trump spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said: “We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”
In his Weekly Standard interview, Mr Bannon said: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over.
“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.”
He added: “In many ways I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on. And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with.”
Mr Bannon added: “I built a [expletive] machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up.”
Breitbart itself carried the headline: ‘Populist Hero’ Stephen K Bannon Returns Home to Breitbart.
News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said: “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”
Breitbart executive Joel Pollak responded to the return of Mr Bannon with a singled-worded, hashtag tweet: #WAR. BBC News
