Top presidential strategist Steve Bannon was booted from the National Security Council, officials confirmed Wednesday, ending a brief but controversial appointment.
President Trump, who put Bannon on the NSC in the first days of his administration, reorganized the council on Tuesday, removing Bannon and downgrading the role of his homeland-security adviser, Tom Bossert.
The White House, which did not publicly announce the change, tried to spin the ouster as no big deal.
A senior administration official told McClatchy News that Bannon was named to the council’s Principals Committee after Trump’s inauguration as a way to ensure the president’s vision would be implemented, and that the mission had been accomplished.
But Politico, citing sources, said Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was behind the move to demote Bannon, who was Trump’s top adviser during the campaign.
Bannon had threatened to quit altogether if he lost the NSC post, according to The New York Times. But he denied that account, and his backers portrayed the development in a positive light.
Late Wednesday, Politico reported that Bannon stayed on at the urging of Republican superdonor Rebekah Mercer, who poured millions into Trump’s campaign and who is a major investor in Breitbart News, where Bannon was executive chairman.
Kushner, Trump’s closest adviser, had been grilling insiders about the fledgling administration’s missteps, and concluded that the nationalist Bannon’s efforts were hurting the president, according to Politico.
One source told Politico Kushner believed Bannon was more of a problem than Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, whom some White House aides blamed for the failure of Trump’s health-care-reform plan.
And a former Trump aide told CNN that the president himself had become frustrated by some of Bannon’s hard-line stances.
“I always believed Steve would be first senior adviser to leave the White House. He’s an ideologue. Trump is not,” the aide said.
National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster will now set the agenda for meetings of the NSC and the Homeland Security Council, and was authorized to delegate that authority to Bossert at his discretion, according to White House documents.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, now serving as energy secretary, was one of several officials added to a core group within the NSC.
Democratic lawmakers applauded Bannon’s departure.
“I’d be very pleased that he would not be on the National Security Council,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said. “My hope is that he would have no role in government at all.”
Bannon’s appointment alarmed top national-security officials in both parties, who feared that security and foreign-policy decisions would be politicized because of his nationalistic views.
The move came as a new Quinnipiac poll showed Bannon had just an 11 percent favorability rating.