WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump has declared: “I am my own strategist.” That would seem to bode poorly for his actual strategist, Steve Bannon.
And Trump now appears to have begun publicly distancing himself.
In an interview with The New York Post, the president said “I like Steve” and called his adviser “a good guy” – but one who wasn’t really all that involved with his winning election campaign. He said his warring senior officials, including Bannon, must “straighten it out or I will.”
The unusual public, lukewarm support from the boss has Bannon’s friends and advisers worried he will soon be out of a job. But shedding Bannon would be no simple staff shake-up. More than any other member of Trump’s orbit, the former media executive and radio host, known as a bare-knuckle political fighter, has a following all his own. He is viewed by many in the conservative core as the ideological backbone in a White House run by a president who boast of his flexibility.
“I think it’s important to recognize the value of the base. It’s important to recognize the base sees their advocate in Steve Bannon,” said Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign adviser who has known the president for decades.