A day after ousting Steve Bannon from the White House, Donald Trump praised the return of his former chief strategist to Breitbart News, where he was executive chairman for four years prior to Trump’s election.
In the tweet, Trump said he believes Bannon will be a “tough and smart new voice” at the far-right news site, and said that “Fake News needs the competition!”
Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at @BreitbartNews…maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017
Shortly after Bannon’s departure was announced on Friday, Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak criticized Trump for the move, warning that it could be the end of Trump’s commitment to conservative ideals and that he could turn into “Arnold Schwarzenegger 2.0.” The piece led to speculation that Breitbart’s support of the president was wavering now without Bannon on the staff.
But, on Friday evening, Bannon told Bloomberg that upon his return to Breitbart, he would be “going to war for Trump against his opponents — on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America.”
While Bannon and Trump have publicly shown their support for each other after the split, Bannon did predict in an interview with conservative outlet The Weekly Standard that the Trump presidency that the far-right fought for was “over.” Bannon went on to say that he believed that it will be more difficult for the president to enact policies that are opposed by more moderate members of the Republican Party.
“It’s the Republican establishment. The Republican establishment has no interest in Trump’s success on this,” Bannon said. “They’re not populists, they’re not nationalists, they had no interest in his program. Zero. It was a half-hearted attempt at Obamacare reform, it was no interest really on the infrastructure, they’ll do a very standard Republican version of taxes.”
“I think they’re going to try to moderate him,” he says. “I think he’ll sign a clean debt ceiling, I think you’ll see all this stuff. His natural tendency–and I think you saw it this week on Charlottesville–his actual default position is the position of his base, the position that got him elected. I think you’re going to see a lot of constraints on that. I think it’ll be much more conventional.”