Former presidential adviser Steve Bannon has stepped down as executive chairman of Breitbart News, after a new book revealed comments he made that were critical of the president and his family.
Breitbart, a right-wing populist website that often offers flattery of the Trump administration, announced the news on Tuesday, saying it would work with Bannon to ensure a “smooth and orderly transition.”
“I’m proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform,” Bannon said in a statement on the site.
“Steve is a valued part of our legacy, and we will always be grateful for his contributions, and what he has helped us to accomplish,” Breitbart CEO Larry Solov said in a statement.
Bannon, who left his White House post as the president’s chief strategist in August to return to his position at Breitbart, had a very public falling out with President Trump after he was quoted in a new book criticizing members of Trump’s family and inner circle.
In Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by Michael Wolff, Bannon slammed the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.
Bannon reportedly called the decision to take the meeting “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
After the comments came to light, Trump severed all ties with Bannon, blasting him in a statement and saying that Bannon — long thought to be the architect behind the Trump campaign’s appeals to the alt-right and to the politics of racial and economic resentment — deserved no credit for helping Trump win the presidency.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Trump said in that statement. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican Party.”
Fox News notes that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked last week if Breitbart should sever ties with Bannon, to which she responded: “I certainly think it’s something they should consider and look at.”
Bannon’s departure from Breitbart leaves him temporarily without a major media platform from which to lodge a populist campaign. When he initially left his post in the Trump administration, Bannon had said he felt he could be more effective in fighting for the president’s political agenda — a campaign that would essentially declare all-out war against the media, corporate America, and the Washington political establishment — outside of the White House.
Back in May, just after our 31st anniversary, I asked readers which of four classic cover interviews from our early years they'd like to see in print again: Greg Louganis (March 9, 1995), Sir Ian McKellen (Jan. 25, 1996), Camille Paglia (Feb. 1, 1996), or Eartha Kitt (Nov. 14, 1996). None of these conversations exist online, and they haven't been seen since their original print dates.
Out of more than 200 responses, 8% chose Paglia, 27% picked Louganis, 29% went for McKellen, and an impressive 36% cast their vote for Kitt.
Kitt, who passed away in December 2008, seemed a fitting choice to revisit. A pop culture icon for her turn as the second Catwoman (following Julie Newmar) on the late-1960s, camp-classic TV series Batman, she was slated to appear at Washington's legendary jazz nightclub Blues Alley when we spoke.
"I was really into politics at a very young age," says Tim Miller, host of The Bulwark Podcast and an MSNBC political analyst. "I can't remember what they were called, but you'd get those kid magazines about politics that would come to your school, and I remember always really being drawn to them, and reading them and wanting to know more. I always knew lots of weird facts about politics and geography as a little middle school nerd."
Raised in St. Louis until fourth grade, when his family relocated to Littleton, Colorado, Miller became enmeshed in conservative politics at a young age, taking various campaign jobs throughout his career as a former Republican strategist. He jokes that his success at handicapping political races dates back to the 1992 election, when he won a $1 wager after betting his grandmother that then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton would unseat sitting president George H.W. Bush.
If you’ve been on social media this summer, those five words have been almost inescapable. Originally part of a British budget airline ad, featuring Jess Glynne singing a snippet of her hit "Hold My Hand," the soundbite has taken on a viral life of its own.
On TikTok alone, the sound has been used in over 2.1 million videos, scoring everything from bad flight experiences to cringe-worthy vacation blunders.
The Trump administration jumped into the Jet2 Holiday meme-a-palooza in its own way. On July 29, the official White House X account posted a video of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees in restraints, set to the ad's soundtrack.
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