"I'm my own strategist". That would seem to bode poorly for his actual strategist, Steve Bannon.
In an interview released on April 11 between Trump and New York Post reporter Michael Goodwin, the president uses this rejecting phrase in a couple of ways when talking about his current chief strategist.
Hell, the idea of President Bannon became such an overwhelmingly accepted one that we have a whole column that ranks who is really running the government, and though the top spot changes, the answer is decidedly never Donald "Useful Idiot" Trump.
According to multiple reports, Bannon has repeatedly clashed with Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, representative of a larger ideological divide between two warring factions within the White House. But shedding Bannon would be no simple staff shake-up. The Fix's Callum Borchers explains how it's typical of the inner turmoil that's plagued the Trump administration from the start.
A protester holds a sign calling for the removal of Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon outside the White House, Jan. 30, 2017.
"I have to do health care first", said Trump.
Trump recently removed Bannon from the National Security Council (NSC).
Jared Kushner is a NY real estate mogul and the husband of Ivanka Trump.
WaPost: FBI Had FISA Warrant to Monitor Trump Adviser Page
Both men have denied this, but Page said he did briefly meet with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during the trip. Page himself told PBS NewsHour in February that he was a "junior member of the [Trump] campaign's foreign policy advisory group".
Mr Kushner has volunteered to speak to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the White House said. It was less than 10 weeks ago that Bannon appeared on the cover of TIME as "THE GREAT MANIPULATOR", with the inside story asking if he was "the Second Most Powerful Man in the World". And as leader of the conservative Breitbart News he spent the better part of a year connecting Trump with the populist, nationalist voters who would propel him to victory over 16 Republican opponents and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Trump tweeted his anger at the claims and said: "I call my own shots, largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it".
But several people familiar with the internal workings of the West Wing say Bannon is well aware of that and is trying to keep a low profile, mend things with Kushner and maintain his foothold in the White House. He spoke in February of "our sovereignty" as a country and about the new administration's aim for "deconstruction of the administrative state". Get in line or get out, Trump is not so subtly telling Bannon.
The MSNBC host posited, "All this talk that Steve Bannon created Donald Trump's nationalistic approach is insanity".
Bannon has always been a controversial figure, having touted Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right", which is closely aligned with white nationalism.
Trump announced the hiring of Bannon and adviser Kellyanne Conway as part of the Trump campaign on August 17, 2016. In 2015, Bannon told a friend that he was already Trump's "campaign manager," which may have been a joke about how much favorable coverage Trump was getting from Breitbart or may have been a more serious comment about some behind-the-scenes advisory role Bannon had in Trump's political operation.
Priebus' message to Bannon and Kushner was to "stop with the palace intrigue" and focus on the president's agenda, an official told Reuters.
But more and more, war is being waged on Bannon himself.
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