Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon fired

President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon has
been fired, multiple White House officials told CNN on Friday.

Sources told CNN that Bannon’s ouster had been in the works
for two weeks and a source said that while Bannon was given the option to
resign, he was ultimately forced out. White House press secretary Sarah
Huckabee Sanders confirmed Bannon’s departure, but claimed the decision for him
to leave was mutual.

“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon
have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his
service and wish him the best,” Sanders said in a statement.

The President has privately stewed over Bannon in recent
days, including Thursday night from his golf course in New Jersey. He was
furious with his chief strategist after he was quoted in an interview with the
American Prospect contradicting Trump on North Korea and asserting that Bannon
was able to make personnel changes at the State Department.

Bannon’s exit comes just seven months after Trump took
office and three weeks after retired Gen. Kelly took over as chief of staff,
looking to instill order in a chaotic White House beset by internal divisions,
staff infighting and a storm of controversies.

Bannon’s exit meant one of the White House’s most
controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind
Trump’s “nationalist” ideology, would no longer be at the centre of
the Trump universe.

Bannon joined Trump’s campaign last year, moving from the
sidelines as one of Trump’s top cheerleaders to a position atop his campaign
apparatus.

He did not travel with the President during the first week
of what White House officials described as a “working vacation” at
Trump’s golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Instead Bannon remained in
Washington where he worked out of a temporary office in the Eisenhower
Executive Office Building as the West Wing underwent renovations.

Bannon was supposed to be fired two weeks ago, a White House
official told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, but it was put off.

CNN reports the President equivocated after an initial plan
was to fire Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at same time, the
official says, because Rep. Mark Meadows, the influential chairman of the
conservative House Freedom Caucus, and others urged Trump to keep him on board.

The interview this week was enough for Meadows to change his
view, a person close to him says.

The question now is whether Bannon will be an ally or a
thorn in the side of the Trump administration outside the White House, where he
is likely to return to his role as head of Breitbart, the right-wing news site
he ran until he joined Trump’s campaign a year ago.

Whatever his plans, Bannon is expected to remain tightly
connected to the billionaire conservative father-daughter pair Robert and
Rebekah Mercer, who are major investors in Breitbart News and top Trump donors.

Both Bannon and Trump spoke with the Mercers in recent days,
a White House official said.