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Steve Bannon out as WH chief strategist

Steve Bannon out as WH chief strategist
Posted at 12:57 PM, Aug 18, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-18 12:57:00-04

(RNN) - White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is on his way out amid blowback over President Trump's remarks about the terror attack in Charlottesville, VA.

The New York Times, ABC News and Bloomberg have all reported his ouster.

Several people have called for Bannon's ouster in the wake of what is seen as Trump's lackluster response to Charlottesville, including former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucchi.

Bannon is joining Scaramucchi, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer as recent ex-White House officials.

Steve Bannon was named White House chief strategist following his tenure as campaign CEO for President Donald Trump, whose campaign he took over in August 2016. Trump's campaign was in trouble before Bannon took the reins and whipped it to victory.

As the former executive editor of Breitbart News, he was influential in the so-called "alt-right" political movement, but was not particularly well-known in traditional conservative politics before Trump's ascendance to the White House.

When Trump selected Bannon as top strategist, outcry erupted from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He has proudly embraced the nebulous "alt-right" movement, which is sometimes defined as including neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

He was regarded as the author of the flurry of executive orders Trump signed in the first days of his administration, including the president's controversial travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries.

Trump was criticized for naming Bannon to the National Security Council's principals committee in January. Bannon, who had no experience in national security or foreign policy, was removed from the committee in April.

While Bannon was in charge, Breitbart, one of the early supporters of the Trump campaign, covered the president favorably and received several exclusive interviews in return. The chief strategist was a founding member of the board for the right-wing, "anti-establishment" website and took over as executive chair when its namesake, Andrew Breitbart, died unexpectedly in 2012.

On a radio show he formerly hosted for Breitbart, Bannon called Islam the most radical religion in the world and claimed that the U.S. is in a civilizational struggle against non-Western cultures. He also claimed that Islamic sympathizers infiltrated the U.S. government and news media.

Before his time in media and politics, Bannon was a junior officer in the Navy and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He Holds an MBA from Harvard.

Bannon has produced 18 films, most of which are political. They include the pro-Sarah Palin feature The Undefeated and the anti-Clinton feature Clinton Cash.

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