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‘Hillary-Lite Administration’? Conservatives Worry About Bannon Ouster

  • Fred Lucas

    • Steve Bannon, while serving as chief strategist to President Donald Trump, spoke this year at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 23 in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo: Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom)

    The exit of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon doesn’t bode well for conservatives or those who just wanted to see President Donald Trump stick to the economic and foreign policy message that he ran on, some on the right fear.

    “There is no question that Steve Bannon was one of the only people who could keep Trump true to Trumpism,” Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Signal. “Without Bannon, you have mostly bankers, generals, and liberal Democrats in the White House. It could be a Hillary-lite administration.”

    Trump was in line with some of the policies promoted by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that backs enforcement of immigration laws. However, it’s not just immigration where Krikorian fears President Trump could waiver from the policies of candidate Trump.

    “Bannon pushed hard in the other directions to keep the president from drifting toward the establishment on foreign policy and trade or confronting China,” Krikorian said.

    However, Tea Party Patriots President Jenny Beth Martin had a less dim view of the Bannon exit.

    “We will miss Steve Bannon in the White House because he helped President Trump keep many of the promises he made on the campaign trail, like replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia with a trusted conservative in Justice Neil Gorsuch,” Martin said in a statement. “President Trump is his own man and we are confident he will keep working to deliver on those promises and we will continue to advocate for the Trump agenda that propelled him to victory.”

    After initial reports Friday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that White House chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general, and Bannon came to a mutual agreement that Bannon should leave his post. Bannon has returned to Breitbart News, a media company he ran before joining the campaign.

    Bannon’s resignation comes almost exactly a year after the former chief executive of Breitbart News took the helm of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign. Bannon was the leading figure of the populist nationalist message, amid reported pushback from Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Gary Cohn, Trump’s National Economic Council chairman. Bannon also reportedly clashed on foreign policy with Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster.

    Bannon offered his resignation on Aug. 7, the Associated Press reported. The resignation was set to go into effect on Aug. 14, but was held back because of the Charlottesville, Virginia, riots.

    Bannon himself told The Weekly Standard: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else.”

    Bannon’s departure marks the fourth major change in the White House staff in less than two months, after press secretary Sean Spicer, chief of staff Reince Priebus, and newly hired communications director Anthony Scaramucci were ousted or left.

    Krikorian noted that Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, and senior adviser Steve Miller have been targeted by the establishment.

    Vice President Mike Pence and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser, are also viewed as two more conservative voices in the current White House.

    Fox News conservative host Tucker Carlson made a similar point regarding Trump’s brand of conservatism.

    “Bannon was one of the relatively few senior staff in the White House who wouldn’t feel at home in a Hillary Clinton administration,” Carlson said on his prime-time show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Friday. “Indeed, he was one of the rare Republicans there and the only, if one of the very few, populist conservatives. That’s strange, since populist conservatism was one of the platforms his boss ran on.”

    Liz Mair,  a Republican consultant and Never-Trumper in the last presidential election who started the “Make America Awesome” super PAC, said the Bannon departure will make little difference.

    “Trump is Trump; no matter what the staffing looks like, in terms of ideological profile or otherwise, he’s still the same guy with the same impulses, instincts, and outlook,” Mair told The Daily Signal in an email.

    Bannon’s exit won’t change Trump’s ideology, she said.

    “Trump has always—over the decades he’s been weighing in on public policy and related debates—been anti-free trade, for greater government involvement in health care,” Mair said.

    In a series of tweets from one of Trump’s most early and vocal supporters, conservative commentator Ann Coulter seemed to have low expectation that Trump would stick to his promises. In three examples, Coulter tweeted:

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