With Bannon gone, Trump gets another shot at survival
Published: Sat 19 Aug 2017, 10:07 PM
Last updated: Sun 20 Aug 2017, 12:08 AM
The Trump administration is in major meltdown, or it could be finally coming to grips with governance. We'll just say it is in disarray as the president's core team hasn't learnt to work together with their inflated egos competing for influence. There may be a new sheriff in the White House by the name of John Kelly who's making some changes in a bid to continue the charade, but Donald J. Trump remains the Big Boss. No one gets ahead of him, even if you are chief strategist Steve Bannon. So Bannon was fired on Friday. The goodbyes were curt. No hard feelings after the hard knocks during some tumultuous months. Some reports said he had put in his papers last week but violence in Charlottesville delayed the departure of the powerful aide, a White supremacist and the founder of the far right Brietbart News.
Bannon won't be missed in the White House but he has promised to go to war to protect the presidency from outside. This means more alt-right inanity that's killing sane discourse in the country. But that's okay for the president who's fending off Russian links. He'll need all the help he can get from friends and former aides in the coming months as a probe into alleged violations gain speed. From the original core Trump team, only Vice-President Mike Pence remains. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are family, so we'll leave them out of the mess to keep this simple. Now, where does the administration go from here? Trump's tough talk forced North Korea to stand down last week. Will we see the same resolve in the days and months to come or will the president get busy putting out more fires in the White House? With Trump, it's hard to tell. His temperament is suspect, and he's unpredictable to both friends and foes. In short, he's a bundle of contradictions who is not averse to airing them on Twitter daily for the world to see. But the good news is he's got a shot at survival with Bannon gone even as his ghostwriter writes the epitaph of this presidency.