[Senator Clay Davis]

I know we've seen this before (Bannon on the ropes), but I think the bigger takeaway here is losing Bannon might be irrelevant, it's Miller who is the real problem. Also gotta like the battle of the ####### billionaires between Murdoch and Adelson/the Mercers.

Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly urged President Trump to fire him. Anthony Scaramucci, the president’s former communications director, thrashed him on television as a white nationalist. Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, refused to even say he could work with him.

For months, Mr. Trump has considered ousting Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist and relentless nationalist who ran the Breitbart website and called it a “platform for the alt-right.” Mr. Trump has sent Mr. Bannon to a kind of internal exile, and has not met face-to-face for more than a week with a man who was once a fixture in the Oval Office, according to aides and friends of the president.

So far, Mr. Trump has not been able to follow through — a product of his dislike of confrontation, the bonds of a foxhole friendship forged during the 2016 presidential campaign and concerns about what mischief Mr. Bannon might do once he leaves the protective custody of the West Wing.

Not least, Mr. Bannon embodies the defiant populism at the core of the president’s agenda. Despite being marginalized, Mr. Bannon consulted with the president repeatedly over the weekend as Mr. Trump struggled to respond to the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va. In general, Mr. Bannon has cautioned the president not to criticize far-right activists too severely for fear of antagonizing a small but energetic part of his base.

But the choice might not be his. At a recent dinner at the White House with Mr. Kushner and Mr. Kelly, before Mr. Trump decamped for a working vacation at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., the president listened while one of the guests, Mr. Murdoch, a founder of Fox News, said Mr. Bannon had to go.

Mr. Trump offered little pushback, according to a person familiar with the conversation, and vented his frustrations about Mr. Bannon. Mr. Murdoch is close to Mr. Kushner, who has been in open warfare with Mr. Bannon since the spring.

But Mr. Trump has expressed similar sentiments in the past, then backed off. Just a week earlier, as Mr. Trump ruminated on whether to dismiss his chief of staff at the time, Reince Priebus, he was pushed by Mr. Kushner and others to dismiss Mr. Bannon as well. Mr. Trump signaled to allies that he was pretty much there.

Someone — people close to the situation are still unsure whether it was initiated by Mr. Bannon or his cadre of administration allies — mustered a counteroffensive. Mr. Meadows reached out to the president and told him that he would lose his base without Mr. Bannon.

Mr. Bannon’s ability to hang on as Mr. Trump’s in-house populist is in part because of his connections to a handful of ultrarich political patrons, including Sheldon G. Adelson, the pro-Israel casino magnate who is based in Las Vegas.

He is especially close to the reclusive conservative billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah, who is a frequent sounding board for Mr. Bannon. In April, Mr. Mercer received assurances from Mr. Trump that he was not about to fire Mr. Bannon over his war with Mr. Kushner and moderates like Gary D. Cohn, the chairman of the National Economic Council and a top Trump adviser.

But Mr. Trump still publicly flayed Mr. Bannon, insulting him as a guy “who works for me.” It was a far cry from the lofty status Mr. Bannon enjoyed when he joined Mr. Trump’s faltering campaign in August 2016, when as a rich former investment banker he held the status of a near-peer and hell-raiser who shared his candidate’s daredevil approach to politics.

Mr. Bannon has not fared well in West Wing politics. His bonds with the president seem to be fraying daily, and Mr. Bannon has told friends his status as “staff” — compared with Mr. Kushner’s familial relationship with the president — will ultimately dictate his departure. But he has been adamant in maintaining that his loyalty to Mr. Trump will survive, and has suggested that he might direct his energies at creating a movement to challenge mainstream Republicans too timid to pursue the president’s agenda, like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Mr. Bannon’s cause is being damaged, people close to the president say, by a war he is waging against General McMaster. It has taken on a life of its own, with several alt-right websites faithful to Mr. Bannon tearing into the national security adviser.

A person close to Mr. Bannon said that Mr. Bannon has denied that he had anything to do with the campaign against General McMaster, and said he has tried unsuccessfully to stem the tide of negative news coverage about the national security adviser, whom he believes to be prodding the president toward possible war with North Korea and Venezuela. But other White House aides have noted that Mr. Bannon has not publicly rebuked the websites over the stories.

At the least, he is also no longer Mr. Trump’s indispensable man. Mr. Bannon’s protégé, chief speechwriter and policy director, Stephen Miller, shares his populist agenda — centered on a controversial immigration crackdown — and has become one of the president’s favorite aides. Despite his image in the news media as a confrontational ideologue, Mr. Miller has proved to be a deft operator who has ingratiated himself to Mr. Kushner.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/u...ite-house.html