WASHINGTON – Stephen Bannon stepped down as executive chairman of Breitbart News Network on Tuesday, ending his relationship with the far-right website that he helped become widely influential and which in turn abetted his rise as a political adviser and would-be kingmaker.
Bannon’s departure – just days after his public criticisms of former White House colleagues led to a spectacular falling-out with President Donald Trump and his allies – was a humbling denouement for a figure who had reached the uppermost levels of power only a year ago. It leaves him with no evident platform to promote his views and no major financial backer for his preferred candidates.
His departure from Breitbart followed what appears to have been a vote of no confidence from a key supporter and investor in the website, Rebekah Mercer, a wealthy political donor, said people at the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on Breitbart’s behalf. Mercer and her father, hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, own a minority share of Breitbart and are influential voices in its operation.
Bannon provoked Rebekah Mercer’s ire by making critical comments about Trump and his family to author Michael Wolff in a book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” published last week. Bannon is quoted as saying that Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, engaged in “treasonous” behavior by secretly meeting with Russian representatives during the campaign to get unflattering information about Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump replied to Bannon’s comments with a statement savaging his former confidant. “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” the president said. He later attacked Wolff and the book in a tweet in which he referred to Bannon as “Sloppy Steve.”
Bannon left Breitbart in August 2016 to join Trump’s presidential campaign and later served as chief strategist in the White House. He was fired by Trump almost exactly a year after formally signing up with him.
Rebekah Mercer weighed in with a rare statement of her own Thursday that distanced her from Bannon. “I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected,” she wrote, adding that her family had “not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.”
Although Bannon continued to chair Breitbart’s editorial meetings and host its satellite-radio program, Mercer’s comments appeared to signal his end, people at the media company said. Breitbart’s readers seemed to side with Trump in the spat.
A person close to Bannon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said “there is no mass exodus” at Breitbart and people were not entirely surprised by the news.
“It’s not personality-driven anymore,” the Bannon ally said of the website. “We get to focus on the agenda. When it’s about issues, Breitbart wins. We hopefully won’t have the cult of personality tearing us down.”
Bannon maintained his visibility by rejoining Breitbart in August and directing it to serve his political ends as the insurgent voice of the “anti-establishment” wing of the Republican Party, a faction that many critics saw as a socially intolerant and racist fringe of white nationalism.