Perhaps Steve Bannon isn’t quite as all-powerful within the Trump administration as everybody believed. He’s just been removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. This news has been understood as a sign that Trump’s new National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is now calling the shots on foreign policy.
The spin in Washington is that Bannon’s role on the NSC had been to act as a ‘check’ on the now disgraced former advisor Mike Flynn, who resigned in February, and with the more level-headed McMaster in charge he’s no longer needed. It’s also emerged that Bannon has kept full level national security clearance.
So what’s changed? Something, clearly, for all the naysaying of White House insiders. The obvious conclusion is that Bannon was considered too toxic for international diplomacy, and McMaster wanted him out. McMaster is currently trying to set out a bold new foreign policy agenda for the Trump administration.
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