On Friday, President Donald Trump dismissed Steve Bannon, his chief strategist and advisor to the president’s campaign throughout the 2016 election, from his White House post, reports The Washington Post.
Bannon’s dismissal comes after a week of racial unrest, most notably after white supremacists, white nationalists, and Neo-Nazis converged on Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. There, white nationalists clashed with counter-protesters, resulting in the death of a 32-year-old woman.
Ever since last year’s presidential campaign, Trump has been criticized for allowing Bannon, the former chairman of the conservative media outlet Breitbart, to influence him. Many critics of the president see Bannon’s fingerprints in several of the president’s policies, particularly those dealing with hot-button cultural issues, such as affirmative action, immigration, abortion, and LGBTQ rights.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters in a statement that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Bannon had “mutually agreed” that Bannon would exit his role in the Oval Office on Friday.
“We are grateful for his service and wish him the best,” Sanders said.
The Post reports that Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general brought in last month to serve as chief of staff, had been contemplating dismissing several White House staffers, including Bannon. Kelly was brought in to stop ideological fights between various staffers and damaging leaks to the news media.
A source close to Bannon, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Post that Bannon has accepted the situation, but will continue to advocate for the president’s agenda.
“No matter what happens, Steve is a honey badger,” the person said. “Steve’s in a good place. He doesn’t care. He’s going to support the president and push the agenda, whether he’s on the inside or the outside.”
“Steve Bannon has built a career peddling white nationalism and placing large targets on the backs of marginalized communities, including LGBTQ people,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, said in a statement. “From Day One, President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, and anti-LGBTQ activists aimed at strengthening institutional discrimination and erasing LGBTQ Americans from the fabric of this nation. Steve Bannon may have resigned, but the fact that he even held the position of White House Chief Strategist is chilling, completely unacceptable, and will not be forgotten.”
“A radical white nationalist like Steve Bannon should never have been put in a position of public trust in any White House,” JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president for policy and political affairs at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “His removal was necessary, but make no mistake, the bigotry in the White House goes far beyond one person. President Trump and Vice President Pence continue to push forward the same dangerous and hateful vision for America and the world that Steve Bannon embodies.”
On my last day of junior high, my stepfather, my mother and I packed up the cars and drove south from Northern Virginia to Pasco County, Florida. The cultural adjustments were significant in both number and magnitude. For example, when we moved into Embassy Hills, I was 14 and easily the youngest person on our flat Florida block of single-story stucco homes. I believe my mother, at 52, was the youngest adult.
Prior to Pasco, my experience with very old adults had been limited mostly to senior relatives at family gatherings. My stepfather's retirement, however, put me squarely in their world. Early bird dinners, senior discounts, and mall walkers became fixtures in my new life.
Kyle Griffin’s first foray into the world of news was serving as the anchor for his high school’s morning announcements program. But the then-teenager quickly realized that being an on-air personality was not for him.
“I saw at my local NBC affiliate that while the anchors and reporters were great, they were reading someone else’s words, and I wanted to be the person who wrote those words,” says Griffin. “I wanted to write the news.”
Griffin got his wish. A veteran of Seven Network Limited, NBC News Yahoo!, and the Albany, New York-based NBC affiliate WNYT, he’s currently the executive producer of MSNBC’s The Weekend, the network’s Saturday and Sunday morning news show, which launched earlier this year.
Former First Lady Melania Trump will host a fundraiser for the gay conservative political group Log Cabin Republicans. It will be her first major political event of the year.
The fundraiser is set for April 20 at Mar-a-Lago, the resort where the Trumps reside. It will launch the Trump organization's "Road to Victory" program, which seeks to target swing-state voters.
Melania Trump has maintained a longstanding relationship with the Log Cabin Republicans, which endorsed her husband's 2020 bid and whose leaders have been among the former president's most stalwart defenders.
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