Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon is declaring the impact of the Trump presidency “over.”
“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” he told the Weekly Standard on Friday. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over.”
In an interview with the conservative outlet, Bannon said President Trump’s administration would “be much more conventional” in the wake of his departure.
{mosads}He said his absence from the White House will likely make it “much harder” for Trump to pave a way forward on issues like “economic nationalism and immigration.”
He went on to predict Republicans would “moderate” Trump. He said the congressional GOP hasn’t given full-throated support to Trump’s agenda since he took office.
“Now, it’s gonna be Trump,” he told the Standard. “I just think his ability to get anything done — particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it’s just gonna be that much harder.”
News of Bannon’s departure from the White House broke Friday. Hours later, the former chief strategist had returned to his previous role as the executive chair of Breitbart News.
Bannon told the Standard that he is eager to get back to Breitbart and lead the opposition from there.
“Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he said. “Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a f-cking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
A number of conservatives expressed dismay about the loss of Bannon’s influence in the White House.
Bannon also said he chose to resign, and that he had initially planned to exit the White House on Monday. But as political turmoil mounted around Trump in the wake of his comments on violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Bannon decided to remain on for a few more days.
“I’d always planned on spending one year” in the White House, he said.
-This report was updated at 6:57 p.m.