Politics
REUTERS/Mike Segar
Stephen Bannon and Jared Kushner.
Several reports in recent days have detailed the brewing conflict. The Daily Beast reported Thursday that Bannon has called Kushner a "cuck" behind his back. And an Axios report that Bannon has told his associates, "I love a gunfight." Axios further reported that "the hatred between the two wings" in the White House "is intense and irreconcilable."
The stories of civil war in the White House started rolling out in earnest this week after the White House announced that Trump was reorganizing the NSC and Bannon would no longer be on it. The shakeup came months after Trump signed a controversial memorandum that removed some of the nation's top military and intelligence advisers as regular attendees of the NSC's principals' committee and elevated Bannon to becoming a regular attendee.
Bannon quickly went into damage control mode, with his allies selling the NSC demotion as a "natural evolution" rather than a sign of his waning influence, according to The New York Times.
The Times also reported that, despite his efforts to play it cool with the media, Bannon resisted his removal from the NSC and at one point threatened to quit over it. Axios reported, however, that Bannon has been telling associates that the stories about him considering quitting are "100% nonsense."
In any case, tensions are clearly running high.
The civil war might not have started with the decision to remove Bannon from the NSC - New York Magazine noted that all started with the failed Republican effort to pass healthcare reform - but now that the narrative about Bannon has shifted to one of him losing power, the infighting has become more public.
The Daily Beast reported that fighting has been "nonstop" between Bannon and Kushner for weeks and that the two often clash face-to-face. One official told the news outlet that Bannon has said Kushner is trying to "shiv him and push him out the door." The same official said that Bannon recently vented about Kushner "being a 'globalist' and a 'cuck.'"
"He actually said 'cuck,' as in 'cuckservative,'" the official told The Daily Beast.
One senior official said the friction between the Bannon and Kushner camps boils down to policy.
"There's tension [between them] on trade, health care, immigration, taxes, [terrorism] - you name it," the official told The Daily Beast.
Bannon is frequently described as a populist and a nationalist, and Trump embraced some of these sentiments on the campaign trail as he appealed to voters with an "America First" message. Kushner, the husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka, is seen as a more moderating force on Trump.
CNN reported that Bannon's removal from the NSC signals a power shift within the White House and Trump moving away "from the more hard-line ideological bent of Bannon." And sources told Politico that Bannon feels like Kushner and his allies are trying to undermine his populist approach.
A person familiar with Bannon's thinking told Politico that the "big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats."
It seems that, for now, the latter wing is coming out on top. As Bannon is marginalized, Kushner's star is rising.
He recently went on a high-profile trip to Iraq and has found allies in Gary Cohn, the National Economic Council chairman, and Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser for strategy, who have become more influential.
Bannon can count Attorney General Jeff Sessions, policy adviser Stephen Miller, and counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway among his allies, according to Axios, but Trump has been known to keep his family (which would include Kushner) close. And he might also have political reasons to reign Bannon in - medial outlets have reported that Trump has been annoyed with the credit Bannon has received for the Trump administration's agenda, illustrated nicely by a "Saturday Night Live" skit portraying Bannon as a puppet master.
The fighting between Bannon and Kushner has had a trickle-down effect, according to Politico.
"As we get further away from Inauguration Day, it is very obvious that no one cares what happens to the people who worked for the campaign or who have loyalty to the president," one former Trump campaign aide told Politico. "The swamp is winning the battle. And longtime campaign staffers are proving to be the first casualties."