Trump mum on whether he still backs Bannon

A week after US President Donald Trump dropped chief strategist Steve Bannon from the National Security Council amid infighting between administration staffers, the president this week indicated the future of the ideologue behind his populist rise to the White House was not certain.

Trump on Tuesday declined to answer whether he still had confidence in Bannon despite the high-level White House shakeup,

“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the New York Post. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”

“Steve is a good guy, but I told them to straighten it out or I will,” he concluded.

Bannon and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, arguably the two most influential voices in the West Wing, have clashed repeatedly in recent weeks over strategy to pass health care legislation, the fallout from the bogged-down immigration bans and, most recently, whether to intervene in the Syrian civil war.

According to a report last week, Bannon began referring to Kushner as a “globalist” and a “cuck,” a term often used on social media and generally online by the alt-right, a political movement coined by white nationalist Richard Spencer composed loosely of anti-establishment conservatives who also have white nationalists, extreme right ideologues, anti-Semites and some strident defenders of Israel within their ranks.

Bannon, a former executive chairman of the Breitbart News website, once said the media company was a “platform for the alt-right.”

“Globalist” is also a term used by nationalists to attack opponents; when paired with “media,” it becomes an attack rooted in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the press, much like “international bankers” in these circles usually alludes to Jews controlling finances, banks and so on.

Although the White House is rife with rumors of a staff shakeup, Trump’s young administration is pushing back against reports of a pending West Wing overhaul fueled by the squabbling.

During last year’s campaign, differences between Trump supporters — Republican moderates and hardliners, globalists and nationalists — were papered over by the common goal of defeating Hillary Clinton.

But from day one in the White House, those ideological factions have engaged in backbiting and leaks that are threatening to stall the whole administration.

Trump recently decided enough was enough, ordering Bannon and Kushner — who have come to represent the two centers of White House power — to patch up their differences, according to officials.

In a meeting late last week, the pair tried to reconcile Bannon’s nationalist and populist policies with Kushner’s more globalist and reportedly moderate outlook.

It will be tough going. Both men have garnered enormous influence inside Trump’s White House.

As the president’s chief strategist, Bannon built up power by helping orchestrate Trump’s shock electoral victory.

Such was the value of his stock that he privately boasted early in the administration about virtually handpicking Trump’s cabinet.

Satirists painted him as the grim reaper and in largely Democratic areas of Washington, posters call for the impeachment of “President Bannon.”

He even won a place on the National Security Council — which decides issues of war, peace and foreign policy — although that rare privilege for a political adviser was recently rescinded.

Meanwhile, Kushner’s familial advantage — he is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka — has been boosted by high-profile portfolios from reaching Middle East peace to reforming the federal government.

Kushner has also been helped by the ascendancy of administration moderates such as ex-Goldman Sachs executives Gary Cohn and Dina Powell.

Their emergence has coincided with slow pedaling on some of Trump’s more protectionist trade promises such as withdrawing from NAFTA, imposing far-reaching tariffs and branding China a currency manipulator.

For many Bannon supporters, the Kushnerites are invasive “Democrats” in a Republican White House, thwarting Trump’s promise to aggressively fight for the white working class.

Bannon and Kushner’s feud has become increasingly public in recent weeks, with Bannon’s allies accusing the young real estate heir of leaking stories to make the 63-year-old Bannon look bad.

Meanwhile, Bannon’s former media outfit, the extreme right-wing Breitbart, has launched scathing criticism of Kushner, questioning his failure to separate himself from business interests and describing his “thin resume in diplomacy.”

Addressing Trump’s view of what he called the two sides’ “policy” differences, White House spokesman Sean Spicer last week said, “I think that he recognizes that sometimes some of it spills over.”