The Mercers Lose The Seat They Bought On The National Security Council

Supposedly it was a "him or me" moment for National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster. After being publicly humiliated when he tried removing doofus Ezra Cohen-Watnick from his staff, only to be overruled by Bannon (and Kushner-in-law) he went to Trump and said the National Security Council needed to be reorganized-- without Bannon on it.

The White House came up with some cock'n'bull story about how Bannon was only appointed so he could "watch" Flynn (who "we all knew Flynn had issues," something they've been vigorously denying for months). They're trying to help Bannon and his sponsors-- the Mercers-- save face by saying it just a "Mission Accomplished" sort of move.

McMaster will now be setting the agenda for NSA meetings with no interference from Bannon. Reporting for Bloomberg, Jennifer Jacobs, also noted that the role of Trump's Homeland Security Adviser, Tom Bossert, was also downgraded. And. as congressional Republicans have been demanding, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, "are again 'regular attendees' of the NSC’s principals committee."

Peter Frase, writing for Jacobin predicts its Bedtime for Bannon, since he failed at his basic job: mobilizing the adoring masses for Señor Trumpanzee. Fraser believes Bannon is "getting hellaciously dumpstered [as] "things are already spinning out of control and falling apart, in the face of resistance from both mass street protest and the judiciary."

And Donald Trump is known to be a person whose primary loyalty is to Donald J. Trump. To stay in his inner circle, you need to have a “value proposition,” as the sleazy businessmen like to say. That is, something you have to offer, that can increase the revenue of the business.

And what, exactly, is Bannon’s value proposition?

It isn’t any special connection with the conventional Republican political elite. Paul Ryan and the like have always regarded him with something between indifference and contempt. And they’re probably starting to wonder if his agenda is crowding out more traditional conservative priorities, such as starving out grannies, enabling financial fraud, lowering taxes on billionaires, and ensuring that sick people die in the gutter if they aren’t rich.

Bannon also isn’t a gateway to the super-rich donor class. From the perspective of the billionaires, his pipsqueak Seinfeld-residuals-cashing ass barely registers.

What Steve Bannon provides-- or was supposed to provide-- is the mass base, the hordes of frothing Trump supporters, who would pour forth from 4chan and Breitbart.com to give aid and cover to the schemes of the Ayn-Rand-worshiping ideologues and the cynical rich.

The problem is that he isn’t actually delivering this. Hence the half-empty inauguration, followed up with packed Women’s March protests. The definitive image from Trump’s coronation wasn’t hordes of his adoring fans; it was Richard Spencer getting punched in the face. This was an embarrassment so severe, Trump was reduced to harassing the Park Service for more flattering photos. And then we got the executive orders on migrants that presumably were supposed to bring out the grateful masses, but which only succeeded in bringing on a whirlwind of mobilization against Trump.

Trump’s vanity and idiocy are sufficient that it may take him some time to realize this. But once he does, it’s bedtime for Bannon, who will be defenestrated without ceremony. That leaves the rest of the ghouls in this administration and in Congress, who are no less terrifying in their own way. But we’ll have gotten our first win, and hopefully far from the last.

Joe Scarborough had been urging Trump to fire Bannon, while Alex Jones, predictably, went ape-shit on his crackpot radio show when the news leaked out yesterday. Oh yeah-- and 16 organizations collected more than 1.1 million petition signatures urging that theRegime get Bannon of the NSC as well. Win Without War Director Stephen Miles:

Steve Bannon’s removal from the National Security Council will not only make America safer, but it’s also a victory for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who took action and said a white nationalist, warmongering, political operative with no credentials shouldn’t be anywhere near the epicenter of U.S. national security and foreign policy making.

President Trump put politics before our nation’s security by elevating Bannon to this position. Bannon was a key architect of Trump’s illegal Muslim ban and from his perch at the NSC, he would have been able to continue to turn his dangerous ideology-- which includes the belief that the U.S. will soon be engaged in a “brutal and bloody” clash of civilizations-- into reality.

While Bannon should never have been a member of the NSC to begin with, his ongoing presence in the White House endangers the United States and its allies. We, along with the American people, will continue to monitor Bannon and pressure every power center to ensure that he can no longer influence U.S. policy, foreign or domestic.

John Roberts on Fox News-- presumably in TrumpWorld not fake news-- reported that "The president wasn't particularly happy with the way Bannon had been grabbing the limelight and that may have played into all of this too." Flynn's crackpot son-- the one from PizzaGate-- was tweeting again yesterday, bitching that Flynn and Bannon are loyal to Señor Trumpanzee while that damned McMaster won't even say "Radical Islam." What a fruitcake!

By late yesterday, the NY Times was reporting that Trump just hated this:

#PresidentBannon

The Times sees Bannon's power-base falling apart as Kushner-in-law and others blame him for the disaster that the Trump Regime has become. When he was fired from the NSC, "Bannon resisted the move, even threatening at one point to quit if it went forward, according to a White House official who, like others, insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations... Bannon’s myriad enemies, both inside and outside the White House, celebrated what they saw as a defeat for his brand of firebrand politics."By this morning Joe Scarborough was claiming on his show that Bannon said that "if my talents aren't needed here, I can take them somewhere else." Moscow?

Kushner-in-law and Ivanka fret that Bannon brings out Trump's worst qualities

Politico is reporting that the Mercers ordered Bannon not to quit over his loss of several West Wing turf battles, primarily to President Kushner-in-law. These leaks sound like people in the White House are pressuring Bannon to resign. "Bannon's removal from the NSC is symbolic of a broader realignment in the West Wing that has Bannon increasingly marginalized and at odds both with the president and Kushner," according to Politico.

The “big fight is between nationalists and the West Wing Democrats,” said a person familiar with Bannon’s thinking.

“You have these New York interlocutors who are just not political and who want to think that they’re above the way Washington thinks, but if anybody is allied on delivering on things that Trump ran on, it’s Bannon and Reince and the vice president,” said the Republican who has spoken to Bannon recently.

Kushner has also told people that he thinks Mercer as well as her father, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer-- who poured $13 million into a super PAC that supported Ted Cruz’s campaign in the Republican primary, and came around to Trump after he won the nomination-- have taken too much credit for their role in his victory, and has expressed misgivings about their go-it-alone approach to outside spending boosting Trump’s agenda.

“If Bannon leaves the White House, Bekah’s access and influence shrinks dramatically,” said the GOP operative who talks to Mercer.