Steve Bannon and Donald Trump composite image
President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman and fired White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has become the "new enemy" to Trump's angry online horde of followers.
Vanity Fair's Tina Nguyen said that the embattled Breitbart.com CEO is skating on thin ice with some of his most trusted allies. His contributions to Michael Wolff's book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House have been interpreted by the base as an act of betrayal and his many enemies are seeing this moment as the chance to dispense with Bannon altogether.
"Looks like we have a new enemy," wrote "Shadowman3001," the moderator of pro-Trump Reddit group r/The_Donald.
In the initial airburst of revelations on Wednesday, Trump's "Make America Great Again" or "#MAGA" army dismissed the new stories as "fake news," but as the afternoon wore on, the tide turned against Bannon.
When Trump released his statement denouncing Bannon, the president's backers had their marching orders.
"I voted for Trump, I didn't vote for Bannon," said the highest-rated comment at Breitbart.com on Thursday, "I'll stick with Trump, thanks." The sentiment was echoed by the vast majority of the president's disciples.
Unfortunately for Bannon -- whose already-sinking political fortunes were dealt a heavy blow by the loss of U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore -- recent weeks have brought desertions by his most powerful allies.
As Nguyen noted, "The Washington Postreported the next day that his longtime patron, Rebekah Mercer, had withdrawn all her funding from his personal projects, angry at his claims that she would back his possible 2020 run for president, while another source close to both Bannon and the Mercers suggested that there had also been talk of shutting down Bannon’s film production company, Glittering Steel."
There is even talk of firing Bannon from the helm of his "killing machine" Breitbart.com and financially defanging the website.
“My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements,” said Rebekah Mercer to the Washington Post.
Bannon maintains that he supports the president and has carried on as usual over the last 48 hours, Nguyen said. His fate appears to be sealed, however.
“He reaped what he sowed,” said the editor of one conservative website. “If Bannon hadn't used so many people on his climb to the top, he might have had a few hands to catch him during his fall to the bottom.”
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