I like to call him “Weasel boy,” but the White House may refer to Reince Priebus as a peace maker, if his weekend efforts at mediation between White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and Trump’s senior adviser/son-in-law, Jared Kushner proves successful.
According to the deluge of reports coming from the White House for weeks, the avowed “Leninist” and alt-right pinup boy, Bannon, and the actual driving force behind the young Trump presidency, Kushner, have not seen eye-to-eye on much.
Each has accused the other of leaking negative stories to the media, with the goal being to undermine the influence of the other.
So while those two fling poo at each other, Priebus has managed to slink out from under the scuffle and emerge as the team player.
Because of that, previous reports that Priebus’ position may be on the chopping block have been dismissed, and he’s been deemed “safe.”
Priebus called the two into a sit down at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.
“Reince had the two sit down with him to clear the air and agree [on focusing] on the agenda and ending the back and forth,” a White House official told CBS News.
Trump reportedly told Bannon and Kushner to “work this out” amid recurring disagreements between the pair before last week’s discussion.
Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law, has allegedly voiced concern about Bannon’s influence over the president and provocative style.
In other words, Kushner isn’t sharing daddy-in-law’s ear with the pugnacious ex-Breitbart CEO.
For his part, Bannon went from turning Andrew Breitbart’s once respectable conservative outlet to an alt-right cesspool, to exerting oversized influence over candidate Trump, and undoubtedly, was a leading force in building up Trump’s angry base.
You’re not going to get a liberal Democrat with a vision for moderate-to-liberal domination and a far right nationalist to occupy the same space without some friction.
After Bannon was removed from his position on the National Security Council, that fueled the rumors that Bannon was losing his grip on the direction of the Trump White House.
Others, however, see it as the emerging influence of national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
Time will tell if Priebus’ attempts to broker a peace between Kushner and Bannon is successful, or if Bannon is really on the way out.
One thing is for sure, he’ll go before Kushner does, so all the people trending #FireKushner over the weekend would be well advised not to get their hopes up.
This very much hinges on Bannon’s ability to swallow his pride and compromise his nationalist fervor.
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