Steven Bannnon in April (Getty Images)

After multiple reports swirling around about his ouster at some point, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is gone.

The White House just released this note: “White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day. We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”

The NY Times first reported:

President Trump has told senior aides that he has decided to remove Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled White House chief strategist who helped Mr. Trump win the 2016 election, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion.

The president and senior White House officials were debating when and how to dismiss Mr. Bannon. The two administration officials cautioned that Mr. Trump is known to be averse to confrontation within his inner circle, and could decide to keep on Mr. Bannon for some time.
As of Friday morning, the two men were still discussing Mr. Bannon’s future, the officials said. A person close to Mr. Bannon insisted the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but it was delayed in the wake of the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

If you consider who’s-on-Air Force One-or-not as part of West Wing tea leaves-reading, then Bannon’s absence from the trip to Camp David was notable:

Matt Drudge’s only Tweet is, “Bannon had one hell of a run…”:

Bannon, a former Goldman Sachs banker who tried his hand at financing projects in Hollywood before taking over conservative website Breitbart News, is seen as an extremely divisive figure in the White House, whether its his apparent allegiance to white nationalist views or his alleged self-promotion.

Roger Stone, Trump pal and pot-stirring agitator par excellence, wrote in The Daily Caller yesterday that Bannon’s time was ticking, noting that Bannon was not viewed positively by Chief of Staff General John Kelly and national security advisor General H.R. McMaster either. “I am one who had publicly defended Bannon from false charges of racism and anti-Semitism yet I have concluded he is a spent force, never being willing to spend his political capital to help his friends and in some cases helping empower the very Globalists he claims to oppose,” he said.

Stone added, “There is no reason for conservatives to be upset about the coming purge of Steve Bannon. He did a lot to help himself but not much to help us.”

Notably, a book about Trump’s campaign, Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency, by Bloomberg News reporter Joshua Green, credits the victory to Bannon.

However, in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville white nationalist rally which saw one counterprotester killed and many other injured by an alleged white supremacist who drove his car into marchers, criticism of Bannon’s apparent influence has increased. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch urged Trump to fire Bannon while former White House communicators director/”political suicide bomber” Anthony Scaramucci made it very clear that Bannon’s views were intolerable.

Earlier this week, The America Prospect ran an interview with Bannon where he ridiculing White House colleagues: “…Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. ‘They’re wetting themselves,’ he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.”

This led the Wall Street Journal to report, “People close to Mr. Bannon were concerned Thursday that the interview in American Prospect would lead to his termination.”

Earlier this week, when Trump was answering reporters’ questions about the horror in Charlottesville, he was asked, “Do you have confidence in Steve Bannon?”

“I like Mr Bannon, he’s a friend of mine. But he came on very late,” Trump said, before adding, “He is not a racist, I can tell you that.”