Although the reasons for his departure are not quite clear, Steve Bannon, who got on-board the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 and later became White House chief strategist, does not appear to be vindictive at all, but rather ready to support the Trump agenda more than ever from his old post.
"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents – on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America," Bannon said.
Being labelled as "far right" by some mainstream news outlets, Breitbart news was one of the greatest supporters of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, however it had been lately suffering from a drop of traffic.
Now however, the site praised the return of its "populist hero."
"Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda," said Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.
Bannon seems equally optimistic regarding his return.
"I built a f**ing machine at Breitbart, and now I'm going to go back knowing what I know, and we're about to rev that machine up; and rev it up we will do," he said.
Popular conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who had received a lot of heat online for not supporting Trump in the early days, wrote on Twitter that he expects Breitbart's coverage of the Trump administration to change from being positive about the administration overall to President Trump being surrounded by ‘the swamp.'
"Breitbart just won't be nearly as much of a cheerleading site," Shapiro wrote.
Bannon, a long-time critic of the "Republican establishment," spoke to the Weekly Standard, saying that the GOP's neocons have "no interest in Trump's success on this." He also criticized the lawmaker's for not supporting enough Trump's healthcare reform plans and is not very optimistic about border wall funding either.
"They're not populists, they're not nationalists, they had no interest in his program," he said. "Zero."
Bannon was one of the few populist-nationalists in Trump's administration, and definitely the fieriest and noteworthy one, which is odd considering his boss, ran on this exact platform.
He was always quick to criticize GOP donors, and called for higher taxes on the ‘investor class,' and was also anti-war.
Breitbart's readership had skyrocketed during the election to about 23 million unique individuals. After November however, this number has been cut by more than half as of last month, to about 10 million.
The news site had created quite a stir as Trump's numbers were climbing in the polls. The Alt Right movement had also picked up steam and is now more controversial than ever. While Bannon had said a long time ago that Breitbart was a sort of "platform" for the Alt Right, he has since denounced ethno-nationalism, along with the more fringe elements of the de-centralized movement.
Bannon kept a classroom-sized whiteboard in his White House office, on which he had written the promises made the Trump administration and checking them off one by one as they were accomplished, such as end the Barack Obama-era "catch and release" immigration policy as well as building a southern border wall.