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Bannon leaving White House post as chief political strategist

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (KUNA) -- President Donald Trump's chief political strategist, controversial former Breitbart News executive Stephen Bannon, will be leaving his post, major US news media reported on Friday, a story that was subsequently confirmed by the White House.
Trump told senior aides that he decided to remove Bannon, who helped Trump win the 2016 election, two administration officials told the New York Times.
A person close to Bannon said the decision for his departure was Bannon's idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the President on August 7, to be announced at the start of this week, but it was delayed in the wake of the deadly racial unrest last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, a development that virtually consumed the White House all week.
Bannon, who is viewed as the main force behind Trump's "white nationalist" political approach to US domestic politics, was reported to have clashed for months with other senior White House advisers and members of the Trump family.
Bannon was also famous for remarks early in the Trump administration calling for the "deconstruction of the administrative state," a reference to entrenched powers within the federal government - and which has been reflected in Trump administration policies of massive deregulation by presidential edicts.
The White House released a statement saying that Bannon and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly had "mutually agreed" that today would be Bannon's last day on the job at the White House. (end) rm.sd