Former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon’s future at Breitbart News is reportedly in question amid his feud with President Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reported that members of the right-wing news network’s board debated Thursday whether to oust Bannon, who was fired from the White House by chief of staff John Kelly last year.
Rebekah Mercer, a member of the board and a prominent conservative donor, distanced herself from Bannon in a statement.
“I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected,” Mercer said, as reported by The Washington Post. “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.”
News of Bannon’s possible departure from the conservative news outlet comes hours after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for the news network to look at the possibility of separating from him.
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“I certainly think that it’s something they should look at and consider,” Sanders said at Thursday’s White House press briefing.
Bannon is in danger of losing control of Breitbart News as well as his hosting gig on the news network’s daily radio show on SiriusXM, “Breitbart News Daily,” a source familiar with the situation told the newspaper. The former Trump aide rejoined the show as a regular host in December.
Trump put distance between himself and his former senior aide on Wednesday after excerpts from an upcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by author Michael Wolff, were published in The Guardian and New York Magazine early Wednesday.
In the excerpts, Bannon called “treasonous” a 2016 meeting that Donald Trump Jr. took in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer under the pretense of obtaining “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately,” Bannon is quoted as saying in the book.
Trump ripped Bannon in a statement, disavowing his former aide and accusing Bannon of losing his mind.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Trump said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
-Updated 5:15 p.m.