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Bannon’s Path From Trusted Attack Dog to Toxic Liability

Trump just severed a vital link to his grass-roots conservative base.
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Stephen K. Bannon, White House chief strategist in the Trump administration, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., in February 2017.

Stephen K. Bannon, White House chief strategist in the Trump administration, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., in February 2017.

Photographer: Mark Peterson/Redux

Steve Bannon’s departure as White House chief strategist abruptly severs Donald Trump’s most important political relationship — at a pivotal moment in his presidency.

Exactly a year and a day ago, on Aug. 17, Bannon, a fiery populist who ran the right-wing Breitbart News, took over Trump’s struggling presidential campaign. The two outsiders joined forces to pull off the most shocking upset in U.S. presidential history.