According to reporting from the Daily Beast, there’s a feud burgeoning between a General Kelly/McMaster block against the Bannon/Miller sect. And it’s over an “enemies list” drawn up by Bannon meant to be used to fire Priebus/Establishment types.
Team Trump never acted on the list, the officials said, and now those employees have finished their tenure at the National Security Council and returned to their home agencies.
But fallout over the list—and questions about loyalty to Bannon versus McMaster—led the three-star general to fire two of his top aides, an act that’s landed McMaster in the firing line of Bannon’s alt-right media allies and Russian troll bots, both calling for his ouster.
It’s the kind of personality clash and conflicting lines of authority that ret. Marine Gen. John Kelly has been brought in to quiet as chief of staff. He gave McMaster the go-ahead to remove people whose loyalty he questioned, including NSC intelligence director Ezra Cohen-Watnick and ret. Col. Derek Harvey, the NSC Mideast director. Both had meetings with Bannon throughout their tenure, described as hushed national-security related “chats,” by one senior White House official, without seeking McMaster’s permission beforehand.
Multiple administration sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that these “chats” between Bannon and Harvey and Cohen Watnick vexed Trump’s national security adviser, and contributed to McMaster’s desire to “finally make moves against” them, as one senior official recounted.
I really think this is actually a good development for Trump – he’s listening to the adults in the room instead of the conspiracy-mongering extremists like Bannon and his ilk. If he does that we’ll see his agenda get back on track, much like it did with immigration at the end of the week.