After a week of reports of deepening factionalism inside the White House, there were murmurs Friday that both Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus may be on the chopping block—Bannon because he’s commanding too much of the spotlight.
And that means UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the administration’s newest rising star, may want to watch out. Trump, of course, hates being out-shined by people in his own orbit. With her profile rising, she could be next on Trump’s hit list.
The drama started earlier this week, when the Trump Administration announced Bannon had been removed from the National Security Council in favor of the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Bannon played it off as his own decision, but it later emerged that he’d thrown a fit over the change, threatening to quit the administration in protest over his demotion.
Although Bannon blames Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner for his troubles, it seems they all started with the “President Bannon” meme that suggested Donald Trump wasn’t in control of his own administration. Fearing Bannon was getting too much attention (and credit), Trump reportedly soured on his chief adviser.
That doesn’t bode well for the administration’s UN ambassador and all-around badass Nikki Haley, who has spent her week taking Russia and others to task for tolerating the use of Sarin gas in Syria.
Holding up photos of children killed and wounded in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s gas attack, she made an emotional plea to the UN Security Council to take action, and accused Russia, directly, of putting Syria’s children in such danger.
As the United States took military action, members of the UN Security Council, including Bolivia, requested an emergency meeting behind closed doors to discuss the destruction of a Syrian air base. Haley again stepped in, like a boss, and forced the UN to open the meeting.
She’s not messing around.
The response to her statement was overwhelmingly positive. On social media, Haley was hailed as a true leader, amazing, “absolutely savage,” and even, probably much to Trump’s likely chagrin, “Presidential.”
Okay, so it’s not likely Trump is going to dump his superstar UN ambassador over a couple of Tweets in the midst of what is probably the most serious global crisis of his short Presidential career. But Haley should probably get her crisis PR team together and put some ears to the ground in the Oval Office.
Bannon and Priebus meanwhile, should probably be thinking more about what post-White House life is going to look like.