White House chief strategist Steve Bannon was finally fired on Friday after another week of unbearable controversies from the administration. It's been reported that plenty of celebrities and critics rejoiced on Twitter, including Democrats who have said there was "one less white supremacist at the White House." The firing comes one week after clashing of white supremacists, white nationalists and self-proclaimed neo-Nazis with counter-protesters.

It was reported on Saturday before his firing that 19 counter-protesters had been injured and one killed when a white nationalist who was among the racist protesters plowed his car into the group.

Much of the criticism the President received over his statements where he placed blame "on all sides" rather than specifically on the hate groups was also directed towards Bannon. Steve Bannon has been seen as the source President Trump's nationalist and extremist right-wing agenda.

John Kelly's changes to White House staff

But prior to the violence in Virginia, there was already consensus building up that Bannon's days were numbered. Despite this, Politico reported last week in an article titled: "Kelly considers further shuffling of West Wing staff, officials say", that the chief strategist was still influential with his enforcement of trade policy against China. It was reported that the President returned to Washington on Monday to sign a memorandum.

Gen. John Kelly -- who replaced Reince Preibus as the new white House Chief of Staff a few weeks ago -- had reportedly been meeting with White House aides at Trump's National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey last week, to talk about how they can improve the function of the West Wing. Politico reported that many of the aides brought up Steven Bannon as the source of many problems and even more damaging, suggested that he was responsible for recent leaks coming out of the White House.

It was reported that rather than be combative with John Kelly, both he and Bannon mutually agreed that Friday would be the chief strategist's last day.

Targeting leakers

In fact, Axios reported in an article titled: "Trump suspects Bannon of leaking, putting job in jeopardy" that President Trump was livid about the possibility that Bannon was behind leaks against his rivals in the administration.

If Donald Trump has made anything clear during the first half of the first year of his presidency, was that he was against leaks that put him in an unfavorable light. Over that time he threatened to take action to stop those leaks, even denying them by saying they were fake news. But in recent weeks, Trump's attorney general Jeff Sessions said that his Justice Department would go after any leakers who were trying to ruin the President's agenda.

Gen. John Kelly had reportedly been looking at Steve Bannon's position, noticing that he didn't really play a role in it and that he still had a publicist on the outside and that he also had a large team on the inside that were loyal to his agenda. The Axios report said that there was a sense that even though Bannon denied that he had anything to do with engineering the Right-wing media's attacks on H.R. McMaster -- especially from Breitbart which Bannon used to run before joining Trump -- that many already knew he was behind the leaks against McMaster.

Axios pointed out that White House officials revealed a comparison in Bannon's reaction to stories targeting McMaster. That being that when Breitbart was targeting Priebus at the beginning of the year as a moderate that the Chief Strategist "went to bat" for him and even went to extremes to tell Breitbart to stop targeting Priebus. But he did nothing to stop the media outlet's publication of stories targeting the national security adviser.

Bannon returns to Breitbart

On Wednesday, the American Prospect published an article titled: "Steve Bannon, Unrepentant", where the writer Robert Kuttner said that he got a call from the senior White House aide on Tuesday where he gave an interview about the internal issues in the White House.

In the discussion, he targeted various government officials and practically leaked out details to the writer which no doubt contributed to his firing. Other reports have said that President Trump was likely already considering getting rid of Bannon at the same time that Priebus had been fired but decided to leave him on.

Yet, other reports say that Bannon was aware that he was on his way out and had tendered his resignation a week before. This would suggest that the now former chief strategist likely gave the interview to the Prospect because he didn't have anything to lose. Nonetheless, this is an indication that Kelly is fulfilling promises he made last week to make changes soon. Some have said that more changes would coming soon and those who know him say that he's moving quickly. On the same day he was fired, Steve Bannon reportedly returned to his position at Breitbart and has new plans for the media outlet.
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