Appearing on CNN Saturday night to discuss Stephen K. Bannon’s return to Breitbart News Network, Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam dinged presenter Jim Acosta saying, “you love the cameras!”
Asked whether he thought Mr. Bannon saw himself as a “legend in his own mind”, Kassam told Acosta: “I don’t know, Jim, you’ve been around D.C. a long time. I feel like everyone is a legend in their own mind in some part in this city.”
“Not as much as Steve Bannon perhaps?” asked the CNN host.
“Oh, come on, Jim!” mocked Kassam, “You love the cameras just as much!”
On Mr. Bannon’s departure from the White House, Acosta asked the Breitbart London chief editor if he thought he had been pushed.
“’Pushed’ is a strong word,” said Kassam,”but I think he had to take a decision: Do you keep fighting an internal battle in the West Wing and keep fighting the same old people over and over again, or do you go on to the outside and actually start achieving things?”
Kassam noted his disappointment over the divisions in the White House, said that he had hoped “people would all come to the agreement that actually the most important thing was to make the Donald Trump presidency a success”.
“Some people as I can tell decided that it wasn’t going to be any way but their way and like you say the more New York-centric folks, what we call the West Wing Democrats, decided that they would keep litigating this over and over again.”
“The president I feel is still on the same page as Steve Bannon,” said Kassam, though said it was “fair to say that something drastically has shifted, and we can expect the presidency to look rather different”.
“Gary Cohn, Jared Kushner, Dina Powell – these people could have been in the Bush White House. They don’t fit in this White House. At least it’s not what the base wants,” he added.
“The point is this: there’s that whiteboard, right? That famous whiteboard with everything Steve hoped the president would achieve? And now that whiteboard is where? Sitting in the back of some removals somewhere,” Kassam said.
“What happens now? Where does the base put its principles? Where does the base put its heart? Does it put it in places like Breitbart who it believes has this nationalist economic agenda?
“Does it put it in President Trump? I argue that [the base] should still believe in this president. And does it trust the people around the president? There are big questions over that. We’ll see how it goes. If there are no major legislative achievements people are going to start scratching their heads.”