Breitbart 'prepared to rally votes for Trump's impeachment if he stops pushing populist agenda'

When Steve Bannon left the White House and fled directly to Breitbart, his conservative news outpost, pundits panicked about how he could push the Trump agenda from the outside. But according to friends and coworkers, the President's chief strategist could quickly become his worst enemy.

The 63-year-old Mr Bannon is best known for helping Mr Trump hone his populist rhetoric as a candidate, and push his nationalist agenda as President. (The travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries and the decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement were both Bannon-backed initiatives.)

Now, insiders say Mr Bannon will seek to keep Mr Trump in line from his new position as Breitbart executive chairman. If the President veers too far from his campaign rhetoric, one Breitbart staffer told Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman, “We’re prepared to help Paul Ryan rally votes for impeachment”.

That threat – made even more menacing in light of Mr Bannon’s notorious hatred of Mr Ryan – condtradicts Trump-team claims that the strategist will be a "loyal soldier" for the President from outside the White House. But the senitment was underscored by Mr Bannon's friends, who pointed to his many enemies inside the White House.

“Why would he help them from the outside at this point? Run the outside group and then Jared Kushner takes credit?” one friend asked The Atlantic’s Rosie Gray.

Many predicted Mr Bannon would take aim at Mr Kushner – a frequent rival for Mr Trump’s ear – and other “globalist”-minded White House workers, including Ivanka Trump, Gary Cohn, Dina Powell, and HR McMaster.

“People think Bannon will go after Trump, which actually isn’t correct,” conservative writer Mike Cernovich told Vanity Fair’s Tina Nguyen. “Bannon especially dislikes Gary Cohn and Dina Powell, so you can look for a lot of interesting articles about the two of them.”

Mr Bannon himself has not been shy about his plans for life on the outside, telling the Weekly Standard that he now feels “free”.

“I’ve got my hands back on my weapons,” he said on Friday, the day of his firing. “Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition.”

To do so, Mr Bannon has met with conservative mega-donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, who helped fund Mr Trump’s campaign. He is also reportedly considering a television programme for Breitbart News, to compete with the right-wing Fox News.

“He’s going nuclear,” one friend of Mr Bannon’s told Ms Gray. “You have no idea. This is gonna be really fucking bad.”