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Trump impeachment: Steve Bannon says Pelosi’s strategy to oust president is ‘quite brilliant’

Mr Bannon was criticised for his far-right political views throughout his time with the Trump campaign and beyond: CBS News
Mr Bannon was criticised for his far-right political views throughout his time with the Trump campaign and beyond: CBS News

Far-right political strategist Steve Bannon has heralded the tactics deployed by Democrats to impeach his former boss and remove him from office as “quite brilliant”.

Mr Bannon, once the president’s right-hand man and chief strategist, has fallen in and out of favour with the president since his resignation.

Now he has praised the woman attempting to remove her from office for her approach in corralling the democrats behind her goal while enthusing the debate with a “sense of urgency”.

“The Democrats are so united in this” he told CBS news. “I disagree with her ideologically, but I think Nancy Pelosi is a master of political warfare and I think strategically what she’s done here is, from their perspective, quite brilliant”.

His comments come ahead of the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, with the acting US ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor and State Department official George Kent set to testify before Congress.

Mr Bannon nevertheless returned to type to argue that the impeachment hearings would prove to be positive for the president – saying that it would highlight the “America First” policy he helped to craft that became a cornerstone of the Trump administration.

“If this is argued the way it should be argued, if the facts come out in the way I think the facts should come out, then this will serve as a predicate for people to understand the direction that he’s trying to take the country in”, he said.

As the case against the president has ramped up, the White House has repeatedly argued that aid to Ukraine was withheld as the Democrats contend – but only because the Trump administration had wanted to pressure other countries to invest more in aide to ease the burden on the US.

The Democrats meanwhile have argued the retention of aid was part of a quid-pro-quo deal in exchange for information on Mr Trump’s political rival Joe Biden – a belief corroborated by a number of sources within the administration including the Trump appointed ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland.

Mr Bannon added that “what Trump is offering is a not just palatable but brilliant alternative to what the permanent political class of both political parties have driven us to, and different to the Isolationism of saying ‘just come home, we’ll have fortress America’”.

Mr Bannon was criticised for his fringe political views throughout his time with the Trump campaign and beyond, courting far-right groups and figures both before and after having served in the White House.

Earlier this year The Independent revealed the links between Mr Bannon’s fledging training academy for right-wing populists, based in Italy, and Tory political figures.

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