President Donald Trump’s stalemated agenda on healthcare, tax reform, trade, and funding the border wall will be compromised if establishment Republicans fail to unite behind the president to bring us to "sweetness and light," ousted White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said.
"If the Republican Party on Capitol Hill gets behind the president on his plans and not theirs, it will all be sweetness and light, be one big happy family," Bannon told The Washington Post on Saturday.
Just do not expect that "sweetness," he added to the Post.
As fractured as President Trump's White House might appear, a fractured GOP in congress failing to move his agenda are equally problematic – and frankly "disheartening" – a former Republican National Committee chairman said, per the Post.
"The reality of it is that even if there were no issues inside the White House, you still have an underlying divide in the Republican Party about how we'll approach some of these issues," former RNC chairman Michael Steele told the Post. "To me, that's the most disheartening part of this."
When congress returns from its August recess, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will be tasked with unifying the party and passing urgent items such as the debt ceiling and avoiding a government shutdown over failing to pass a budget.
"No administration in history has been so divided among itself about the direction about where it should go," Bannon told The Washington Post.
President Trump and Bannon have parted ways, but the chaos and Republican discord will remain, according to the report, and Bannon had gone so far as to tell The Weekly Standard on Friday: "the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over."
"Now, it's gonna be Trump," Bannon told the Standard on Friday. "I just think his ability to get anything done – particularly the bigger things, like the wall, the bigger, broader things that we fought for, it's just gonna be that much harder."
President Trump has praised Bannon's service and his aiding in the election victory in tweets this weekend.
Bannon leaves to "go to war" against President Trump's opposition at Breitbart News in the conservative media, and sources said he is preparing to "go nuclear."
"I think Steve is going to be more effective on the outside," chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp, a longtime friend of Bannon, told the Post. "On the outside, if you are well-funded and you are feared and you have a platform, you are going to be a power player. Steve has all of that in spades."
After early reports questioned whether Bannon might be a White House official scorned, Bannon himself spoke out to confirm he will be working against the president's political opponents and not attacking his former boss – no matter how he might be misled by his fractured inner circle of White House advisers.
"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents – on Capitol Hill, in the media, and in corporate America," Bannon clarified in an interview with Bloomberg News hours after his departure was announced.
The installation of Gen. John Kelly, which ultimately led to Bannon's ouster, has been considered a move to restore stability and order to a White House that has often been criticized for having too many competing agendas.
"I think it raises the morale of staffers and brings more of a sense of normalcy to the White House on a day-to-day basis," a Republican strategist speaking candidly under anonymity told the Post. "You don't have such an unorthodox staffer breathing down people's necks and creating tension every day.
"What it does not do is remove the person who's creating the most drama in the White House, and that's Donald Trump. He's going to continue to do what he’s going to do."