President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the future of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is still uncertain.
"Well, we'll see," Trump said at a news conference at Trump Tower in New York City when asked if he still had confidence in Bannon.
"Look, I like Mr. Bannon, he's a friend of mine, but Mr. Bannon came on very late – you know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that, and I like him, he's a good man."
Bannon has faced criticism for his ties to the so-called alt-right, especially in the days after violence in Charlottesville, Va., where white nationalists clashed with counter-protestors, leaving three people dead and at least 34 injured.
"He is not a racist, I can tell you that," President Trump said. "He's a good person, he actually gets a very unfair press in that regard. But we'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon, but he's a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, unfairly."
Trump has for months considered ousting Bannon, and many critics have pressured the president to do so after Trump waited two days to blame white supremacists for the violence in Charlottesville.
"I don't think that White House has a chance of functioning properly as long as there's a resident lunatic fringe," Mark Salter, a longtime adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told The New York Times. Bannon, he said, seems willing to "tolerate something that's intolerable" in Trump's base.