Story highlights Trump's relationship with Bannon became impossible to ignore as of November 2015

They first met in 2011

(CNN) With Steve Bannon's place in his inner circle increasingly insecure, President Donald Trump is casting his chief strategist as a belated addition to a campaign team that was already on a warpath to the White House.

But the shiv, delivered in the pages of The New York Post on Tuesday, belies both Bannon's tenure and prominence in Trump's brain trust, a relationship that slowly blossomed over at least five years -- through shared aides, radio interviews and eventually a formal hire.

Bannon joined Trump's campaign at a time when it was struggling to raise money and being badly outpolled in states that Democrats typically did not even contest. The candidate's children were frustrated with Manafort's leadership, and Bannon forged key relationships with them as he led Trump to a once-improbable victory that November.

The introduction

Trump was first introduced to Bannon, then a conservative filmmaker and media provocateur, in 2011 thanks to David Bossie, the president of Citizens United, a conservative group famous for its court case that helped open the door for more money in politics.

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