Philip Rucker and David Filipov write at the Washington Post that Donald Trump’s chief strategist and former Breitbart News Executive Chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, will assume a new National Security role:

President Trump on Saturday ordered the Pentagon to devise a strategy to defeat the Islamic State and restructured the National Security Council to include his controversial top political adviser as he forged a partnership with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin in their first official phone call.

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Counseling Trump in the effort will be Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist whose influence inside the administration is expanding far beyond politics. In a separate presidential memo, Trump reorganized the National Security Council to, along with other changes, give Bannon a regular seat on the principals committee — the meetings of the most senior national security officials, including the secretaries of defense and state.



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Bannon has already been playing a major role in directing Trump’s foreign policy, administration officials say, and joined the president in the Oval Office on Saturday for his calls with Putin and several other world leaders.