Steve Bannon, who previously ran the populist news site before joining President Donald Trump's campaign, left his West Wing post earlier on Friday. Bannon returns to Breitbart News as executive chairman

Steve Bannon on Friday returned to Breitbart News as executive chairman, just hours after officially being ousted as White House chief strategist, and even helmed the conservative news site's evening editorial meeting.

“The populist-nationalist movement got a lot stronger today,” said Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow. “Breitbart gained an executive chairman with his finger on the pulse of the Trump agenda.”


Bannon, who previously ran the populist news site before joining President Donald Trump's campaign, left his White House post after having become increasingly isolated in the West Wing. Breitbart said in its announcement that Bannon had submitted his intention to leave the White House on Aug. 7.

Bannon had floated a potential return to the bomb-throwing Breitbart prior to his ouster, and had told colleagues he was looking forward to not having to wear a blazer and long pants.

Breitbart News CEO and President Larry Solov touted the reunion in a statement.

“Breitbart’s pace of global expansion will only accelerate with Steve back,” Solov said. “The sky’s the limit.”

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The return comes amid speculation that Bannon, freed from the confines of the West Wing, will seek to inflict damage against some former colleagues in the Trump White House and return to his firebrand ways at Breitbart. Under assault from several other top Trump aides, Bannon reportedly told friends in recent days that'd he'd grown impatient with the internal constraints of the West Wing, and that he yearned to return to his guerrilla warfare days as an outsider. It was time for "Bannon da barbarian," he told friends.

And the right-wing site may have already fired its opening salvo to the White House in the new Bannon era.

Prior to the unveiling of the Breitbart-Bannon reunion, the site reported Friday that the dismissal of Bannon “may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration.”

In the article, Breitbart’s editor-at-large, Joel Pollak, says that Trump’s firing of Bannon, whose staunchly nationalist views had led him to frequently clash with other Trump administration officials, could lead his tenure to mirror that of former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger — a celebrity-turned-populist Republican who Pollak says failed to deliver on grandiose campaign promises.

“It may turn out to be the beginning of the end for the Trump administration, the moment Donald Trump became Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Pollak said of Bannon’s departure.

Pollak argued that without Bannon’s influence, Trump may veer of course and fail to deliver on the agenda he promised to Republican voters.

“With Bannon gone, there is no guarantee that Trump will stick to the plan,” Pollak wrote in a piece published just a few hours after the White House released a statement saying Bannon and White House chief of staff John Kelly had “mutually agreed” to part ways.

Earlier Friday, the Breitbart editor seemingly responded to news of Bannon’s ouster with a simple tweet: “#WAR.”

Pollak told MSNBC on Friday afternoon that the message was intended as a reassurance to Breitbart readers that their mission would remain unchanged going forward under Trump. But he warned that the White House could risk losing support from its base if Trump sought to recast himself politically.

If the president “veers away, if he pulls an Arnold Schwarzenegger and tries to reinvent as a liberal, he will see that support erode very, very quickly and he will struggle politically to make the case for re-election in 2020,” Pollak said.

Pressed on whether Bannon and Breitbart intended to go to “war” with the Trump White House, the Breitbart editor left the door open to the possibility.

“It really depends on the Trump administration,” Pollak said. “The key to the administration’s success has been and continues to be whether it sticks to the agenda on which Donald Trump ran for president.”

In a separate report, however, Breitbart cited an Axios story claiming that Bannon was "preparing for war" by meeting with the billionaire Mercer family, one of the most prolific-backers of the Republican Party.