Report: Bannon Breathing Sigh Of Relief That Gary Cohn Isn’t New Chief Of Staff

Gary Cohn Image by Getty Images

By Nathan Guttman August 1, 2017

Top White House strategist Steve Bannon was considered an unlikely ally of former chief of staff Reince Priebus in recent months. And yet Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, was happy to see Gen. John Kelly take over the role.

That wasn’t because he wanted to see Priebus ousted, Politico reported, but rather because he was worried that the next chief of staff could be Trump’s economic adviser, Gary Cohn.

“Bannon believes that installing Kelly was a loss for the ‘White House Democrats,’” a White House aide told Politico, “meaning Cohn, Kushner and Ivanka Trump, because it meant that Cohn was not lined up for the job.”

Cohn, a former president of Goldman Sachs, was a registered Democrat before joining the Trump administration. He is viewed, like Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as lacking true conservative credentials.

Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.