Donald Trump and Mike Pence each signal how scared they are of Steve Bannon’s revenge

| 3:55 pm EDT August 19, 2017
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Steve Bannon’s official exit from the White House yesterday was something we could all see coming. In fact it was cemented a few weeks ago when Trump signed off on the firing of all of Bannon’s loyalists from the National Security Council. But here’s what maybe you didn’t see coming: Donald Trump and Mike Pence are both so afraid of Steve Bannon that they’re each publicly kissing up to him on his way out the door.

Here’s what Donald Trump tweeted early this morning: “I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great! Thanks S” (link). Because that apparently wasn’t enough praise, Trump circled back this afternoon with another tweet: “Steve Bannon will be a tough and smart new voice at Breitbart News…maybe even better than ever before. Fake News needs the competition!” But then things got weird.

Somewhere along the way Mike Pence decided to get in on the action as well. He used his official @VP account to tweet “Steve served POTUS Trump with distinction. I value his friendship and contributions. Thank you, Steve!” Wait, so now Pence and Bannon are friends? No, they’re not. By all accounts the two didn’t even like each other. And yet on this day both Trump and Pence felt compelled to tell the whole world how much they appreciate the contributions of Steve Bannon, even though they didn’t act quite like this when any of the other high profile White House advisers were recently run out of the joint. So why?

The short answer is that neither one of them wants to end up on the wrong end of Steve Bannon’s desire for revenge. He’ll use Breitbart to go hard after the people in the White House whom he clashed with, including the likes of H.R. McMaster, Jared Kushner, and even Ivanka Trump. And he may now have inside information to use against them. And so on this day, Donald Trump and Mike Pence each stood up and said “Please don’t hurt me.”