Steve Bannon Booted From National Security Council, We Can't Imagine Why

Other NSC members couldn't meet Bannon's strict standards of grooming and fashion

Big doin's at the White Supremacy House today as Donald Trump reorganized the National Security Council, removing Steve Bannon from the NSC where he never belonged in the first place . Trump also restored the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, to their full places on the NSC after ham-handedly placing them on a vague sort of standby status back in January.

The shuffle brings the NSC back into a more conventional configuration, removing a political advisor who really had no business being part of the "principals committee." In February, reports surfaced that Trump had signed an executive order elevating Bannon and sending Coates and Dunford away without really knowing what was in the order, then later griped that he hadn't been fully briefed on what was in the copy-pasted executive order before he signed it. Hey, weren't we just saying the president of the USA doesn't read? Surprise!

So why is Bannon out now? It's the Trump administration; could be any of a million reasons! Hell, it could be another copy-paste mistake! The talking heads on MSNBC are calling it a victory for Trump's second, smarter national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, but that doesn't fit so well with the fact that Bannon and Deputy President Jared Kushner wouldn't let McMaster fire that one dumb aide who was Mike Flynn's lickspittle. (And who was kind enough to leak documents to Devin Nunes so he could take them right back over to the White House from whence they came.) We're not especially inclined to believe this version of events either, which sounds unlikely at best:

Again, seems unlikely since by all accounts Trump and Bannon both believe Michael Flynn extrudes completely odor-free poops.

Hey, how about this explanation? 

Hmm. We don't know whether that's the real reason, but we can certainly guess that "official" is Bannon himself, because "de-operationalize" is precisely the kind of pseudointellectual postmodern bafflegab Bannon loves, and also he's no doubt happy to claim the real reason he's off the NSC is that His Work Here Is Done. As to what the hell "de-operationalizing" the NSC even means, other than generally wrecking it, we won't even guess.

The Washington Post notes that two "senior White House officials" emphasized that Bannon's departure from the NSC was definitely not a demotion, no, absolutely not, which -- Trumpland being Trumpland -- could mean it's not a demotion and Bannon is still the disciple Trump loves best, or that it's actually a huge demotion and Bannon is about to be fitted with a laser guidance system and fired from an FA-18E Super Hornet on an ISIS camp somewhere in Syria.

While it may be some time before we fully learn why Bannon is out at the NSC, Yr Wonkette still tends to think our initial guess is right: Bannon was asked to stop coming to NSC meetings because no one could hear the briefings over the noise of Bannon lapping up cheap gin from a bowl on the floor.

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[ Bloomberg / WaPo / Brad Jaffy on Twitter / Robert Costa on Twitter]