The uncertainty over Steve Bannon’s future in the White House continued as President Donald Trump refused to give any assurance over his far-right chief strategist’s fate, in wake of the violence in Charlottesville over the weekend.
Over the last few days, there has been an increasing demand to fire Mr. Bannon with critics labelling him as a white supremacist.
“Look, I like Mr. Bannon. He’s a friend of mine. But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 Senators, Governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a news conference at the Trump Towers in New York.
“I like him, he’s a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that. He’s a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard. But we’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon.
“But he’s a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump was responding to questions if he still had confidence in Mr. Bannon.
A day earlier, The New York Times had reported that Robert Murdoch asked Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Bannon.