Eight plus months into this administration, the millstone that Steve Bannon has been is finally being cast off.

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is leaving his White House post, sources say. https://t.co/xnqbNMEbNO

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 18, 2017

https://twitter.com/yashar/status/898584605909012482

Bannon going – admin officials say it was Trump, people close to Bannon insist he resigned. https://t.co/XuOvPjZN37

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 18, 2017

From the NYT article…

“White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Steve Bannon have mutually agreed today would be Steve’s last day,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement. “We are grateful for his service and wish him the best.”

Earlier on Friday, the president had told senior aides that he had decided to remove Mr. Bannon, according to two administration officials briefed on the discussion. But a person close to Mr. Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the president on Aug. 7, to be announced at the start of this week. But the move was delayed after the racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va.

Yeah, no, not buying that this was totally Bannon’s idea. The handwriting was on the wall, so to speak.

Ben Shapiro, who has a long history with Bannon, says that this will get ugly.

This explains the entire week. Bannon was planning. The war is coming. https://t.co/SBAlxnr1l0

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 18, 2017

Bannon understands the Game of Thrones. Joffrey just beheaded him. So his new plan is to become the Winter King. https://t.co/SBAlxnr1l0

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 18, 2017

Bannon vs. Trump is going to be amazing.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 18, 2017

Think Glenn Close vs. Michael Douglas in 'Fatal Attraction' with Ann Archer played by Mike Pence.

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 18, 2017

Bannon is deeply vengeful, and supremely ambitious. He has already held the most powerful job he will ever have – unless, of course, his new job is to destroy Trump from the outside. And he set the groundwork for that job over the past week.

First, he pushed Trump not to alienate the alt-right – Bannon’s base – and succeeded. Bannon was widely credited in the media with encouraging Trump’s bizarre Tuesday press conference, at which Trump rehabilitated the alt-right and said there were “very fine people” protesting with white supremacists in Charlottesville. Trump could have easily carved off the alt-right and not lost much; Bannon, however, had to keep them in his pocket. Without them, he is merely another former government employee searching for a home. With them, he can threaten Trump with political Armageddon.

Second, he gave an insane interview with The American Prospect that isn’t insane at all in retrospect. In that interview, he laid out his own foreign policy and contrasted it with Trump’s – a fully isolationist foreign policy that the Trump administration almost certainly will not pursue, a militant and protectionist foreign policy with regard to trade with China, an “anti-globalist” policy totally at odds with some of Trump’s closest advisors like Gary Cohn.

And of course, Bannon will continue to sully the name of Andrew Breitbart to set up his rival throne.

Bannon’s play for Trump’s populist and alt-right bases will be partially successful. Outside the White House, Bannon can be more powerful than he was inside: if Trump doesn’t do what Bannon likes, Bannon will declare that he was ousted because the globalist insiders have taken over, and Trump has sold out the base. Bannon will attempt to claim the leadership of the movement he believes he built.

And he’ll do so from his platform at Breitbart.

That makes sense, since no one else will have him. There’s no interest in him from any of the major conservative think tanks: he’s toxic, he works poorly with others, and he’s utterly self-promoting. He has no real political future in electoral politics: he’s unattractive, deeply disliked across the country, and widely perceived as a class A a**hole. But that doesn’t matter for the people Breitbart has been catering to for more than a year. They see Bannon as their champion, and in leaving now and under these circumstances, Bannon has set himself up admirably as a Trumpian foil.

This was a necessary, overdue separation – whether it was by firing or resignation, I don’t care. It won’t be enough for the left…

DNC on Bannon: "There is one less white supremacist in the White House." pic.twitter.com/HCqhqjB2YK

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) August 18, 2017

… but it is a welcome moment that conservatives, who remember what Andrew Breitbart REALLY stood for, have to be relieved to see.