Stephen Bannon Out at the White House After Turbulent Run

His removal is a victory for Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general whose mission is to impose discipline on White House personnel. A caustic presence in a chaotic West Wing, Mr. Bannon frequently clashed with other aides as they fought over trade, the war in Afghanistan, taxes, immigration and the role of government.

In an interview this week with The American Prospect, Mr. Bannon mocked his colleagues, including Gary D. Cohn, one of the president’s chief economic advisers, saying they were “wetting themselves” out of a fear of radically changing trade policy.

Mr. Trump had recently grown weary of Mr. Bannon, complaining to other advisers that he believed his chief strategist had been leaking information to reporters and was taking too much credit for the president’s successes. The situation had become untenable long before Friday, according to advisers close to Mr. Trump who had been urging the president to remove Mr. Bannon; in turn, people close to Mr. Bannon also were urging him to step down.

By Friday night, Mr. Bannon was already back at the far-right Breitbart News, chairing an editorial meeting at the organization he helped run before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign and where he can continue to advance his agenda.

Mr. Bannon can still wield influence from outside the West Wing. He believes he can use his perch at Breitbart — which has given a platform to the so-called alt-right, a loose collection of activists, some of whom espouse openly racist and anti-Semitic views — to publicly pressure the president.

And he may still play an insider’s role as a confidant for the president, offering advice and counsel, much like other former advisers who still frequently consult with Mr. Trump. Mr. Bannon had formed a philosophical alliance with Mr. Trump, and they shared an unlikely chemistry.

Mr. Bannon has indicated to people that he does not intend to harm Mr. Trump and he has promised to be somewhat reserved about other administration officials, including Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.

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“In many ways I think I can be more effective fighting from the outside for the agenda President Trump ran on. And anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with,” Mr. Bannon said on Friday.

But his former colleagues in the West Wing are uncertain how long that will last.

Joel Pollak, a Breitbart executive, tweeted after Mr. Bannon’s departure was made public a single word with a hashtag: “#WAR.” Mr. Bannon called reporters to suggest Mr. Pollak had gone too far, but he also acknowledged his own disappointment at departing the White House.

He told The Weekly Standard: “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over. We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”

Mr. Bannon later clarified to The New York Times that he did not mean the Trump agenda was over; instead, he said he was referring to his direct work with Mr. Trump, from the end of the campaign to the first stages of his presidency.

Still, allies of the president predicted that Mr. Bannon’s ouster would help Mr. Trump’s agenda.

“I think it’s going to be good for both Steve and for the president,” said Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media who has known the president for years.

“The president has a major hurdle in the fall, I think, in getting legislation passed,” Mr. Ruddy said. He cited several lawmakers who had told the White House “that they had a real problem with Steve because of Breitbart, and Breitbart’s been a thorn in the side for a lot of congressional Republicans.”

The president has struggled to overcome the dysfunction that has plagued his administration. Bitter feuds among aides were frequently showcased on cable news and in the pages of newspapers. Mr. Bannon was among those suspected of repeatedly leaking the details of internal White House debates.

“I’m going to nominate this White House for a Tony Award for the most drama, not the best drama but the most drama,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama’s first chief of staff. “I’ve lost track, eight months in, how many people have been fired? How many have left?”

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Mr. Trump’s first year has been plagued by departures, including Anthony Scaramucci and Michael Dubke, both of whom served as communications director; Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser; Sean Spicer, the press secretary; and Reince Priebus, who was chief of staff before Mr. Kelly.

The sense of chaos continued on Friday as Carl Icahn, a billionaire investor who was advising Mr. Trump on regulatory issues, announced he was stepping down from that role. And A.R. Bernard, a pastor on the president’s Evangelical Advisory Board, quit, citing a “deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration.”

By dismissing Mr. Bannon, the president loses the most visible avatar of the nationalist agenda that propelled him to victory. Contentious and difficult, Mr. Bannon was nonetheless a driving force behind the president’s most high-profile policies: imposing a ban on travelers from several majority-Muslim countries; shrinking the federal bureaucracy; shedding regulations; and rethinking trade policies by aggressively confronting China and other countries.

He was also an opponent of Mr. Cohn, a former official at Goldman Sachs, and Dina Powell, the deputy national security adviser who had also worked on Wall Street. Mr. Cohn is a registered Democrat, and both he and Ms. Powell have been denounced by conservative media outlets as being antithetical to Mr. Trump’s populist message.

Mr. Bannon had become increasingly critical of Mr. Trump, according to a person close to both men, complaining that the president lacked the political skills and discipline to avoid a succession of self-inflicted public relations disasters.

But ultimately, he viewed the president as losing sight of what propelled Mr. Trump to the White House. On one hand, Mr. Bannon told friends that Mr. Trump was a populist savant who had a deeper connection with the alienated white working class than any politician in the last half-century. But Mr. Bannon, a former naval officer, also saw the president as increasingly trapped by the generals he surrounded himself with, and moving toward an interventionist foreign policy.

Mr. Bannon complained bitterly about the president’s provocative and unscripted threats to North Korea and was especially concerned about a wider attempt to reassert American military power in the Western Hemisphere. He told his small circle of like-minded confidants in the West Wing that he feared the president would be talked into an intervention in Venezuela, where President Nicolás Maduro has been cracking down on the opposition amid a deteriorating economic and political situation.

Last week, Mr. Trump suggested that a military option was under consideration in Venezuela. Mr. Bannon told people close to him that the statement indicated the president is relying too heavily on advisers who want him to embark on “military adventures.”

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Mr. Bannon frequently clashed with Mr. Kushner and others in the administration who sought a more traditional, globalist approach to the world’s problems. He also had a long-running feud with Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, the national security adviser.

There were different interpretations of how Mr. Bannon left his job, which had been long anticipated in Washington.

One White House official, who would not be named discussing the president’s thinking, said Mr. Trump has wanted to remove Mr. Bannon since he ousted Mr. Priebus three weeks ago. Since then, Mr. Kelly has been evaluating Mr. Bannon’s status, according to the official.

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, timed to his one-year anniversary of working for Mr. Trump.

According to three people close to the discussions, Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon agreed during the previous week that he would depart. But the violence in Charlottesville pushed Mr. Bannon closer to Mr. Trump; he encouraged the president to stand by his impulses in his response and, one of the three people said, sought to stay on longer.

That became untenable after the American Prospect interview, in which he mocked colleagues, though he later said he thought was off the record. In it, Mr. Bannon also contradicted Mr. Trump’s tough threats toward North Korea, saying “there’s no military solution here, they got us.” Privately, several White House officials said that Mr. Bannon appeared to be provoking Mr. Trump.

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Charlottesville Wounds Still Fresh, Boston Girds for Dueling Protests

“If anything gets out of hand,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said on Friday, “we will shut it down.”

Other protests were expected around the country this weekend on the heels of the deadly rally in Charlottesville, where white supremacists led a protest that deteriorated into one of the bloodiest confrontations to date over the removal of a Confederate monument. A woman, Heather D. Heyer, was killed when a car was driven into a crowd of counterprotesters.

In Hot Springs, Ark., demonstrators on Saturday were expected to rally in support of preserving monuments to Confederate history. In Dallas, demonstrators said they would meet on Saturday night to protest white supremacy, and other demonstrations in opposition to white supremacy were announced for cities such as Chicago and Houston.

On Friday evening, several hundred people gathered in downtown Portland, Ore., for an “Eclipse Hate” rally. Later, others joined in, and more than 1,000 protesters marched on downtown streets, chanting: “No K.K.K. N fascist U.S.A. No Trump.”

The march was loud but relatively peaceful. Protesters swarmed two of the city’s bridges, halting traffic in both directions. At one point, they chanted: ”Whose bridge? Our bridge.” Then protesters returned quietly to where the rally had started.

The Dallas event on Saturday comes with added emotion and strain. Thirteen months ago, a gunman fired on officers in downtown Dallas at a demonstration against police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota. Five officers were killed in the deadliest attack on law enforcement in America since Sept. 11, 2001. The ambush began blocks from City Hall Plaza, the site of the rally on Saturday.

Dallas officials said they planned to form a barricade around the demonstration site using buses and heavy equipment in an attempt to “lock down” the area and prevent any cars from getting too close to the crowd.

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Here, a Boston Free Speech Coalition rally was to begin at noon on the Common. The demonstration was scheduled before the deadly clash in Charlottesville, and its organizers with the Boston Free Speech Coalition have denounced the violence there and said they had no connection with it. Rather, they say, they are appealing to “libertarians, conservatives, traditionalists, classical liberals, Trump supporters or anyone else who enjoys their right to free speech.”

Yet some who attended the demonstration in Charlottesville last weekend were expected to be here, though others have dropped out, citing security concerns.

Kyle Chapman, who founded a group of right-wing vigilantes called the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, was among those expected to speak here.

“It is estimated that 10,000 #AltLeft Terrorist will be protesting and potentially attacking us,” he wrote on Facebook, using his nickname, Based Stickman. “We all knew this time was coming. Honor your ancestors. Defend our Republic. This event is for the brave. Cowards stay home.”

In addition, news reports circulated Friday that some members of the Ku Klux Klan planned to attend, though they said they would remain inconspicuous.

The Boston Free Speech Coalition said it would “not be offering a platform to hatred and bigotry.” And John Medlar, a spokesman for the group, said it would not allow its platform “to be hijacked by the K.K.K.”

The Boston police, who have worked intensely over the last week to prepare, said they would be out in force with perhaps 500 officers, some of them under cover. Multiple security cameras are already in place, they said. And officers in riot gear will be nearby in case they are needed, William B. Evans, the police commissioner, said Friday.

Officials cleared the Common of vendors and their carts, and they were shutting down the Swan Boats, a major tourist attraction in the nearby Public Garden. Marchers were banned from bringing weapons, bats, sticks, flagpoles or anything that might be used as a weapon or a projectile, and backpacks will be subject to search.

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The permit for the free speech rally confines the group to the Parkman Bandstand, where the police have set up metal barricades. The permit said that perhaps 100 “free speech” marchers would attend, but Facebook postings suggest that many more could show up.

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Robert Trestan, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New England office, said the Boston Free Speech Coalition appeared to be more “alt-light” than “alt-right,” but, he added, the language it used appealed to bigots and white supremacists.

“In the aftermath of Charlottesville,” he said, “they have a very large platform with a very big spotlight on their message.”

Mr. Walsh, the mayor, said the city had consulted the Southern Poverty Law Center on how to handle hate groups. He said the center warned that “interacting with them gives them a platform to spread their message of hate” and that it recommended that people “not confront” them.

“So we’re urging everyone to stay away from the Common,” Mr. Walsh said. “At the same time, we can’t look away.”

The mayor had begun the week by telling hate groups they were not welcome in Boston. By Friday, he acknowledged their right to assemble and express their views.

“The courts have made it abundantly clear they have the right to gather, no matter how repugnant their views are, but they don’t have the right to create unsafe conditions,” Mr. Walsh said. “So we’re going to respect their right of free speech, and in return they must respect our city.”

As the demonstrations neared, the area around Boston Common included fliers showing symbols of white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The leaflet, which protesters appeared to have prepared, urged people to “learn to identify these symbols and let anyone displaying them know that they are not welcome in our city!”

“Boston is an anti-fascist zone!” it added.

Part of the police strategy is to keep the free speech rally separate from those joining the counterprotest, which will consist of several groups.

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An estimated 10,000 people were expected to march with groups such as Black Lives Matter and Occupy Boston under the umbrella name of “Fight Supremacy! Boston Counter-Protest Resistance Rally.”

“Charlottesville is what forced me out here,” said Rose Fowler, a retired teacher who is black and was among the people who had gathered to march from Roxbury toward the Common, about two miles away. “Somebody killed for fighting for me. What is wrong with me if I can’t fight for myself and others?”

Monica Cannon, an organizer of the counterprotest and the founder of a local anti-violence group, said 10,000 people had indicated on Facebook that they intended to be there, but plans were being made for many more.

“When we heard that the nationalists had planned a free speech rally here, we were like, ‘No, not in our city,’ ” Ms. Cannon said.

She said she believed that anti-fascist demonstrators — a loose affiliation of radical activists known as antifa who have openly scuffled and sparred with white supremacists and right-wing extremists — would be present. But she added that she could not speak to their plans.

“They stand alone,” she said.

Still, tensions here have been rising all week. On Monday night, a teenager threw a rock at the New England Holocaust Memorial, shattering the glass; passers-by quickly tackled the youth before the police arrived.

And with the national spotlight on the debate over Confederate monuments in the South, John W. Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox, said he was “haunted” by the racist legacy of his predecessor, Tom Yawkey, who resisted integrating the ball club long after every other club in Major League Baseball had hired black players. Mr. Henry said he wanted to lead an effort to rename Yawkey Way, a public street outside Fenway Park, “in light of the country’s current leadership stance with regard to intolerance.”

Duke University announced early Saturday that it had removed a recently vandalized statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee from the entrance to its campus chapel in Durham, N.C.

“I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university,” Vincent E. Price, the university’s president, said in an email to students, employees and alumni.

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Dr. Price said the statue would be “preserved so that students can study Duke’s complex past and take part in a more inclusive future.”

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