Update: 1/9/2018: Steve Bannon, who served as White House Chief Strategist t for the first eight months of Donald Trump's presidential administration, has stepped down from his position as executive chairman of Breitbart News. Per the alt-right outlet, Bannon said, “I’m proud of what the Breitbart team has accomplished in so short a period of time in building out a world-class news platform.”
The announcement comes just a few days after a Wall Street Journal report suggested that Breitbart's board, including Rebekah Mercer, was considering axing Bannon. Specifically, the board was reportedly concerned over quotations from Bannon in Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury in which Bannon calls Ivanka Trump "dumb as a brick," and refers to Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russians as "treasonous."
At this point, it's unclear what Bannon, who also served as a top advisor on Trump's 2016 campaign, will do next.
Original 2/27/2017: The owners of Breitbart News, the far-right nationalist website that White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon ran until he joined the Trump campaign last summer, were revealed for the first time on Friday. According to Buzzfeed's Steve Perlberg, who live-tweeted a Standing Committee of the Senate Press Gallery, the site's CEO Larry Solov appeared as part of a process to secure press credentials for the site.
During the hearing, Solov revealed he owns the site, along with founder Andrew Breitbart's widow, Susie Breitbart, and the Mercers, a family of Republican megadonors.
Robert Mercer, the family's patriarch, is a hedge fund tycoon who has put tens of millions of dollars towards conservative candidates and causes. He's never been interviewed about his political interests, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2010, "I'm happy going through my life without saying anything to anybody."
Kate Storey is the author of White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port and the senior features editor at Rolling Stone. She was previously a staff writer at Esquire, where she covered culture and politics, and has written long-form profiles and narrative features for Vanity Fair, Marie Claire, Town & Country, and other publications.
![jill biden](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/first-lady-jill-biden-speaks-during-the-teachers-of-the-news-photo-1714960951.jpg?crop=0.670xw:1.00xh;0,0&resize=360:* "First Lady Jill Biden Hosts "Teachers Of The Year" State Dinner At The White House")
