Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon fired

By Kaitlan Collins, Jeremy Diamond and Elizabeth Landers, CNN

(CNN) -- President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon has been fired, two White House officials told CNN Friday.

A source told CNN that Bannon was given the option to resign but was forced out. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Bannon's departure but did not say whether he was fired or resigned.

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

The President has privately stewed over Bannon in recent days, including Thursday night from his golf course in New Jersey. He was furious with his chief strategist after he was quoted in an interview with the American Prospect contradicting him on North Korea and asserting that he was able to make personnel changes at the State Department.

Bannon's exit comes just seven months after Trump took office and three weeks after retired Gen. John Kelly took over as chief of staff, looking to instill order in a chaotic White House beset by internal divisions, staff infighting and a storm of controversies.

Bannon's exit meant one of the White House's most controversial staffers, the man generally perceived as the driving force behind Trump's "nationalist" ideology, would no longer be at the center of the Trump universe.

Bannon joined Trump's campaign last year, moving from the sidelines as one of Trump's top cheerleaders to a position atop his campaign apparatus.

He did not travel with the President during the first week of what White House officials described as a "working vacation" at Trump's golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey. Instead Bannon remained in Washington to work out of a temporary office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Bannon was supposed to be fired two weeks ago, a White House official told CNN's Jeff Zeleny, but it was put off.

CNN reports the President equivocated after an initial plan was to fire Bannon and then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus at same time, the official says, because Rep. Mark Meadows, the influential chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and others urged Trump to keep him on board.

The interview this week was enough for Meadows to change his view, a person close to him says.

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