The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday said that it was a “positive step” that White House chief strategist Steve Bannon had been removed from the National Security Council. But, he continued, Bannon didn’t belong in the White House at all.
“I think it’s a very positive step,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
On Wednesday, news broke that Bannon, whose political position in the White House made him an extremely unorthodox inclusion on the NSC’s principals committee, would be removed from the group. NSC meetings would now be led, according to the same filing that included Bannon’s removal, by the relatively new National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.
“He certainly introduced a political element there that doesn’t long there,” Schiff continued, referring to Bannon. “From my own point of view, he doesn’t belong in the White House, either. But this is I hope a first and very positive step.”
Schiff echoed comments he made a day earlier, that hopefully McMaster’s leadership would result in a more sound national security policy.
“One that is less focused on blaming Obama for things and more focused on, ‘What are the decisions we need to make in Syria?’” he continued.
“I’m hoping that the removal of Bannon and some consolidation in authority in McMaster will result in a more sound policy,” he added later.
