Mr. Bannon was appointed a day after the recently ousted Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, emerged in an advisory role with Mr. Trump. It was not lost on Republicans in Washington that two news executives whose outlets had fueled the anti-establishment rebellion that bedeviled congressional leaders and set the stage for Mr. Trump’s nomination were now directly guiding the party’s presidential message and strategy.
Mr. Bannon’s most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, in this month’s primary, making his new role atop the Trump campaign particularly provocative toward Republican leaders in Washington.
.. Mr. Bannon is likely to be more amenable to letting him run the sort of media-focused campaign he prefers.
.. “This is Trump going back to the nativism and nationalism that fueled his rise in the primary,” said Lanhee J. Chen, who was Mr. Romney’s policy director in 2012. “But it’s very dangerous to the future of the party because it only further narrows the appeal of a party whose appeal was already narrow going into this cycle.”
.. the possibility that the coming weeks could resemble a conservative publicity tour more than a conventional White House run, fueled speculation that Mr. Trump was already looking past November.
.. the growing influence of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, conservative donors from Long Island. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart
.. Before Mr. Ailes’s ouster, some of the network’s most prominent journalists and contributors privately complained that Mr. Ailes was pushing them to be more supportive of Mr. Trump.