With Bannon out, White House gets serious about national security

The news that President Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon no longer has a permanent seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council comes at a particularly opportune time.

The NSC is increasingly becoming the locus of the key decision-making about the United States’ place in the world, in part because the State Department under the Trump administration is barely functioning, while almost all of the key policymaking positions at the Defense Department remain unfilled.

Bannon should never have had a permanent seat on the NSC as he is a political operative and the NSC has traditionally been a place where American interests are considered rather than narrow Republican or Democratic interests.

MORE: With Bannon out, White House gets serious about national security – CNN.com