Bannon is still there though. close to the President. Bloomberg attempts to make it sound as a shakeup when it’s not.
“A White House official said that Bannon was placed on the committee in part to monitor Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and never attended a meeting. He’s no longer needed with McMaster in charge of the council, the official said.”
And here is good news:
“Under the move, the national intelligence director, Dan Coats, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, are again “regular attendees” of the NSC’s principals committee.”
The fact that Coats is still there and is a regular is a good sign that the country is in good hands.
If he lost or never was approved for a TS Clearance, he cannot be in those meetings.
There is a fundamental lack of understanding as to how clearances work. A person with NSC level clearance would have access to virtually all secrets short of those for the President’s eyes only.
You could lose that and still have “read in” clearance into almost any program on a need to know basis.
I was “read into” the National Aerospace Plane program, a secret hypersonic aircraft program-—but I had no access whatsoever to the B-2, or cruise missile, or anything else.
People ought to be a little restrained before jumping to conclusions that x or y “won” any power struggle.