From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, a special edition of the show after a historic week in which the

president bolsters the alt-right and white nationalist. Why does he end the week

by getting rid of Steve Vannon, the alt-right crusader in his White House?

It's Friday afternoon, August 18th.

Maggie Abramann, this seems like a shocking end to this week in particular.

The president has outraged much of the country with his comments about the

protesters in Charlottesville and his statement that some of them are fine

people and that seems like a big victory in a sense for Steve Vannon.

Potentially the biggest realization of his vision in this presidency and yet on the last day of the week,

Steve Vannon is out. So what is going on?

It's an excellent question, Michael, and thank you for having me. This has been a bit of a crazy day.

There are a couple of different versions of this story going around.

In one version, we have White House officials who don't like Steve Vannon, saying that the president

had wanted to fire him for several weeks around the time he fired Ryan's

previs that he was talked out of it by several people and that General

John Kelly, who replaced Ryan's previs as chief of staff, had been, quote,

unquote, evaluating the tenure. Vannon has told people close to him that he

offered his resignation on August 7th to go into effect on August 14th, except that it was delayed

because of Charlottesville. That's not, I think, accurate. As I understand it,

there's a third way here, which is there was some deal between the president and Vannon

for Vannon to leave late last week. And that deal was,

...