WASHINGTON • United States President Donald Trump parted ways with his controversial chief strategist Stephen Bannon last Friday as the White House reeled from the fallout over the President's much-criticised response to a violent white supremacist rally.

The sense of chaos continued yesterday as Mr Carl Icahn, a billionaire who was advising Mr Trump on regulatory issues, announced he was stepping down from that role over concerns of conflict of interest.

But Mr Bannon, 63 - whose departure caps one of the most disastrous weeks of the already chaotic young Trump administration - vowed to keep pushing the President's right-wing agenda, as he returned to his former home at the ultra-conservative Breitbart News.

"If there's any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I'm leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents - on Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate America," the hero of the so-called "alt-right" told Bloomberg News within hours of leaving the White House.

Mr Bannon's departure amounts to a nod to members of Mr Trump's government and the Republican Party, who grew increasingly frustrated with the anti-establishment firebrand. It remains to be seen what role the serial provocateur - who was credited with a major role in Mr Trump's upset election victory - will continue to play from outside the White House.

Mr Bannon was the nucleus of one of several competing power centres in a chaotic White House, and reportedly fell into disfavour for allegedly leaking stories about colleagues he felt did not sufficiently adhere to his populist agenda.

Mr Trump had recently grown weary of Mr Bannon, complaining to other advisers that he believed his chief strategist had been leaking to reporters and was taking too much credit for the President's successes. The situation had become untenable long before last Friday, according to advisers close to Mr Trump who had been urging the President to remove Mr Bannon; in turn, people close to Mr Bannon also were urging him to step down.

Mr Bannon had become increasingly critical of Mr Trump, said a person close to both men, complaining that the President lacked the political skills and discipline to avoid a series of self-inflicted public relations disasters.

But ultimately, he viewed the President as losing sight of what propelled Mr Trump to the White House. On the one hand, Mr Bannon told friends that Mr Trump was a populist savant who had a deeper connection with the alienated white working class than any politician in the last half-century.

But Mr Bannon, a former naval officer, also saw the President as increasingly trapped by the generals he surrounded himself with, and moving towards an interventionist foreign policy.

Mr Bannon complained about the President's provocative and unscripted threats to North Korea and was especially concerned about a wider attempt to reassert US military power in the Western Hemisphere.

He told his small circle of like-minded confidants in the West Wing that he feared the President would be talked into an intervention in Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro has been cracking down on the opposition amid a deteriorating situation.

One White House official, who would not be named discussing the President's thinking, said Mr Trump has wanted to remove Mr Bannon since he ousted former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus three weeks ago. But a person close to Mr Bannon insisted that the parting of ways was his idea, and that he had submitted his resignation to the President on Aug 7, to be announced at the start of this week, timed to his anniversary of working for Mr Trump.

According to three people close to the discussions, Mr Trump and Mr Bannon agreed during the previous week that he would depart. But the violence in Charlottesville pushed Mr Bannon closer to Mr Trump; he encouraged the President to stand by his impulses in his response and, one of the three people said, sought to stay on longer.

That became untenable after an interview with The American Prospect, in which he mocked colleagues, though he later said he thought it was off the record.

In it, Mr Bannon also contradicted Mr Trump's tough threats towards North Korea, saying "there's no military solution here, they got us".

NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE