The architect is finished.

Steve Bannon, the wily provocateur who helped push President Trump across the finish line in the bloody 2016 presidential contest, has resigned from his position as White House Chief Strategist. Or, in Washington speech, he was gently nudged out, reportedly handing in his resignation on August 7th.

This was a firing by any other name. In elite politics, few are given immediate pink slips. They are pushed, prodded, cajoled, and publicly pressured to leave on their own accord, so as to not besmirch those doing the work of dirty encouragement.

Bannon left the White House the same way he came in: Swingin’. In a loose-lipped interview with Weekly Standard, the former Breitbart News head (now-reinstalled) gave a blistering assessment of the Trump presidency. In short, it’s quickly losing its populist credentials and devolving into another milquetoast, ho-hum Republican administration. “The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon declared, sticking a fork into the raging beast he helped mold and weaponize.

The reasons vary for Bannon’s dismissal. From self-promotion to possible press leaks to conspiring against his colleagues, the man who once referred to himself as a Leninist who wanted to destroy the state didn’t moderate once he reached the pinnacle of power. Bannon’s brawling instincts, much like his boss’s, defined his approach to governing.

Since the Trump presidency began, leftist politicians and media types have called for Bannon’s removal based on his news publication’s cozy relationship with the racist alt-right. The tragic death of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia, renewed these calls with vigor.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, whose penchant for day-late-dollar-short calls-to-action is unmatched, said in a statement, "If the president is sincere about rejecting white supremacists, he should remove all doubt by firing Steve Bannon and the other alt-right white supremacist sympathizers in the White House." She was joined by multiple caucus chairs of her party, who in a joint-letter, demanded Bannon be removed along with senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka, traducing the three as being “white nationalists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis.” The NAACP also echoed the call for resignation.

Democrats are quicker to hop on opportunity than rats looking for scraps in a dumpster. But even some Republicans couldn’t help jumping on the “fire Bannon” band wagon.

Long Island moderate Republican Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said in an interview that “I think it’s important for the president to fire Steve Bannon.” National Review’s David French wrote, “There is no room for an alt-right apologist in the White House.” Token conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin joined the chorus of entreaties.

The timeline – Heather Heyer’s death, followed by Trump’s tergiversation, then Bannon blame -- doesn’t comport with Bannon’s earlier resignation. In other words, the amplified voices demanding that Trump’s “brain” be let go didn’t actually cause the firing. But they were highly revealing.

Now that Bannon has returned home to his media empire, the question is: Are the president’s critics satisfied? To answer in the affirmative shows you haven’t been paying attention to the past two years of never-Trumpism.

Ryan Cooper of The Week unmasked the bluff in a breathless article titled “Bannon's Departure Will Change Nothing.” America’s future is just a precarious with the pugnacious strategist out of the picture. According to Cooper, we’ll still be subject to “ever-more blatant white supremacy” without the added benefit of “Bannon's economic populism.”

Imagine that! Trump accedes to the demands of the popular press and still gets no credit. The pattern is clear: Any time someone in the Trump Administration goes by the book to placate the left, it does nothing to quiet the naysayers.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe, yet he still needs to be fired. A special prosecutor is assigned to look into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Vladimir Putin’s regime -- yet impeachment is still necessary. Should Trump resign or be forced out of office, the rest of the Administration must still pay.

It goes to show that the president’s critics aren’t interested in having their demands met. This isn’t about negotiation; it’s about salt-the-earth destruction by any means necessary. Any and all opportunities to attack Trump will be exploited. It’s how MSNBC’s Chris Hayes can call the president an incompetent “bullshit artist” while also claiming he’s debasing our norms with “terrifying abandon,” forcing journalists to work harder than ever to combat the growing threat to our democracy.

President Trump is simultaneously Hitler and Gomer Pyle; he’s a spray-tanned bulletin board hysterical liberals tack hurriedly scribbled notes to representing their deepest fears.

By being wrong on all fronts is how leftists can say openly and without shame assert that the president’s supporters have it coming when they get beaten in the streets. As Rod Dreher writes, liberals justify antifa violence “as long as it’s being committed by people whose cause they agree with, against people whose cause they hate.”

This isn’t self-government through civil debate. This is not the workings of a healthy society. This is will-to-power politics similar to the anti-democratic anarchy occurring in Venezuela.

Democrats are playing for keeps. They’ve flipped Lincoln’s inspired adage on its head. “We are not friends, but enemies. We must not be friends” is the Democrats’ new slogan. They won’t rest until total victory; and that means ousting Trump and every conservative-friendly person from power.