President Donald Trump turned on former chief strategist Steve Bannon on Wednesday, saying Bannon “has nothing to do with me or my presidency” and that he “lost his mind” after he left the White House.
Trump unleashed his fury on Bannon after excerpts from Michael Wolff’s upcoming book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” surfaced earlier in the day. According to the excerpts, Bannon ripped the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., for holding a meeting with a Russian lawyer, calling the action “treasonous.”
The criticism did not sit well with the president.
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“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said in a statement released to the media.
“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look,” Trump added. “Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country.”
The attacks on Bannon continued throughout the day, when White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Bannon’s “treason” remark was “a ridiculous accusation.”
She noted Bannon had told “60 Minutes” last year that the Trump-Russia collusion theory is untrue.
“If that is a reference to the comments made by Mr. Bannon, I’ll refer you to his comments on ’60 Minutes,’ where he said collusion was a ‘farce,'” Sanders said during the press briefing on Wednesday afternoon. “If anybody’s been inconsistent, it’s been Bannon.”
Yet the White House likely knows the damage is done — with Democrats freshly armed with new weapons to continue their theory that Trump or his presidential campaign knowingly colluded with Russian hackers. Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian attorney in June 2016, a meeting that became known in July 2017. The attorney was not associated with the Kremlin, and was in the United States to lobby about sanctions, but the meeting was seized upon by Democrats who said they now had proof that collusion was real.
And now Bannon’s remarks indicate he thought the meeting was treasonous.
Liberals could not contain their glee.
“Bannon fratricide against his own team … openly dishing with a reporter in the White House,” tweeted MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “Tom Barrack calling Trump ‘dumb and crazy.’ Yeah, this is gonna be quite a read.”
And naturally left-wing Hollywood types jumped into the fray: “In the Trump/Bannon divorce who gets custody of the Nazis?” tweeted actress Patricia Arquette.
But despite the harsh White House condemnation of Bannon — whom Sanders said has not spoken with the president since early December — Trump can only distance himself so much from his former campaign chairman and his former top White House political adviser.
When Trump first announced in November 2016 that Bannon would serve as his chief strategist, he noted Bannon was “highly qualified” and helped “[lead] us to a historic victory.”
In his statement Wednesday, Trump insisted Bannon “had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than 30 years by Republicans” when embattled Republican Roy Moore lost to newly sworn-in Sen. Doug Jones (D) in December.
Donald Trump Jr. noted on Twitter Wednesday that Bannon helped Moore over the incumbent Republican, Sen. Luther Strange. Many Trump surrogates blame Bannon for helping the troubled Moore win a primary in a ruby-red state like Alabama, then lose to a Democrat — the first Senate loss for Alabama Republicans since 1992.
But for Bannon to go after Trump’s family is widely seen as criticism that went too far.
Apparently, the president now feels no loyalty to Bannon. Trump claimed that Bannon “doesn’t represent my base” because “he’s only in it for himself.” He also accused Bannon of leaking “false information” to the press throughout his time inside the White House.
The former White House chief strategist made it his personal mission to thwart the GOP Establishment and support candidates that reflect the conservative populism and nationalism that Trump championed during the 2016 presidential election.
After Bannon left the White House in mid-August, he told The Weekly Standard “the Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over” — and accused the president of straying from the conservative populist agenda that propelled him to victory on Election Day.
“We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency,” Bannon had said. “But that presidency is over. It’ll be something else. And there’ll be all kinds of fights, and there’ll be good days and bad days, but that presidency is over.”
The former White House chief strategist made it his personal mission to thwart the GOP Establishment and support candidates that reflect the conservative populism and nationalism that Trump championed during the 2016 presidential election.
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
PoliZette White House writer Jim Stinson can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.
(photo credit, homepage image: Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore / White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon at CPAC…, CC BY 2.0, by Michael Vadon; photo credit, article image: Steve Bannon & Reince Priebus, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore / Trump visits Yokota, CC 0, by Airman 1st Class Juan Torres)
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