Politics

Trump Savages Steve Bannon Over Quotes To Michael Wolff

Saagar Enjeti White House Correspondent
Font Size:

President Donald Trump torched former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon in a Wednesday statement in response to the incendiary quotes the Breitbart chief made in a new book on the Trump administration by Michael Wolff.

The statement:

“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. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.

Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself. 

Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well. Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books. 

We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.”

Bannon relayed several anecdotes to Wolff that cast President Trump, the administration and the Trump family in a poor light.

Specifically, he accused Donald Trump Jr. of committing treason for his role in orchestrating an “unpatriotic” meeting between Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya and members of the Trump team.

He also claimed First Lady Melania Trump was in hysterics during the lead up to the election, a claim which FLOTUS’ office vehemently denied in a Wednesday statement.

“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” Stephanie Grisham, Communications Director for the First Lady explained. “Mrs. Trump supported her husband’s decision to run for President and in fact, encouraged him to do so. She was confident he would win and was very happy when he did.”

You can get Michael Wolff’s book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” over at Amazon.

WATCH:

Follow Saagar Enjeti on Twitter