Trump, steering away from Twitter and instead releasing an official statement, wrote off comments made by Steve Bannon, his former campaign chief executive and White House chief strategist — going as far as to say that Bannon "not only lost his job, he lost his mind."
Bannon parted ways from the Trump administration in August 2017.
— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) January 3, 2018
"Now that Steve is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as I make it look," POTUS wrote. "Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country."
"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 added.
What did Bannon in this steamy book say to get 45 fuming? He described a July 2016 meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 presidential election campaign at the Trump Tower as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."
"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon was quoted as saying. "Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad sh*t, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."
Though the treason comment was the most inflammatory to come out, the bulk of Bannon's discussions with "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff suggest that the Mueller investigation will focus more on money laundering by Trump associates than collusion.
But Bannon's comments regarding the Trump tower meeting is really just the 64-year-old Virginian's "advice as a political consultant," Lee Stranahan told Sputnik. According to Stranahan, Bannon's remarks on the meeting were an attempt to show that he knew better and that the setup of the July meeting was unacceptable and improper.
Speaking with Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, Stranahan, a fellow radio host at the station, likened Bannon's comments to a statement a jilted lover makes to an ex, promising (or threatening) to show them how much they've lost.
"You've got to remember that when Steve left the White House he made statements publicly… that [he was only] leaving for now," Stranahan, a co-host on Sputnik's Fault Lines, told Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. "Part of his strategy was… if you've ever broken up with someone, of ‘I know, I'll show her, I'll get in shape and then she'll see that she made a huge mistake.'"
"Bannon was trying to do that with Trump," Stranahan added.
The Breitbart founder's comment is just one of hundreds mentioned in the book, which is reportedly based on more than 200 interviews with Trump and his inner circle. The book will hit shelves Tuesday, January 9.
