Shortly after comparing the size of his “Nuclear Button” with Kim Jong-un, President Donald Trump verbally attacked his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, for making derogatory comments concerning his presidency, blatant collusion with Russian officials, and the stupidity of his children. Although Trump praised Bannon last year for his service, the president attempted to distance himself from the former White House chief strategist on Wednesday and accused Bannon of losing his mind.
In a new book by Michael Wolff titled “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” Bannon told the author, “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”
Referring to the secretive June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower involving Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and several Russians with ties to Vladimir Putin, Bannon scathingly observed, “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.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon added, “The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”
“You realise where this is going,” Bannon reportedly said while reflecting on Special Counselor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner…It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”
Bannon concluded, “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”
On August 19, 2017, the president tweeted, “I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton – it was great! Thanks S”
On Wednesday, President Trump issued the following 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.”
In response to Bannon’s comments, Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter on Wednesday and wrote, “Steve had the honor of working in the White House & serving the country. Unfortunately, he squandered that privilege & turned that opportunity into a nightmare of backstabbing, harassing, leaking, lying & undermining the President. Steve is not a strategist, he is an opportunist.”
Trump fired Bannon last year after several publications and even SNL depicted Bannon as the insidious puppet master pulling the egomaniacal president’s strings. Both Trump and Bannon publicly supported accused child molester Roy Moore who lost his Alabama Senate candidacy to Doug Jones last month.
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