Trump ‘trying to halt release of damaging book’
AMERICAN PRESIDENT Donald Trump is seeking to stop the release of a book containing damaging allegations about his administration, it was claimed last night. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump
White House, which is due for release next week, quotes former top aide Steve Bannon describing a meeting with a group of Russians as “treasonous”.
It also questions Mr Trump’s fitness for office, reports that his wife was crying on election night and says Ivanka Trump has presidential ambitions.
The White House has disputed the book’s accuracy.
Mr Trump earlier said Mr Bannon – who was sacked in August – had “lost his mind” after being dismissed from his White House position.
Mr Bannon, who was forced out of his White House job last summer, was not surprised or particularly bothered by the backlash, according to a source.
The source said Mr Bannon vowed to continue his war on the Republican establishment and also predicted that, after a cooling-off period, he would continue to speak with Mr Trump, who likes to maintain contact with former advisers even after he fires and sometimes disparages them.
Ms Sanders said the two men last spoke in the first part of last month.
Meanwhile, Tony Blair has dismissed allegations that he warned Donald Trump that UK intelligence agencies may have spied on him as a “complete fabrication”.
The former Prime Minister said: “This story is a complete fabrication, literally beginning to end.”
PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has said he no longer speaks with former chief strategist Steve Bannon, who savaged his administration in a new book.
Mr Trump told reporters “I don’t talk to him”, before he began a White House meeting with Republican senators on immigration reform. Mr Bannon questioned Mr Trump’s fitness for office and made scandalous allegations against the president and his family in excerpts of the book, Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump
White House, by Michael Wolff. As the bombshell book surfaced on Wednesday, Mr Trump turned on Mr Bannon in a statement, saying he had “lost his mind”.
Speaking yesterday at the White House, Mr Trump said Mr Bannon spoke positively of him on Wednesday night on his Breitbart radio show. Mr Trump noted: “He called me a great man last night.”
The president added that his counter-attack had its desired outcome, saying: “He obviously changed his tune pretty quick.”
On Wednesday Mr Trump was scathing about his former ally over the new book which portrays the US president as an undisciplined man-child who did not actually want to win the White House and quotes his former adviser as calling his son’s contact with a Russian lawyer “treasonous”.
Hitting back via a formal White House statement rather than a more typical Twitter volley, Mr Trump insisted that Mr Bannon had little to do with his victorious campaign and “has nothing to do with me or my presidency”.
“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” he said.
The attack against Mr Bannon was sparked by an unflattering new book by Wolff which paints Mr Trump as a leader who does not understand the weight of the presidency and spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the phone to old friends.
Later, Mr Trump’s lawyer, Charles Harder, threatened legal action against the former aide over “disparaging statements and in some cases outright defamatory statements”.
Mr Harder wrote to Mr Bannon, saying he had violated confidentiality agreements by speaking to Mr Wolff. His letter demanded Mr Bannon “cease and
desist” any further disclosure of confidential information.
White House aides were blindsided when early excerpts from Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump
White House were published online by New York magazine and other media outlets ahead of the January 9 publication date. The release left Mr Trump “furious” and “disgusted”, said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who complained that the book contained “outrageous” and “completely false claims”. Asked what had prompted the president’s fury, she said: “I would certainly think that going after the president’s son in an absolutely outrageous and unprecedented way is probably not the best way to curry favour with anybody.”
When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. President Trump on former chief strategist Steve Bannon.