Bannon comments stoke Trump’s ire

President: Former strategist ‘lost his mind’ after he was fired in August

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump denounced his former top strategist Steve Bannon on Wednesday, distancing himself from the man considered the architect of Trump’s populist campaign.

“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind,” Trump said in a statement issued after the publication of excerpts of a new book in which Bannon criticizes the president and his family. “Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.”

Bannon has lost the access to the president that

he’s enjoyed since leaving the White House in August, one person familiar with the matter said.

Meanwhile, Trump’s former campaign chairman sued special counsel Robert Mueller and the Justice Department on Wednesday, saying prosecutors had overstepped their bounds by charging him for conduct that he says is unrelated to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The lawsuit by Paul Manafort, filed in federal court in Washington, is the most direct challenge to date to Mueller’s legal authority and the scope of his mandate as special counsel.

Earlier Wednesday, The Guardian published excerpts of a forthcoming book by

author Michael Wolff in which Bannon predicts that Mueller will “crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV” over the president’s son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in June 2016.

Bannon also called Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with the lawyer, in which he expected to receive damaging information on Trump’s election opponent Hillary Clinton, “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” according to The Guardian.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters at a briefing that Trump was “furious, disgusted” by Bannon’s remarks about his son, calling the claims “outrageous” and “completely false.”

Bannon, reached by Bloomberg News, declined to comment on the remarks published by The Guardian. Two people close to him said he wasn’t bothered by the president’s statement. They asked not to be identified.

Also Wednesday, New York Magazine published an article by Wolff, based on the book, that recounts a conversation between Bannon and former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes in which the two men debated whether Trump understood the importance of his election.

“‘Does he get it?’ asked Ailes suddenly, looking intently at Bannon. Did Trump get where history had put him?” Wolff wrote. “Bannon took a sip of water. ‘He gets it,’ he said, after hesitating for perhaps a beat too long. ‘Or he gets what he gets.”’

In his 265-word statement, Trump went on to criticize Bannon for some of his activities at the White House and afterward. He blamed Bannon for the loss of a Republican Senate seat in Alabama in a special election last month and accused him of leaking to news reporters while he served as the White House chief strategist.

“Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country,” Trump said. “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.”

Bannon backed former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore over Trump’s preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, in a primary election for the Alabama seat. Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones in a special election after several women accused Moore of sexual misconduct while they were teenagers.

Trump Jr. also declined to comment but retweeted a Bloomberg News reporter’s tweet about the outcome of the Alabama election with the comment: “Thanks Steve. Keep up the great work.”

President Trump complimented Bannon when he left the White House in August, saying Bannon “would be a tough and smart new voice at” the website, Breitbart News. “Maybe even better than before. Fake News needs the competition!”

And Bannon boasted at a private luncheon in Hong Kong in September that he spoke with Trump by phone every two to three days, according to two people who attended.

After Trump issued his statement on Bannon, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign staff tweeted an image of the Kentucky Republican sitting at his desk, grinning.

Bannon, a populist and nationalist who considers much of the Republican establishment corrupt, has said Senate Republicans should replace McConnell and has sought to recruit people to run against McConnell’s favored candidates in Republican primaries, including in Alabama.

Wolff, who New York Magazine said conducted more than 200 interviews for his book, including with the president and most of Trump’s senior staff, also reported that Trump never expected to win the election and had promised his wife, Melania, that he wouldn’t be president. She “was in tears — and not of joy” on Election Night as it became clear Trump would beat Clinton, Wolff reported.

“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” Melania Trump’s spokesman, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement. “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.”

The book is titled Fire and Fury: Inside Trump’s White House.

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