No defense of Congress as Bannon declares war

WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday offered a lukewarm defense of House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell after President Donald Trump’s former top strategist said he is going to war with them.

Trump is “committed” to working with the current crop of congressional GOP leaders, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Monday. But then, rather than say the GOP leaders and the president share a conservative policy agenda or otherwise defend them, she merely added that she had “nothing beyond that — at this point.”

Sanders was pressed multiple times during her daily press briefing about an explosive interview that aired Sunday evening featuring former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

He told CBS’s Charlie Rose on “60 Minutes” that the so-called “Republican establishment” is actively “trying to nullify the 2016 election — that’s a brutal fact we have to face.”

When pressed by Rose to name names, Bannon said “I think Mitch McConnell, and to a degree, Paul Ryan. They do not want Donald Trump’s populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented. It’s very obvious. … It’s obvious as night follows day.”

Bannon is back as the head of the conservative Breitbart News Network, and made clear that while he has no plans to use the popular site to criticize Trump, he will not hold fire on McConnell and Ryan.

“Now that you’re out of the White House,” Rose asked as one point, “you’re going to war with them?”

Bannon replied without hesitation: “Absolutely.”

To the ever-combative Bannon — who described himself during the “60 Minute” interview as a “street fighter” — McConnell and Ryan must be closely scrutinized by Trump’s allies if the president is going to enact his agenda, which as Bannon noted is not a clearly conservative one.