BOOK DRAWS REBUKE FROM PRESIDENT
“When he was fired ... he lost his mind,” president says of former adviser
President Donald Trump delivers a scorching rebuke to Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, before the release of a new, unflattering book.
WASHINGTON» President Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on former top adviser Steve Bannon on Wednesday, responding to a new book that portrays Trump as an undisciplined man-child who didn’t actually want to win the White House and quotes Bannon 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, Trump insisted 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,” Trump said.
It was a blistering attack against the man who helped deliver the presidency to Trump. It was spurred by an unflattering new book by writer Michael Wolff that paints Trump as a leader who doesn’t understand the weight of the presidency and spends his evenings eating cheeseburgers in bed, watching television and talking on the phone to old friends.
White House aides were blindsided when excerpts from “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” were published online by New York magazine and other outlets before the Jan. 9 publication date.
In the book, Bannon is quoted as describing a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr., Trump campaign aides and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” The meeting has become a focus of federal and congressional investigators.
Bannon also told Wolff the investigations into potential collusion between Russia and Trump campaign officials would likely focus on money laundering.
The Washington Post reported that lawyers for Trump sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, arguing he had violated a nondisclosure agreement in speaking about his time on the campaign and in Trump’s most trusted inner circle.