Trump: Bannon has 'lost his mind'
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 01/03/18 01:24 PM EST 1,337
President Trump on Wednesday ripped former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon for his incendiary criticism of the president and his family published in a new book.
In a blistering statement issued by the White House, Trump said Bannon has "lost his mind" and claimed he had “no influence” within the West Wing.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Trump said. “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
Trump sought to undercut the veracity of comments attributed to Bannon, once one of Trump's closest aides, that appear in the forthcoming book by Michael Wolff "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House."
"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," Trump said.
"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," the president added.
Earlier Wednesday, excerpts from the book leaked that quoted Bannon describing a 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between a Russian lawyer and Trump’s son and son-in-law as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
"They're going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV," Bannon predicted, referring to the president’s eldest son.
The book, which purports to draw on more than 200 interviews, is full of explosive claims about Trump, his family and his staff that painted a picture of a campaign and administration wracked by chaos and infighting.
Bannon, who was ousted from the White House last August, is quoted frequently as a central figure in the campaign and the administration.
The president’s statement came as a part of a full-court press by the White House against the book.
“This book is filled with false and misleading accounts from individuals who have no access or influence with the White House,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a subsequent statement. “Participating in a book that can only be described as trashy tabloid fiction exposes their sad, desperate attempts at relevancy.”
Stephanie Grisham, the communications director for Melania Trump, denied vivid claims in Wolffs’ book that the first lady was cried tears of sadness after Trump’s election victory.
“The book is clearly going to be sold in the bargain fiction section,” said Grisham. “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.”
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