The rift between President Trump and former strategist Steve Bannon seems has been in steady escalation this morning. Earlier, the former White House strategist Steve Bannon claimed that Don Trump Jr will “crack […] like an egg” under pressure from the erroneous Russia investigations. Continuing, Bannon went as far as to call Trump Jr’s agreement to meet with a Russian attorney “treasonous”.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s***, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon then went on to double down on his distaste for Jared Kushner and stated to author Michael Wolff:
“You realize where this is going,” Bannon told Wolff. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose (senior prosecutor Andrew) Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f—ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”
“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner s–t. The Kushner s–t is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me,”
On the heels of Mr. Bannon’s claims, President Trump punched back saying that the former strategist has “lost his mind”, that he “only pretends to have influence”, and that Bannon had “very little to do with our historic victory.”
Full Presidential Statement Via BloombergPolitics:
Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my Presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.
Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look. Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. 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.
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. It is the only thing he does well. 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.
We have many great Republican members of Congress and candidates who are very supportive of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
This story is still developing….