Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is, “one of the most eagerly awaited political books of the year,” according to The Guardian. The book, written by author Michael Wolff includes more than 200 interviews with President Donald Trump, his colleagues and members of his administration.
The book gives readers an inside look into the 2016 Presidential campaign and how the Trump administration handled their victory and the crises that soon followed. And while victory was sweet, a few of Trump’s closest allies reveal condescension for the current Commander in Chief.
Steve Bannon, a former investment banker and executive chairman of Breitbart News is one of them.
Appointed chief executive of the Trump campaign in the final three months, he served as White House chief strategist for the first seven months, before he left to return to Breitbart News. With Brietbart posting stories like, “Gay rights have made us dumber, it’s time to get back in the closet,” and “White people pretend to be black because that’s an advantage,” it’s no wonder Bannon was controversial, radical and what many argued, a solid fit for the Trump campaign.
However, upon Bannon’s departure, he had strong words for one of President Donald Trump’s most highly publicized and criticized scandals, the alleged collusion with the Russians.
In a June 2016 meeting in New York’s Trump Tower, President Donald Trump’s son Donald Jr., his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya met to discuss what were documents promised to them, that would ultimately “incriminate” Hillary Clinton. Instead of alerting the FBI immediately about the alleged information that was uncovered, Donald Jr. simply replied in an email, “I love it.”
The meeting between the three men and the Russian lawyer is not a new story, but Bannon’s comments are. He told Wolff, per The Guardian that “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon even went on to speculate that Donald Trump Jr., involved President Donald Trump in the information he uncovered during that June 2016 meeting. He said, ”The chance that Don Jr did not walk these jumos up to his father’s office on the twenty-sixth floor is zero.”
In December of 2017, federal prosecutors subpoenaed records from Deutsche Bank, the same financial intuition that lent hundred of millions of dollars to the Kushner’s property company, and Bannon had thoughts on that as well. He said, “It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit 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.”
While, Bannon has insisted he knows not a single Russian, will not be getting a lawyer, will not be speaking to the matter on national television or be a witness, it’s clear he’s loose lipped.
Shortly after news of Bannon’s comments in the book broke on Wednesday, Trump released a statement denouncing Bannon and saying “Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency.”
JUST IN: President Trump statement on Steve Bannon: “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.” pic.twitter.com/LxZoBI5Ng4
— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 3, 2018
Trump also commented on Bannon’s approach to the media, claiming that he spent most of his time at the White House “leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was.”
Wolff’s, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House will be published next week.