US President Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on Steve Bannon, one of his former political allies and former White House strategist, on Wednesday, calling him crazy and playing down his role, reports Reuters.
The president’s comments come after revealing controversial excerpts from a new book on the White House during the Trump era, in which Bannon describes a meeting between Trump’s son, Donald Jr., and a Russian lawyer in the 2016 campaign as “betrayal” and “unnational.”
“When he was sacked, he did not lose his job, but his mind as well,” Trump said in blunt remarks even to the belligerent president.
Trump said Bannon had “done it only for his own good,” knowing that he was the architect of the New York real estate tycoon’s nepotism and helped create a pro-Trump media.
Bannon’s scathing remarks came in a book by Michael Wolf entitled “Fire and Wrath: Inside White Trump House” which is due for publication next week.
But the Guardian and New York magazine have also published excerpts that are also exposed to presidential ambitions. Trump’s daughter Ivanka says Trump himself did not believe he would defeat Hillary Clinton.
Banon, who left the White House in August, was quoted as saying that the investigation by Special Adviser Robert Mueller in the case of Russian intervention in the 2016 election would focus on money laundering.
The investigations by Muller, the former director of the FBI, are looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia for his election victory – a charge that the president has repeatedly rejected.
– It was more effective to contact the FBI –
Donald Trump Jr. attended the meeting with a Russian lawyer after receiving promises of offensive material for a campaign against his father, Hillary Clinton.
President Trump Jared Kouchner and campaign director Paul Manafort also attended the meeting at the Trump Tower in New York.
“The three big men in the campaign thought that meeting a foreign government at the Trump Tower in the conference hall on the 25th floor without lawyers was a good idea,” the book quoted Pannon as saying.
“They did not have any lawyers.”
“Even if you think the meeting is not treason, not patriotism or filth, and I think all that, it would have been more effective to contact the FBI immediately,” he said.
– No little role in the electoral victory –
Trump was quick to respond harshly to the comments quoted by Bannon, a former investment banking expert and founder and chief executive of conservative Web site Printport News.
“Now that he is alone, Steve is learning that winning is not as easy as making it look,” said Trump. “Steve has hardly played a role in our historic victory for the forgotten men and women in this country.”
“Steve pretends to be in a war against the media he calls the opposition party, but he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to give himself more importance than he had.”
“Steve barely had a one-on-one meeting with me and pretended to have had the effect of deceiving a few unknown people and helping them write false books,” Trump said.
Woolf, who says he is based on interviews with Trump and his top aides, also mentions that Trump did not know who former House Speaker John Bainer was and that he ate McDonald’s meals because he believed it was safe.
“The book is full of false and misleading information from people who have no White House ties or influence,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.