Trump Breaks With Bannon, Saying He Has ‘Lost His Mind’
WASHINGTON — President Trump essentially excommunicated his onetime chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, from his political circle on Wednesday,
excoriating him as a self-promoting exaggerator who had “very little to do with our historic victory” and has now “lost his mind.”
In a written statement brimming with anger and resentment, Mr. Trump fired back at Mr. Bannon, who had made caustic comments about the president
and his family to the author of a new book about the Trump White House.
“When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”
Mr. Trump berated Mr. Bannon for the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama and said the former adviser did not represent his base
but was “only in it for himself.” Rather than supporting the president’s agenda to “make America great again,” Mr. Bannon was “simply seeking to burn it all down,” Mr. Trump said.
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.”
The president was responding to comments attributed to Mr. Bannon in a new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” by Michael Wolff.
In the book, Mr. Bannon was quoted suggesting that Donald Trump Jr., the future president’s son; Jared Kushner, his son-in-law;
and Paul J. Manafort, then the campaign chairman, had been “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for meeting with Russians offering incriminating information on Hillary Clinton during a June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.
“Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency,” Mr. Trump said in the statement.
