Trump Responds To Steve Bannon’s ‘Treason’ Accusation, Says His Former Top Strategist Has ‘Lost His Mind’

Ahead of its January 9th publication, Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House is already making waves thanks to excerpts published in New York magazine and The Guardian. The latter is especially divisive, however, as it repeats claims made by Steve Bannon, the former Trump campaign executive and White House chief strategist who was subsequently ousted by Chief of Staff John Kelly. Why? Because Bannon called the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian officials “treasonous” and said Don Jr. would be “[cracked] like an egg on national TV.”

Evidently, the White House caught wind of The Guardian‘s excerpt from Wolff, and Bannon’s choice words in it, because President Trump issued a lengthy response hours later:

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.

Between claiming Bannon “lost his mind” when he was fired, dubbing him a mere “staffer,” and suggesting his election victory was all but secured prior to the Breitbart executive’s arrival, Trump’s response is rife with as much jawdropping material as Wolff’s book excerpts are. However, much like the president’s recent “nuclear button” tweet aimed at North Korea, the statement seems to say far more about Trump than it does about Bannon. After all, he initially supported Luther Strange during Alabama’s GOP primaries, which Roy Moore (Bannon’s candidate) won instead. Trump eventually endorsed Moore, who lost to Doug Jones.

You can read Trump’s full statement responding to Bannon’s remarks below:

(Via CNN)