People might think that former chief strategist and Donald Trump campaign chief executive, Steve Bannon, would be loyal to the president. If so, they would be wrong. When he talked to author Michael Wolff, he was blunt and unflattering.
Wolff says his book is based on over 200 Trump interviews, plus interviews with his inner circle and outside advisers. Bannon was naturally one of those. Wolff is the author Rupert Murdoch’s biography, too.
Wolff told The Guardian that he wrote in Fire and Fury that Bannon warned the administration that Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation would be centered upon money laundering and collusion with the Kremlin. The former strategist apparently does not think highly of Donald Trump Jr.:
‘They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.’
Bannon seems to hold Trump in contempt, too. He gave Wolff insight into the inner White House workings as it lurched from “crisis to crisis,” according to the Guardian.Â
After leaving the White House, the strategist returned to the alt-right Breitbart News, which is owned by Murdoch.
Bannon said this about the meeting the younger Trump arranged with son-in-law “Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York”:
‘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 continued:
‘You never see it, you never know it, because you don’t need to … But that’s the brain trust that they had.’
Bannon advised Trump against firing former FBI Director James Comey:
‘You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose (senior prosecutor Andrew) Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.’
According to the Guardian, these include:
‘Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Manafort has pleaded not guilty to money laundering charges; Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. In recent weeks Bannon’s Breitbart News and other conservative outlets have accused Mueller’s team of bias against the president.’
Bannon told Wolff about the Deutsche Bank, which has loaned “hundreds of millions of dollars” to the Kushner family:
‘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.’
He continued:
‘They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.’
Wolff told Guardian why he started his book:
‘To research the book, he showed up at the White House with no agenda but wanting to “find out what the insiders were really thinking and feeling.” He enjoyed extraordinary access to Trump and senior officials and advisers, he said, sometimes at critical moments of the fledgling presidency.’
Wolff said that Bannon and Kushner, plus Kushner’s wife Ivanka Trump, did not get along. He referred to Kushner as “Javanka.” Bannon is supposed to be a friend of Trump, but it is not apparent from what he said about the president:
‘He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.’
Those words are not comforting, given that Trump has been dancing with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un about who has the bigger button, which would start a nuclear war.
Featured Image via Getty Images/Joe Raedle.
