This week, a new book came out that has the political world’s attention — Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Reports about the book’s contents came out before its release that set off the president big time, including harsh comments from the president’s former top staffer and current Breitbart chief Steve Bannon.
Bannon is alleged to have literally accused Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort of treason because of their choice to meet with a Kremlin-connected lawyer back in 2016.
At the time, Trump Jr. was seeking dirt from this lawyer on Hillary Clinton, and Bannon isn’t that off point here in his grim assessment of secretly meeting with someone marketed as a representative of a foreign government.
Even still, the president lashed out at Bannon, issuing a statement with the quip that his former top adviser had “lost his mind.”
On Friday morning, the president took to Twitter to lash out at Bannon yet again, hitting him over losing the support of one of his most prominent backing interests, the Mercers.
The president wrote on Twitter:
‘The Mercer Family recently dumped the leaker known as Sloppy Steve Bannon. Smart!’
As some have pointed out, the president calling Bannon a “leaker” does, in a way, confirm some of his statements as accurate. You can’t leak stuff that you make up — so Bannon’s claims, for instance, of financial crimes on the part of the Trump team are given a bit more credibility with the president’s Friday tweet.
Multiple interests have pointed out that the Mercers distancing themselves from Bannon isn’t a new thing, even though yes, Rebekah Mercer issued a statement after excerpts from Wolff’s book were first circulated.
Even still, if you take a moment to think about the statement, it reveals that the Mercers distancing themselves from Bannon is something that came long before Trump huffed and puffed over the contents of a political expose.
Rebekah Mercer stated:
‘I support President Trump and the platform upon which he was elected. My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.’
That’s right — the Mercers have not communicated with Bannon for “many months.” Even still, it’s not at all clear that Trump doesn’t intend to take credit for Bannon losing the Mercers, who have poured large amounts of cash into Breitbart, among other interests.
It was back in November, before the Wolff book came out, that Robert Mercer — Rebekah’s father — announced that he would be selling off his stake in Breitbart to his daughters. Reporter Jane Mayer suggests that the split began over “Bannon’s proposed tax hike on millionaires.”
The Mercers have a history of doing their utmost to protect their cash, with Robert Mercer having gone back and forth with the IRS for months over the agency’s claims that his hedge fund had been illegally averting taxes.
In other words, the president has seemingly vastly oversimplified an issue yet again for the sake of advancing his interests.
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
