Last week, what’s proven to be an incendiary book came out. Called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, Michael Wolff’s book has sent the Trump team scrambling for cover, with an array of allegations contained within its pages that yet again cast the legitimacy and competence of the Trump White House into serious question.
In the book, among other incendiary points are comments from Steve Bannon that an infamous meeting in 2016 involving Donald Trump Jr. and a Kremlin connected lawyer was “treasonous.”
Bannon wasn’t that far off point in his reported assertion, but it unsurprisingly earned him a lot of scorn from within the Trump camp, including from the president himself. In response to Bannon’s comments being published, Trump quipped that his former campaign head had “lost his mind.”
Besides the comments from Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and the billionaire Mercers also distanced themselves from the Breitbart leader, and there was even talk that Bannon would lose his job at Breitbart, which he returned to after leaving the Trump White House late last year.
Now, after days had passed with the nation watching and waiting to see what would happen with Bannon, days in which Bannon was feeling the heat of pressure from his longtime allies, the Breitbart executive has issued an apology to the Trump team.
In his apology, he claims that he never even meant to implicate Donald Trump Jr. with his comments about the 2016 meeting he participated in being “treasonous,” instead aiming them at Paul Manafort, who was also in the meeting.
His statement, published by Axios, reads on that subject:
‘My comments were aimed at Paul Manafort, a seasoned campaign professional with experience and knowledge of how the Russians operate. He should have known they are duplicitous, cunning and not our friends. To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.’
He explains that his understanding of the Russians as “cunning” is born out of his time both in the Navy and at the Pentagon.
Besides his praise for Donald Jr., Bannon also reiterated his support for the president, saying:
‘My support is also unwavering for the president and his agenda — as I have shown daily in my national radio broadcasts, on the pages of Breitbart News and in speeches and appearances from Tokyo and Hong Kong to Arizona and Alabama.’
Axios notes that it’s going to be a long road for Bannon to make it to be on good terms with the president again if he ever even successfully makes it to the end of that road at all. Trump has lashed out at Bannon repeatedly on Twitter in the wake of his comments in Wolff’s book being published, even coming up with a nickname for him — “Sloppy Steve.”
Axios says that they’ve “learned that POTUS has said that he wants surrogates who appear for him on TV to ‘bury Steve.'”
There’s evidence for Axios’ claim in the form of Stephen Miller’s contentious appearance on CNN this Sunday, an appearance in which he lambasted Bannon’s comments — which included others besides his perceived jab at Trump Jr. — as “grotesque.”
That interview — in classic Trump-ian fashion — ended early when Miller wouldn’t stop shouting at Tapper.
Featured Image via Joe Raedle/ Getty Images
