On Wednesday, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon tore into his former boss, President Trump, as well as Trump’s son Donald Jr. and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. He also backhandedly swiped his own publication, Breitbart News, and dumped all over the entire Trump campaign.
All in a day’s work for that supremely loyal aide to the Great Man Himself.
Bannon spoke with author Michael Wolff for Wolff’s new book; that book has now been reported by The Guardian. Bannon told Wolff that Robert Mueller’s investigation would “crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” He stated that Donald Jr.’s campaign meeting with a lawyer associated with the Russian government was “treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s***,” and added that Trump Jr. and associates “should have called the FBI immediately.” Bannon’s shocking turn toward advocacy for transparency is a far cry from his statements on 60 Minutes last year, when he called the Russia investigation a “farce” and a “waste of time.” Suddenly, after Bannon becomes just another political loser hanging around the fringes of power, he has a change of heart. (Worth noting: Bannon wasn’t on the campaign at the time of the meeting, so he has no insider knowledge of what happened there.)
Hilariously, Bannon went on to tell Wolff that such a meeting should have occurred “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people,” and information should then have been “dump[ed] … down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication.”
It’s certainly hilarious to hear Bannon, the chairman of Breitbart News, admit that he’s turned the publication into an illegitimate one. But it’s puzzling that Bannon thinks the meeting would become non-treasonous if it were leaked to the media.
Then again, Bannon was the leakiest faucet at the White House, too.
Bannon went on to tell Wolff that the investigation would eventually center on Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law: “You realize where this is going. This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissman first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to f***ing Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner…It’s as plain as a hair on your face…It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner s***. The Kushner s*** 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…They’re sitting on a beach trying to stop a Category Five.”
Odd how according to Bannon, the investigation will hit all of his personal enemies.
None of this is a surprise coming from a leech on the ass of power, a man who rode Michele Bachmann’s coattails to Sarah Palin’s coattails to Andrew Breitbart’s coattails to Donald Trump’s and the Mercer family’s coattails. It’s also not a shock from a fellow whose only contribution to the White House was apparently leaking regularly to reporters for The New York Times. Bannon’s an ambitious fellow, and his connection to power has now been reportedly cut off on both the monetary side (the going rumor has it that the Mercers aren’t funding his side projects anymore) and the political side (he’s not on good terms with the Trump White House, either). That means he has to build a brand of his own. So far, his branding isn’t going well — it turns out endorsing a credibly accused child molester and then utilizing your publication to dig up dirt on the accusers doesn’t do much for your Q rating. So now Bannon, who always had more balls than brains, is turning on the hand that fed him.
Bannon’s utterly full of crap on virtually every level, of course. He always has been. But his comments are going to cause a whole new round of headaches for the Trump administration, since the media have insisted from the outset that Bannon is far more important than he has ever actually been.