White House erupts in anger over explosive book by Trump’s former chief strategist

Fire and fury erupted from the White House on Wednesday and it was not directed at North Korea or Pakistan.

US President Donald Trump unloaded on his former aide and chief strategist Steve Bannon after he trashed Trump and his family in interviews to a journalist whose book is now the hottest property in town. Bannon suggests among other things that meetings between Trump’s aides — including the President’s family members — and Russian interlocutors, were possibly “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”

Bannon’s remarks emerged in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House that has just come out and zoomed to the top of the best seller list on the strength of some astonishing claims: Among them –neither Trump nor anyone from his circle expected to win the election, and there was a feeling of shock, horror and disbelief on election night when he actually won against all odds, predictions, and polls.

Michael Wolff, author of the book, says Trump didn’t want to win but ran for the White House because it would make him “both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary.” After he won, he was completely unprepared for office because he is is ill-informed and disinterested, and engaged mainly in satisfying his own ego.

The reaction from the White House was so fast and furious that all other crises, including nuclear saber rattling with North Korea, were sidelined and Washington was engulfed in a firestorm that overshadowed the cold front closing in on the East Coast. Hours after Bannon’s remarks surfaced, Trump ditched his favorite medium of Twitter to ferociously attack his one-time political lieutenant in an official statement, the likes of which Washington has not seen or heard before.

“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,” the statement began. It went on to dismiss him as a “staffer who worked for me” after he (Trump) had won the Republican nomination, and who had “very little to do with our historic victory.”

“Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself….Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was. It is the only thing he does well,” Trump continued in a litany of charges against a man who was widely seen as his alter-ego /Svengali etc till be was fired from the White House in August last year.

Bannon was ejected from the White House after less than a year as Trump’s “chief strategist” after he fell afoul of Trump’s family, including his son Donald Trump Jr and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom Bannon regarded as elite New York Democrats and liberals (as was Trump himself). In the book, he is said to call Kushner “greasy” and Ivanka “dumb as a brick.”

In fact, the President’s fury appeared to stem from Bannon’s conclusion that the two Trump family members had erred in meeting with Russian interlocutors, and that FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller would eventually nail them.

“They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV,” Bannon is quoted saying in the book, referring to Trump’s son.

There are other unflattering references to Trump and his family in the book, including a purported understanding between Kushner and his wife/Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump that she will run for President at an appropriate time, how Trump and wife sleep in separate bedrooms, Trump’s own sloppy eating habits, and his addition to watching TV news. The book also says Trump and Bannon were once so close that they met over dinner almost daily.

Washington DC and much of the political world lapped up excerpts from the book as it dribbled into social media and the press, leaving the White House in a firefighting mode throughout the day after Trump himself lit into Bannon, who did not deny his remarks.

Late in the day, Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon, accusing him of violating the employment agreement he signed with the Trump Organization and saying he also likely defamed the president.

They ordered that he stop communicating either confidential and/or disparaging information, and preserve all records in preparation for “imminent” legal action.

Wolff himself is not exactly known to be the paragon of accuracy, and his book also contained other tawdry details that were challenged by the White House, including claims that Trump was shell-shocked by his own victory and his wife Melania was dismayed by his win and was in fact in tears – not of joy.

The White House First Lady’s office released a separate statement saying Wolff’s book should be in the “bargain fiction” bin, while the Republican National Committee said Wolff has a long history of making stuff up. Don Jr also followed by his father sulfurous statement with his own jibes on Twitter.

“Steve had the honor of working in the White House & serving the country. Unfortunately, he squandered that privilege & turned that opportunity into a nightmare of backstabbing, harassing, leaking, lying & undermining the President. Steve is not a strategist, he is an opportunist,” Trump Junior tweeted.

Source: Times of India