Steve Bannon has issued an apology for the quotes that appeared in Michael Wolff’s book offering some clarification on the context. Looks like it’s too little to late though.
Steve Bannon has in essence apologized for comments he made that were quoted in Michael Wolff’s new anti-Trump book.
A full statement was provided to Axios.
“Donald Trump, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man. He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around.”
“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.”
“President Trump was the only candidate that could have taken on and defeated the Clinton apparatus. I am the only person to date to conduct a global effort to preach the message of Trump and Trumpism; and remain ready to stand in the breech for this president’s efforts to make America great again.”
“My comments about the meeting with Russian nationals came from my life experiences as a Naval officer stationed aboard a destroyer whose main mission was to hunt Soviet submarines to my time at the Pentagon during the Reagan years when our focus was the defeat of ‘the evil empire’ and to making films about Reagan’s war against the Soviets and Hillary Clinton’s involvement in selling uranium to them.”
“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.”
“Everything I have to say about the ridiculous nature of the Russian ‘collusion’ investigation I said on my 60 Minutes interview. There was no collusion and the investigation is a witch hunt.”
“I regret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reporting regarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president’s historical accomplishments in the first year of his presidency.”
This is too little to late. Bannon has proven himself to be an unreliable ally to Trump. That’s why Trump is burying him on Twitter.
Michael Wolff is a total loser who made up stories in order to sell this really boring and untruthful book. He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad! https://t.co/mEeUhk5ZV9
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018
When all of this news broke, he should have been on television correcting the record if he felt that his statements were made out of context. Instead, we see this statement issued to Axios days after the story dominated the media cycle.
There’s also the issue of leaks which mostly went away after Bannon left the White House. It was almost as if Bannon was trying to build his own political brand off of the Trump presidency. Others have claimed that he’s always been an intelligence asset of some kind. But who knows what his real motivations were. Whatever they were, they were counterproductive. He shouldn’t have been leaking information to the media and he shouldn’t have been talking to shady people like Wolff.
Bannon’s political implosion isn’t the end of the world though. This fiasco doesn’t invalidate Bannon’s original political strategy. There will be Trump-populist candidates running in Republican primaries irregardless of this situation. We should continue to support these candidates. They might even have a better chance of winning now that Bannon is out of the picture.
The only bad news to this is that Trump is now more closely aligned with establishment Republicans. It is hard to say how this will impact policy.
Of course, it isn’t like Trump has any choice but to work with these clowns. Congress is filled with establishment Republicans. That’s why we need to purge them with a combination of populists and Nazis who want to gas Jews.
