I guess, between the millions in soft money reportedly being yanked from under him and the biggest coattails he’s ever ridden publicly going bye-bye, “Sloppy Steve” Bannon (President Donald Trump’s words, not mine) has tapped out and apologized for statements attributed to him in a new biography of the president, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, by journalist Michael Wolff.
“Donald Trump, Jr. is both a patriot and a good man,” Bannon wrote Sunday in a statement to Axios. “He has been relentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helped turn our country around.”
Bannon specifically called out the president’s son in his apology because in the book, he’s said to have told Wolff that a 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and several Russian nationals was “treasonous.”
“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,” he continued.
The Daily Beast reported Friday that the Breitbart chief was set to disavow the book, but did not, after the president went HAM and said that Bannon had “lost his mind” (which, on a side note, sounds very black to this reporter).
A few days later, Bannon exclusively offered a mea culpa to Axios, most likely trying to cover his fat ass.
“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,” Bannon said Sunday in the statement.
Bannon continued that his comments were taken out of context—and that the “treasonous” comments were not about the president’s son but were, coincidentally, about Trump’s disgraced former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has been indicted for tax evasion and money laundering by special prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is looking into possible collusion with the Russians in the 2016 presidential election.
“To reiterate, those comments were not aimed at Don Jr.,” Bannon said.
This back-and-forth is better than an episode of Love & Hip Hop ... Miami (which isn’t really that hard).
Read more at Axios.