Bannon backs away from Don Jr remarks

FormerDonald Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Sunday sought to back away fromincendiary remarks quoted in an explosive new book that have landed himin hot water with the president he helped elect.Bannon has foundhimself in dire straits since excerpts of Paul Wolff’s Fire and Fury:Inside the Trump White House — an explosive behind-the-scenes accountthat questions the president’s fitness for office — were first publishedlast Wednesday.He has been abandoned by financial patrons,condemned by erstwhile political allies and ridiculed by Trump himselfover his reported comments in the book, which he has not denied making.Inthe book, Bannon is quoted as saying a pre-election meeting involvingson Donald Trump Jr and a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer was“treasonous,” and that prosecutors investigating possible collusionbetween the Trump campaign and Russia would “crack Don Junior like anegg on national TV.”In a statement to the Axios news website,Bannon, who was a senior Trump adviser until he was ousted in August,said: “Donald Trump Jr is both a patriot and a good man. He has beenrelentless in his advocacy for his father and the agenda that has helpedturn our country around.”His criticism, Bannon said, was aimed atonetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, “a seasoned campaignprofessional” who “should have known (the Russians) are duplicitous,cunning and not our friends.” But in Fire and Fury, Bannon is quotedas saying that “the top three guys in the campaign” — Manafort, DonaldJr and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — attended the meeting hedescribed as “treasonous”.The closest Bannon came to an actual apology was saying he regretted the timing of his response.“Iregret that my delay in responding to the inaccurate reportingregarding Don Jr has diverted attention from the president’s historicalaccomplishments.”Trump on Sunday continued his daily assault on Fireand Fury and its author, tweeting that the book — which paints him asdisengaged, ill-informed and unstable, with signs of serious memory loss— was a “Fake Book, written by a totally discredited author.” A day earlier, seeking to refute Wolff’s suggestion that he lacked stability, Trump called himself a “very stable genius.”SeniorTrump policy adviser Stephen Miller treated the book derisively whileinsisting that his boss was in fact “a political genius,” in aninterview with CNN on Sunday.Wolff, Miller said, “is a garbage author of a garbage book.” He assailed Bannon, reportedly a key source for the author, as “vindictive” and “out of touch with reality.”Wolffdefended his work on Sunday, telling NBC he “absolutely did not”violate any off-the-record agreements in his reporting but conceding, ofthe total three hours he said he spent with Trump, that the president“probably did not think of them as interviews.”He also portrayed ahigh level of concern in the White House over whether Trump risks beingremoved from office as unfit, as is possible — if difficult — under theconstitution’s 25th Amendment.Almost daily, he said, White House aides would say, “We’re not at a 25th Amendment level yet.”NikkiHaley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, rejected that notion,telling ABC that no one at the White House “questions the stability ofthe president.” She suggested that Wolff was someone who would “lie for money and for power.”But Wolff insisted he did not enter the book project with an anti-Trump bias or agenda.“Iwould have been delighted to have written a contrarian account here:‘Donald Trump, this unexpected president, is actually going to succeed.’Okay, that’s not the story. He is not going to succeed. This is worsethan everybody thought.”CIA director Mike Pompeo, appearing on FoxNews Sunday, insisted that Wolff’s portrayal of Trump was “just purefantasy.”  Far from being detached and unable to deal with complexpolicy issues, Pompeo said, “The president is engaged, he understandsthe complexity, he asks really difficult questions of our team at theCIA.” He described Trump as an “avid consumer” of the agency’s intelligence.