In a new book, former Trump campaign manager and presidential strategist Steve Bannon is quoted as saying contacts the campaign had with Russian agents before his involvement were “treasonous” and “unpatriotic,” singling out a meeting attended by the president's son and son-in-law.
The meeting was revealed by the New York Times in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.
“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
Bannon went on, Wolff writes, to say that if any such meeting had to take place, it should have been set up “in a Holiday Inn in Manchester, New Hampshire, with your lawyers who meet with these people”. Any information, he said, could then be “dump[ed] … down to Breitbart or something like that, or maybe some other more legitimate publication”.
Bannon comparing Breitbart, his own media outlet, to "other more legitimate publications" is something of a buried lede. But it's not as if anyone's pretending otherwise.
A telling moment of candor by a leading member of Trump’s team, but don’t be fooled. Bannon and other populist nationalists will learn from Trump’s worst mistakes and be more clever, but their philosophies will remain every bit as dangerous and vile. https://t.co/FgNLr1NFay
— Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) January 3, 2018
Welcome to the Resistance, Steve Bannon! https://t.co/gZBke642cg
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) January 3, 2018
Ok. When Steve Bannon is way out in front of even ME on the use of the word “treasonous” I’m guessing we’re approaching the proverbial End Game https://t.co/1yHaTWEYU2
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) January 3, 2018
So @anthony makes a great point: Bannon's comments to Wolff came when he was in the White House. Now that he's not, and Mueller has started to look at him, he's singing a different tune.
Basically, he's slime whose slime-trail confirms the validity of the Russia investigation. https://t.co/L17fBLcHom
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) January 3, 2018
So Bannon is giving the Democrats everything they ever dreamed of just in time to torpedo the Trump agenda going into the midterms? WHY would he do that? It's the opposite of what he stands for. I don't believe it.
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) January 3, 2018