Here is the president of the United States of America’s official statement on his former chief advisor:
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. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating seventeen candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party. Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look.
Steve had very little to do with our historic victory, which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. Yet Steve had everything to do with the loss of a Senate seat in Alabama held for more than thirty years by Republicans. 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.
Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books. We have many great Republican members of the Make America Great Again agenda. Like me, they love the United States of America and are helping to finally take our country back and build it up, rather than simply seeking to burn it all down.
What the president did not say:
1. that Bannon “had blood coming out of his eyes, blood coming out of his wherever.”
2. that Bannon was “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
3. that Bannon was wrong when he said the chance that “Don. Jr did not walk [the Russians he met with in Trump Tower] up to his father’s office on the 26th floor is zero.”
4. that Bannon was wrong when he said that the campaign should have called the FBI rather than hold a meeting with Kremlin-connected Russians peddling illegally obtained dirt on Hillary Clinton.
5. that Bannon was wrong when he said that holding the meeting was “treasonous.”
6. that Bannon was wrong when he said that holding the meeting was “unpatriotic.”
7. that Bannon was wrong when he said that holding the meeting was “bad shit.”
8. that Bannon was wrong when he mocked the “brain trust” that decided to meet with the Russians with no lawyers present.
9. that Bannon was a “coffee boy.”
I don’t know how well the president will do in deflecting these criticisms with this stupid press release but if this is the kind of criminal defense he and his family are hoping to offer, he’s really going to wish he never became president.