Bannon Apologizes to Trump, Calls Don Jr. a “Patriot and a Good Man”

President Donald Trump talks to chief strategist Steve Bannon during a swearing-in ceremony for senior staff at the White House on January 22. (Photo: Reuters)

Steve Bannon apologized to the First Family in a statement to Axios, expressing “regret” to President Donald Trump and praising his son Donald Trump Jr. as “a patriot and a good man.”

“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,” Mr. Bannon told Axios. “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.”

The former White House strategist and current Executive Chairman at Breitbart News was quoted by author Michael Wolff as saying a meeting held between Don Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer connected to Fusion GPS at Trump Tower in July 2016 was “unpatriotic” and “treasonous.”

In Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury, which has been called into question my numerous journalists, Mr. Bannon is quoted as saying Special Counsel Robert Mueller III was “going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” While many people in the book have said the author straight fabricated their remarks, which he has a history of doing, Mr. Bannon did not dispute the comments.

President Trump returned fire in a scathing statement that in part said “he [Bannon] not only lost his job, he lost his mind.”

“Now that he is on his own, Steve is learning that winning isn’t as easy as I make it look,” he added. “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.”

Here’s the rest of Steve Bannon’s statement:

• “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.”