Stephen Bannon reportedly called the infamous Trump Tower Russia meeting 'treasonous' and 'unpatriotic'


It seems that Stephen Bannon really wants to distance himself from the Trump White House.
The Guardian got to sneak a peek at Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury, an upcoming book on the Trump White House in which Bannon features prominently. Perhaps most notably, the former Trump campaign chairman and White House chief strategist says that Donald Trump Jr.'s choice to take a meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was "treasonous" and "unpatriotic."
Trump Jr. went into the meeting on the promise of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton, but has maintained that no information was ultimately provided and that the summit was brief and inconsequential. Still, Bannon sees a dark future ahead for President Trump's eldest son: "They're going to crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV."
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Bannon additionally seems to believe the end may be near for the Trump presidency as a whole. "You realize where this going," he says about Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian election meddling, per Wolff. "This all about money laundering … Their path to f--king Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner." Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, has already been indicted in Mueller's investigation on financial charges, while Kushner's bank records are reportedly being subject to scrutiny.
Bannon has made similarly dour predictions about his former employer before, like when he told Vanity Fair in October that he believed Trump only had a 30 percent chance of serving four years in office. But the bombastic Breitbart chairman reportedly believes the June 2016 meeting was the campaign's most unwise move: "The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower," Wolff quotes him as saying. "That's the brain trust that they had."
Read more about Wolff's upcoming book at The Guardian.
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Kelly O'Meara Morales is a staff writer at The Week. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and studied Middle Eastern history and nonfiction writing amongst other esoteric subjects. When not compulsively checking Twitter, he writes and records music, subsists on tacos, and watches basketball.
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