Steve Bannon may have been the man of the hour and the cock of the walk back in the days when he was crowing to the Hollywood Reporter that "the GOP will govern for fifty years" but those days are gone. Per the Daily Beast, "Bannon and his allies, both working in and outside of the West Wing, have been losing influence in Trump’s inner political circle, as reports of infighting between Bannon and Jared Kushner, spilled over into full public view. Last week, it was reported, citing multiple senior Trump administration officials that “face-to-face” ideological clashing has been “nonstop” in recent weeks, and that Bannon had called Kushner a “globalist” and a “cuck.” One official said Bannon had complained about Team Kushner trying to “shiv him and push him out the door.”Today things have come to a head once again and Trump is denying how long he has known Bannon or how well.
Anonymous Bannon allies tell The Daily Beast that Bannon was “blindsided” when President Trump falsely claimed that he never knew Bannon before Bannon came on to manage his presidential campaign.
What’s more, they say that Bannon is “laying low” for the time being to avoid rousing the president’s ire.
“Of course we didn’t know [that] interview was coming,” one Bannon ally said of Trump’s interview with the New York Post.
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”
However, PolitiFact has found that Trump’s claim to have not known Bannon until last year is completely at odds with what he said when he first announced he was bringing Bannon and top adviser Kellyanne Conway on board to run his campaign.
“I have known Steve and Kellyanne both for many years,”‘ Trump said at the time. “They are extremely capable, highly qualified people who love to win and know how to win.”
Additionally, PolitiFact points to a report from Real Clear Politics’ Rebecca Berg that claims Trump first met Bannon in 2011, while also noting that Trump appeared on Bannon’s talk radio program at least nine different times before Bannon came aboard as his campaign manager.
Trump has been an inveterate liar for quite some time and the Bannon-Kushner feud has been going on for quite some time as well. Bannon has consistently put Kushner in the one down position by planning the signing of executive orders or the issuing of press releases for Friday at sunset when Kushner is off work for the Jewish sabboth. That blew up last week, however, when animosity between the two men peaked in the wake of Bannon threatening to quit as Chief Strategist after he was removed from the National Security Council.
Bannon retaliated against Kushner by encouraging Breitbart and the alt-right press in general to write anti-Kushner articles, and that resulted in Kushner being characterized as "the little snake" [in the garden] and being compared to the satanic child in "The Omen," as well as the #FireKushner hastag being implemented. Alex Jones and Roger Stone declared that Jared and Ivanka Kushner were "enemies of the state." Trump went so far as to order the two feuding men to an impromptu retreat at Mar-A-Lago to work out their differences. Now, just a few days later, Trump is showing Bannon that blood is thicker than water and Bannon most likely will be packing up his war room and going home to Breitbart in the not too distant future. In any event, Bannon’s approval rating with Trump has clearly never been lower.