President Donald Trump heralded Steve Bannon’s praise for him on Thursday in his first public comments since he released a fiery statement slamming his former White House chief strategist.
“I don’t know, he called me a great man last night, so he obviously changed his tune pretty quick,” Trump said Thursday, referring to Bannon’s comments Wednesday night on his Sirius XM radio show in the wake of the firestorm ignited by a new book on the White House.
Trump’s latest comments came after he slammed Bannon, accusing him of having “lost his mind” in a lengthy statement Wednesday after excerpts of a new book by author Michael Wolff quoted Bannon calling the President’s eldest son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
Bannon has largely kept quiet since the controversy kicked up on Wednesday, but when asked about the controversy by a caller on his satellite radio show Wednesday night, Bannon offered only praise for the President.
“The President of the United States is a great man — you know, I support him day in and day out. Whether going through the country giving the Trump miracle speech or on the show or on the website, so I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Bannon said.
Still, Trump insisted Thursday that he doesn’t talk to Bannon, calling it a “misnomer.”
“I don’t talk to him. I don’t talk to him. I don’t talk to him, that’s just a misnomer,” Trump said.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Wednesday confirmed that Trump and Bannon spoke as recently as last month.
While Trump’s biting comments about Bannon on Wednesday amounted to his most significant criticism of the chief strategist he fired in August, Trump has a history of discarding and criticizing advisers, but then bringing them back into the fold.