Former White House strategist Steve Bannon has publicly stated that Donald Trump is not lying. But according to a new book, Bannon told his assistants, “Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything.”
The former president lies “to win any change [is] having at that time, ”Bannon said.
Bannon is quoted in The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020, by Jonathan Lemire, head of the White House Politico office and host of MSNBC. The book will be published on July 26th. The Guardian got a copy.
Lemire’s title refers to Trump’s lie, backed by Bannon, that his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden was the result of election fraud. This lie fueled the attempt to revoke the elections that culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Bannon, a far-right and provocative typhoon, ran Trump’s winning campaign in 2016 and then spent less than a year in the White House before being fired.
Source of numerous books on Trump, even saying he believed Trump had early-stage dementia, he returned to the inner circle of the 45th president to play a central role in his attempt to stay in power.
This week, Mother Jones released an audio recording three days before polling day in which Bannon told associates that Trump planned to “only declare victory” on election night.
Trump did not, but Bannon continued to work to keep the president in power.
Lemire reports that Bannon promised January 6, the day the congress certifies the results of the polling station and, therefore, “a dark date, known only to a few political addicts … [come to] to be ‘known all over the world’ ”.
On Jan. 6, Trump told his supporters to “fight like hell” and march toward the Capitol. Authorities have linked nine deaths to the riots that followed. More than 870 people have been charged, some for seditious conspiracy.
Bannon’s role in Trump’s attempt to stay in power, including links to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, is of central interest to the Jan. 6 House committee. .
Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena. He has since offered to testify, but the selection of the jury in his trial for contempt of Congress, a charge that could lead to time in jail, is scheduled for Monday.
Bannon escaped again with the law at the end of Trump’s presidency, when Trump pardoned his former adviser in a case of alleged fraud.
As president, Trump was famously happy to lie. A Washington Post count found that he did so 30,573 times during his time in power.
Regardless, in 2018, Bannon made headlines by telling ABC News that Trump did not lie.
He told Trump that “he hasn’t always told the truth,” Bannon said, “I don’t know,” and he also said the claims Trump lied about were “something else to demonize him.”
His host, Jonathan Karl, asked, “Has the president never lied?”
Bannon said, “Not that I know of, no.”
But Lemire writes that “even for Bannon, Trump was something new. The chief strategist told me that Trump” wasn’t looking to win a news cycle, he was looking to win an informative moment, a second. “
“Sometimes a Bannon, shocked, told attendees that ‘Trump would say anything, lie about anything to win that moment, to win any exchange he had at that moment.’
“Entire campaign proposals had to be written on the fly, political plans had to be reverse engineered, teams of aides immediately mobilized to meet what was going through Trump’s head at the time to defend his history, removing a journalist or changing a chiron on CNN “.